Harkavy Long

Political Geography 18 (1999) 941–972www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

Long cycle theory and the hegemonic powers’basing networks

Robert E. Harkavy*

Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Abstract

One recent focus of research in international relations theory is that of “long cycle theory,”associated primarily with George Modelski and William Thompson, which posits serial cyclesof hegemonic dominance — Venice, Portugal, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the UnitedStates — lasting approximately for one century. These hegemonic cycles are highly correlatedwith, or underpinned by, maritime and commercial dominance. Some aspects of long cycletheory have been contested by the rival “world systems” theory, that has fewer cycles and adisinclination to separate the military and economic dimensions of hegemony. Heretofore,naval power, as reflected in capital ship construction and orders of battle, has been used tomeasure maritime dominance. This research suggests that data for rival and successive globalbasing access networks could be used to inform and query the basis of long cycle theory; i.e.,to provide a measure of “global reach”. There are additionally, interesting conceptual questionsabout the basis for basing access, as it has evolved historically; specifically, from a basis inconquest to one dependent upon diplomacy and various quid pro quo. The article suggests theneed for more historical data collection on bases. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rightsreserved.

Keywords:Long cycles; Bases; Hegemony

Introduction

Recent years have seen the development of long cycle theory as one of the primaryfoci of efforts toward “grand theory” in international relations. Stated in summaryform by its most well known proponents, George Modelski and William Thompson,“the long cycle of global politics refers to the process of fluctuations in concentration

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942 R.E. Harkavy / Political Geography 18 (1999) 941–972

of global reach capabilities which provide one foundation for world leadership”(Modelski & Thompson, 1988: 97; see also Modelski 1978, 1987). Crucially, it dealswith the serial (and approximately 100 years in length) periods of maritime andcommercial dominance by Venice, Portugal, the Netherlands, Great Britain (two cen-tury-long periods straddling the intervening Napoleonic Wars), and the United States.In relation to these long cycles, the theory further identifies those “phases of globalwar (1494–1516, 1580–1608, 1688–1713, 1792–1815, and 1914–1945) for it is thesesystem-transforming bouts of warfare that constitute the watershed phases of thehypothesized long cycle process”. Further, according to Modelski and Thompson,“it is during the global war phase that the system’s tendency toward concentration-deconcentration essentially switches from deconcentration to a fairly high level ofconcentration for some finite post-war period of time” (Modelski & Thompson,1988: 97).

As it happens, the extant corpus of long cycle theory raises a few interesting issuesin relation to International Relations (IR) theory and the state of the discipline whichwe may only briefly touch upon here. It is closely related to, and in some crucialways rivalrous to, “world system theory” associated with Immanuel Wallerstein, etal., which focuses on the origins and dynamics of the modern global capitalist econ-omy and worldwide uneven development, that is, a capitalist world system that hascontinually contained a core, periphery and semi-periphery.1 The shifting serialhegemony, or what otherwise has been referred to by Thompson (1997) as “systemleader lineage” forms the core of capitalist domination. Interestingly, too, long cycletheory, as noted by Rosecrance (1987), constitutes one example of a cyclical theoryof IR, by contrast with linear ones as represented, for instance, by “realism”, ormillennial constructs such as Marxism or perhaps “endism” in its recent manifes-tations. Also interesting, in relation to structural theories of IR, is the seeming impli-cation of long-cycle theory that the international system tends constantly towardsunipolarity, or to an alternation between unipolarity (during concentration phases oflong cycles) and bipolarity, the latter during periods of hegemonic warfare. Thiscontrasts with the widely held assertion by some IR theorists that the system hastended to alternate between bipolar and multipolar periods (Hopf, 1991).

One other interesting relationship appears to have emerged with long cycle theory,and that is the extent to which it forces attention to the connection between thehitherto almost wholly separate worlds of IR theory and military history; specifically,the history of maritime rivalries and naval warfare. An analyst looking to flesh outthe historical details feeding into long cycle theory will necessarily find himselfimmersed in the magisterial works of Boxer (1965, 1969) and Parry (1967) on thePortuguese, Spanish, and Dutch seaborne empires; in the exemplary two-volumeseries by Padfield (1979, 1982) on maritime and commercial rivalries in the 15th to18th centuries, and the historical analyses of naval warfare and maritime supremacyby Mahan (1980), Graham (1965) and Rosinski (1957) and more latterly, Gray

