About

Studying for USM GLOBAL is part of Tiffany Chung’s project comissioned by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) for the exhibition Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America. This online archive of Chung’s research in mapping the U.S. military global footprint provides interactive maps tracking the location and number of U.S. military facilities in about 125 countries and colonies, including unconfirmed and recently closed facilities. To create these maps and the related embroidered work, USM GLOBAL, Chung relied extensively on David Vine’s 2021 List of U.S. Military Bases Abroad[1] and crosschecked it with other sources, such as the 2018 Base Structure Report published by the U.S. Department of Defense. As the research expanded more in-depth, a comprehensive list of articles charting the U.S. military facilities & activities in Sub-Saharan Africa and some of the ongoing conflicts in the continent is filed under In Focus–AFRICA, which gave form to her cartographic work, Africa in Focus: Refugees, IDPs, LIC Policy, Drone & Air Strikes, and Combat Engagement. The section In Focus–ASIA PACIFIC spotlights Okinawa, Japan, with materials on complex issues in relation to U.S. military bases and the environment on the archipelago. Under In Focus–Southwest & Central Asia, the materials are compiled from Chung’s ongoing research and tracking of the war and humanitarian crisis in Syria, which she has begun in 2012, with additional materials on conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And most importantly, interwoven in these findings are websites of organizations that track the human cost of war, the most sober component of this online archive that we should all pay attention to.

[1] Vine, David. Lists of U.S. Military Bases Abroad, 1776-2021. American University Digital Research Archive, 2021.
Artwork: Tiffany Chung Africa in Focus: Refugees, IDPs, LIC Policy, Drone & Air Strikes, and Combat Engagement (2021). Acrylic, ink, and oil on vellum & paper.

Further Notes:

“…for Americans to remember what they call the Vietnam War, the fact that it was one conflict in a long line of horrific wars that came before it and after it. This war’s identity–and, indeed, any war’s identity–cannot be extricated from the identity of war itself.”

       – Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies.

1619 is becoming recognized as an alternative beginning to how America was formed, one based in slavery as much as democracy. It is the year that marked the landing of the first 20 to 30 enslaved Africans in the colonies, with more slaves to arrive in the following many decades. The American experiment was entangled from its beginnings with slavery and forced migration of Indigenous peoples from First Nations and those from Africa. Expanding and colonizing new territories also meant repeating wars against other colonial powers and First Nations before and after independence, as well as military aggression against hemispheric neighbors in the Americas in later years. At the same time, distant places like Algiers, Angola, Somalia, Turkey, the Marquesas Islands, Samoa, Haiti, Siberia, China, and Laos saw the deployment of U.S. troops in the early decades after independence.[2]  Pondering whether the sun was rising or setting on the newly forming nation at the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin also concluded: “But now at length I have the happiness to know it is a rising and not a setting sun.” Indeed, the sun has never set in the context of the United States political and military power. The American experiment with its ideas and ideals, has continuously left profound impacts in many parts of the world, Vietnam included. My family and I were among the Vietnamese that came to the U.S. after 1975, those who fled our post-war ravaged country through different means but all as refugees.

My quest to understand the conflict called Vietnam War and to come to terms with how it has shaped the lives and histories of so many of us has led me further into unpacking different conflicts and larger geopolitical contexts, which unavoidably includes the history of the U.S. military expansion overseas. From the dawn of the U.S. independence, there has been series after series of conflicts–with the establishment of U.S. military bases and facilities worldwide on a large scale beginning after the 1898 Spanish-American war, although David Vine has traced some of the U.S. bases existing as early as 1776. Vine believes there are currently about 750 U.S. military base sites outside of the 50 states and Washington DC, in around 80 countries and colonies worldwide. In the book Nothing Ever Dies, Viet Thanh Nguyen quotes Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together.”[3]  I have sought to understand war by tracing my father’s journey as a helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese Air Force, captured as a POW in Laos from before I learned to speak, and kept in North Vietnam’s prison camps for 14 years. In my quest, I have tried to unpack how the United States’ commercial interests intertwined with its Cold War policy and political influence in Guatemala, and to track the current conflict in Syria, among other issues.