1 Summarized for the uninitiated in Viotti and Kauppi (1993: pp. 449–470). See also Wallerstein(1979).

943R.E. Harkavy / Political Geography 18 (1999) 941–972

(1992). Those analyses are juxtaposed to those more focused on, but related to, theeconomic and technological roots of long cycles, particularly, the historical pro-gression of Kondratieff waves, as analyzed by Goldstein (1985) and Thompson(1997). Though it is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth remarking thatwhereas some analysts see long cycles driven primarily by domestic economic factorsand technological innovation, historians such as Padfield (1979, 1982) and Boxer(1965, 1969), wholly innocent of the theoretical baggage of long cycle theory, seethe successive periods of maritime supremacy driven only in part by K-waves (orsome looser interpretations of economic dynamism), but also by envy, piracy, andidiosyncratic geographical factors related to maritime dominance.2 Padfield, indeed,wholly absent from the vocabulary of modern IR theory, portrays a lengthy skeinof balance of power combinations and recombinations, or at the least, of the riseand fall of global maritime empires.

Finally, it is to be noted that some serious general criticisms have been leveledat long cycle theory, some of them summarized in a review article by Rosecrance(1987) more than a decade ago. The almost too-coincidental nature of century-longcycles (literally corresponding to the actual centuries) provides an almost bizarretwist. The omission of the major land wars of the 17th century in Europe is alsoraised, as is the question of whether periods of dominance or aspirations of sameby major land powers in Europe — France under Louis XIV, Germany in the twenti-eth century, the USSR during the Cold War — does or doesn’t chip away at longcycle theory’s thesis of continuous, serial hegemony by major seapowers. This prob-lem is finessed somewhat by Modelski and Thompson (1988), who include thesepowers within their definition of “global powers”, albeit short of hegemony. Thequestion of whether Spain was at least co-equal to Portugal as a hegemonic powerin the 16th century is also raised not only by Rosecrance (1987), but by devoteesof world systems theory such as Taylor (1989).

Then too, these devotees of world systems theory criticize what they perceive aslong cycle theory’s tendency to a “dual logic” that separates military-security andeconomic forces and trends (these critics naturally see such matters through neo-Marxist lenses), even despite the recent efforts by Thompson and Modelski to focuson Kondratieff waves as economic underpinnings of military, mostly naval,hegemony.

Indeed, world systems theory advocates perceive three cycles of hegemony, butnot so congruent with actual centuries, broadly parallel to Modelski’s Dutch longcycle, the second British long cycle, and the ongoing U.S. long cycle. They largelyomit Portugal despite its extensive naval reach and basing structure. But it is worth

2 Somewhat ironically, the historian Padfield (1979, 1982), while not attuned to K-waves or, generally,the economic bases of capitalist hegemons, raises throughout his works another important political andeconomic “variable” of sorts, namely, the comparative ability of then major power governments to“extract” money for military purposes involving bank loans, government budgets, etc. (nowadays thatproblem tends to be encompassed by ratios of military expenditures to GNP). Padfield (1982: 145–151)covers this for Britain and France in the 1690s. For a more generalized analysis of this problem, coveringnumerous nations in the 20th century, see Millett and Murray (1988).


noting that basing structure could as easily be used as a correlative measure of worldsystems’ theory’s three hegemonic cycles as of Modelski’s five long cycles; indeed,it might be one basis for comparing the comparative validity of the rival theses oflong cycles and “cycles of hegemony” a la world systems theory.

What then has been central to definitions of (or causes of) hegemony in the longcycle context? In general, that means seapower and commercial dominance, the latterreferring to the successive roles of Venice, Lisbon and Antwerp, Amsterdam, Londonand New York as global financial cores (the now apparent near collapse of the powerof Tokyo banks in the 1990s removed for now another possible anomaly in relationto this thesis). Thompson (1997) and Goldstein (1985) stress the relation to K-waves,i.e., technological innovation and dynamism, as Cipolla (1965) did earlier in pointingout the crucial nature of the development of iron production and naval ship andarmaments developments in the early phases of the rise of the West. Modelski andThompson (1988), in their more recent work, dwell upon the central measurementof numbers of capital ships, concluding that long cycle dominance has been associa-ted with a 50% or more share of the world’s largest fighting ships (echoes of Mahanhere, and his thesis of indivisible seapower, and the traditional British naval doctrinethat insisted upon a navy equal to or better than the next two ranked naviescombined). Interestingly, much of the literature on comparative US–Soviet navalpower during the latter phases of the Cold War dwelled not just on comparisons ofnumbers of ships (surface and sub-surface), but on comparative “ship-days” spentby rival fleets in the major oceans and seas, i.e., Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, etc.(see Watson, 1982). Such measures could conceivably be reconstructed for earlierrivalries, i.e., Dutch and Portuguese ship-days in the Indian Ocean year-by-year inthe late 16th century.

Most fundamentally, long cycle theory is concerned with seapower as one formof global reach. As noted by Modelski and Thompson (1988: 3), the questions of whoexercises leadership in global politics and why are perhaps the cardinal questions ofworld politics, and the concept linking these two questions is seapower. Accordingto them, “only those disposing of superior navies have, in the modern world, stakedout a claim to world leadership”. They refer to an “oceanic system” in the modernworld, and aver that the advent of the modern world system was at the same timealso the onset of use and control of the seas on a global scale, hence the openingof an entirely new age of seapower. Indeed, in ancient Greece, there came to beknown the termthalassocracy, which meant “maritime supremacy” or “rule of thesea” (Modelski and Thompson, 1988: 5). Modelski and Thompson trace the develop-ment of this concept from the ancient Greeks via Byzantium and Venice, and inconnection with periods of Arab and Chinese naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean.But they also conclude that “in West European experience the first to evolve globaloceanic concepts were the Portuguese”. Prior to 1500, maritime supremacy playedout within the confines of narrow seas, i.e., the Mediterranean, Arabian Sea, theBaltic, the Black Sea, the North Sea, and the South China Sea. But after 1500, onecould begin to speak of truly global maritime activities and predominance, so thatthe subsequent serial maritime hegemons could be seen as striving towards a trulyglobal reach.


As noted, Modelski and Thompson have chosen to focus upon data for the numberof capital ships as the primary criterion for global seapower, and for defining hegem-onic long-cycle phases. While it was dealt with in the interstices of that analysis,there was much less attention paid to the related and important subject of the devel-opment of global — or at least extensive short of global — systems of overseasbases. In the earlier periods of Mongol, Southern Sung China, Venetian, Portuguese,Dutch and British dominance, that referred, of course, solely to naval bases. As weshall see, in the 20th century, the development of airpower, missiles, satellites anda host of new communications and intelligence functions has produced a far morediverse set of functions and purposes for external basing access. And, indeed, thecritical role of basing access in defining global military and commercial dominancehas not changed.

That then leads into the central research question here provisionally broachedpending a much larger research effort. The question deals with the extent that ananalysis of the far-flung basing networks of the serial maritime hegemons can furtherinform and question the basic tenets of long cycle theory.

Key questions, criteria involved in the relationship of basing access and long-cycle hegemony

This paper is intended as an initial cut — an outline — of the relationship ofexternal basing access and long-cycle hegemonic dominance, as it developed histori-cally from China in the Middle Ages, to Venice, to Portugal and Spain, to the Nether-lands, to Britain and to the U.S. in serial phases of maritime and commercial domi-nance (the basing access of rival “global powers” in Modelski’s and Thompson’sterms — such as France during and after Louis XIV, Germany, Japan, and the SovietUnion — will also be considered, if only for juxtaposition to the superior basingnetworks of hegemonic powers). As such, we have identified a range of conceptualand historical-developmental questions, or issues, which may serve as the basis fora more comprehensive analysis and effort at data collection on bases, spanning 500or more years of great power rivalry.

O The fundamental problem of reciprocal causation involved in the question ofwhether maritime dominance has resulted in corresponding dominant patterns ofbasing access, or whether the latter has provided for maritime dominance, or bothhave developed simultaneously in ways perhaps too complex to allow for easyattribution of causality.

O The long term evolvement of basing networks from “regional reach” (Venice inthe Mediterranean) to “quasi-global reach” (Portugal around the Indian Oceanlittoral and across the Atlantic in Brazil), to truly global reach in the more recentcases of Great Britain and the U.S. “Global reach” has become increasinglytruly global.