With the history of transatlantic slave trade as an ever-present backdrop, my research pays particular attention to the 53 states in Africa that are under the auspices of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) to implement the current U.S. policy of using African forces in the U.S. led war against terrorism in their continent. This strategic policy of ‘low-intensity conflicts’ (LICs) involves localizing conflicts to the Third World in applications of U.S. military power, which is cost effective and brings low-intensity effects for people in the U.S.,[4] while still implanting regional and global security measures to advance U.S. international goals. The cartographic work Africa in Focus: Refugees, IDPs, LIC Policy, Drone & Air Strikes, and Combat Engagement maps AFRICOM shadow facilities in Africa, locations of drone & air strikes and combat engagement, the number of refugees originated from African countries, and the number of refugees hosted by countries in the region. The work juxtaposes the high-intensity and destructive force of conflicts in locales bearing the brunt of war with the U.S. policy of low-intensity conflicts.

For the Asia Pacific region, I traveled to Okinawa after two years reading about it and saw for myself the overwhelming number of U.S. military bases. My research covers from the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 but focuses mainly on the U.S. military presence since WWII and related issues, especially Okinawa’s environmental degradation due to chemical contamination and uneven development since its 1972 reversion to Japan, while being affected by climate change. Protected by neither the U.S. or Japan’s constitution prior to 1972, Okinawa became the ‘Keystone of the Pacific,’ serving as a launchpad for the U.S. military’s war efforts in Korea (1950-1953) and Vietnam (1954-1975). Okinawa served as the U.S. military’s logistics hub and practice ground for military training and fighting simulations before deploying U.S. troops to Vietnam.[5] A buffer zone between mainland Japan and China, Okinawa continues to be instrumentalized in maintaining Japan-U.S. security alliance–the cornerstone of Japan’s defense strategy and policy–with ongoing U.S. military presence in Okinawa since 1945. While Okinawa occupies an area only 0.6% of Japan’s total land area, it currently hosts 70% of all U.S. military facilities in Japan.

Okinawa’s geopolitically strategic location and militarized landscape put a heavy toll on the indigenous population, which has been coined by scholars as a bilateral ‘Okinawa struggle,’ the long-term economic, social, and environmental struggles. The materials archived on this website give an overview of the U.S. military bases in Okinawa and PFAS contamination in water and soil originating at U.S. bases from the 1970s until present, particularly from MCAS Futenma and Kadena Airbase. While tracking the construction site of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) missile base in Ishigaki Island, my research also looks into the conditions of Shiraho coral reef in Ishigaki resulted from climate change and during the construction of New Ishigaki Airport (2006-2013). The research materials on Okinawa and Ishigaki exemplify the entanglements of nature, war, colonization, state-making, and extreme climate impact.

It is implausible to discuss the U.S. military activities worldwide without referencing to those of China and Russia, although their discreet policies make it nearly impossible to gather information. Mapping the U.S. military global footprint alone does not necessarily explain this convoluted nightmare called ‘war,’ and the U.S. military is not the only superpower at the chess table. The fact that certain information is made available to us through the Freedom of Information Act indicates that there is still hope for democracy in this country. We shall not forget that for many, the U.S. is a second chance, amid its shortcomings and failures. This project is an attempt to look at a giant without losing sight of what the focus should be and therefore, it is to be seen in relations to my other projects that foreground people’s memories and histories – and certainly, their hopes.

— Tiffany Chung

[2] Torreon, Barbara & Plagakis, Sofia. Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2022. Congressional Research Service report, 2022, accessed on 25 February 2023.
[3] Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press; 2016; p.2
[4] Gerson, Joseph & Birchard, Bruce. The Sun Never Sets: Confronting the Global Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases. Boston: South End Press; 1991; p.xi
[5] Jon Mitchell, “Vietnam: Okinawa’s Forgotten War,” The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus, vol.13, issue 16, no.1, 20 April 2015, accessed on 30 August 2022.