O The vastly increasing proliferation of types of basing access. Venice, Portugal,and the Netherlands sought and acquired naval bases only (albeit of somewhat


differentiated types), i.e., basing networks were almost entirely defined by navalinstallations. By the late 20th century, rival U.S. and Soviet global networks com-prised a diverse array of military functions under the general rubrics of air, naval,ground, missile, communications, space-related, intelligence, research, logisticsbases, etc. Whereas earlier bases related almost entirely to surface naval activitiesaround the major seas and oceans, today they relate to complex interactionsbetween land, air, outer space, and underseas military activities as well as thoseon the surface of the major seas.

O The earlier mixing or co-mingling of military (naval) and commercial (entrepoˆt)functions for specific external bases; later, these military and economic functionswould largely be separated out.3

O The relationship of rival basing networks (often highly asymmetric) to the tra-ditional Mahanian concept or dictum about the indivisibility of seapower or “com-mand of the sea”. Has the co-existence of rival basing networks, albeit asymmet-ric, diluted this maxim or dictum?

O Indeed, does the co-existence of naval basing networks even amidst periods ofseemingly global dominance dilute the central thesis of long cycles and perhapsprovide indicators of degrees of multipolarity or power diffusion?

O The long-range connection of long cycle theory to geopolitical theory (Mackinder,1904; Mahan, 1980; Spykman, 1944; Cohen, 1963), as informed by analysis ofbasing networks as reflective of “heartland versus rimland”, or landpower versusseapower dualisms.

O The relationship of basing access networks to the outcomes of hegemonic wars,but also, the gradualness of “base races” or contests over access before, after, andin-between major wars.

O The ability of dominant naval powers to “pick off” rival bases and colonial out-posts during wars; further, the deterrent aspects of this possibility. There may bea relationship here to the recently evolved concept — during the latter part of theCold War — of “horizontal escalation” (Epstein, 1984).

O The use of external bases for off-shore ship production in earlier phases of hegem-onic cycles; in modern times, the crucial role of ship repair but also licensed shipand other weapons production as a contemporary analog.

O The long term shift in the mix of basing functions, i.e., from commerce raidingin earlier times to various aspects of interventions, arms re-supply, coercive diplo-macy, etc., in modern times.

O The evolvement of mixed government-private basing activities earlier (tradingcompanies, privateers) to the more or less entirely state-based nature of contem-porary basing diplomacy.

O How bases are acquired and retained in historical context, i.e., the varying roles

3 This point is only partly modified by the fact that in the modern world, basing structures are criticalto protection of key economic assets, even if not co-located with them, as witness U.S. naval and airbases in and around the Persian Gulf in proximity to major oil fields.


of colonial conquest, alliances, arms transfers as quid pro quo, etc., in differenthistorical epochs. Stated otherwise, the historical evolution of basing diplomacy.

O The changing technological requirements for bases, viz., for naval basing, theprogression from galleys, to galleons, to coal-fired ships, to oil-fired ships, andnuclear-powered ships.

O The correlation of basing access dominance to the phases of long cycles identifiedby Modelski, 1987, i.e., delegitimization, deconcentration, etc., as further corre-lated with statistics regarding capital ship production and deployment.

O Thompson’s recent work on “system leader lineage”, the extent of congruence ofthe serial basing networks of Portugal, the Netherlands, Great Britain and theU.S., emanating from a core area of hegemonic dominance, and the long-termnature of the strategic importance of certain key oceanic areas and routes, navalchokepoints, islands, etc. (Thompson, 1997).

Many of these questions will be addressed below, not necessarily in the above order,as they are in some cases inextricably entwined with one another.

Regional reach to global reach

Though on a superficial level one may talk about serial century-long periods oflong-cycle hegemony based on seapower, and also about “system lineage” patternswhereby basing networks (along with other aspects of “global” dominance) partlyclone each other, in fact there has been a progression from less-than-global basingsystems to more truly global ones. [Perhaps also one might say the same thing aboutthe reach of western capitalist interests in the context of “world systems analysis”and/or core-periphery relations.]

China, in the early period of the Ming dynasty, under the aegis of the Muslimeunuch admiral Zheng He, had a naval reach — and some associated points ofaccess — extending from south China to Southeast Asia and on through the IndianOcean, at Colombo (Ceylon), the Philippines, Malacca (Sumatra), Calicut (India),Chittagong (modern Bangladesh), Hormuz, Aden, Jidda, and the area around the BabEl Mandeb, also Mogadishu (Somalia) (Swanson, 1982). Previous to that, the MongolEmpire in its latter stages, albeit primarily a landpower, had utilized naval basesalong the Chinese and Vietnamese coasts to project power to Japan and the EastIndies.4 Venice, perhaps to be characterized as holding, in long cycle terms, regionalleadership prototypic of later cases of global leadership, had extensive basing accessthroughout the Mediterranean, extending to Crete, the Greek islands, the Levant(Accra), Constantinople, Corfu, Ragusa on the Adriatic, and Negroponte (in Greece).(Rival Genoa had similar but less extensive access) (Lane, 1973). But it had truly

4 The activities of the Mongol navy and associated basing problems are discussed in Benson (1995:374), including Mongol naval operations in the 1270s and 1280s in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, parti-cularly the use of naval vessels for amphibious operations. The bases used by the Mongols were, appar-ently, on the basis of conquest rather than diplomacy.


nothing outside the enclosed region of the Mediterranean Sea. Portugal, commonlycharacterized as the first global maritime power, had a basing system that encom-passed much of the African littoral, west, south and east, islands offshore of Africasuch as Madeira, Cape Verde, etc., and all around the Indian Ocean arc extendingfrom East Africa to the Arabian Sea, India and what formerly was known as theEast Indies and on to China (also in Brazil). Portugal also had access to NorthernEurope via Antwerp and Southampton, and to the Mediterranean via Seville. Thatwas an impressive extended reach, quasi-global in scope, but lacking in access toNorth America, and South and Central America other than Brazil, i.e., the entirePacific coast of the Western Hemisphere, and also northeast Asia. Also, Spain duringthis period maintained extensive basing access in areas not reached by the Portugeseempire, i.e., in Peru, Mexico, and throughout the Caribbean including what is nowVenezuela and Colombia. The Dutch founded new forts and trading posts, andinherited others from the Portuguese.

Great Britain, on the other hand, in its two long-cycle phases bracketing the Napo-leonic wars, developed a more truly global basing network in accord with an empireupon which “the sun never set”. That system of access included, at its zenith, navalbases in, among other places, all along the east and west African coasts (Freetown,Capetown, Zanzibar, Mombasa), throughout the Mediterranean (Gibraltar, Malta,Cyprus, Suez, Alexandria), in the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean area (Aden, Basra, Bom-bay, Colombo and Trincomalee, Singapore), in the Antipodes, in East Asia (HongKong), various southwest Pacific islands, in British Columbia (Esquimalt), in theCaribbean (Kingston, Trinidad), around the North Atlantic (Halifax, Bermuda) andalso in the South Atlantic (the Falklands). The U.S. basing network during the ColdWar was also truly global, albeit perhaps less quantitatively extensive than its prede-cessor. After all, it was denied access in the broad swathe of territories under commu-nist sway, i.e., China, the USSR and its nearby satrapies. It also had little access inLatin America, as that region tried to emerge from the Monroe Doctrine and keepits distance from Cold War rivalries. As we shall note in another subsequent context,that had to do both with political factors (colonialism as a basis of imperial controlversus various quid pro quo with essentially independent actors), and also technologi-cal factors; specifically, the lesser requirements for large numbers of bases as tech-nology came to transcend factors of distance.

Proliferation of types of bases and/or basing access

In earlier times, indeed up to the interwar period after World War I, basing accesswas almost entirely to do with navies, with ships. There were, of course, no aircraftnor “technical” facilities in the modern sense, all of which required the invention ofelectricity. There were some predecessors to contemporary land force access, mostlypertaining to small army garrisons (co-located with naval bases and fortresses builtto protect them.)

Even in earlier times, the Venetian, Portugese and Dutch basing access systemsrevealed some diversification, subsumed beneath the generality that almost entirely,


naval basing was involved. In each of these early systems, what would today befamiliar as “navy bases” actually combined, sometimes, the functions of naval basesand entrepoˆts, i.e., factories and commercial trading stations used for warehousing,transshipments of goods, etc. (Padfield, 1979: 4). In short, there was perhaps a lessclear line then between specifically military and specifically economic functions,centuries before the U.S. overseas military presence would inspire charges of“imperialism”, that it was intended to protect corporate assets overseas.

Venice and Portugal not only used bases for provisioning, ship repairs, R and R(rest and recreation in modern lingo), but also had small fleets more or less perma-nently stationed overseas (or in Venice’s case, at the other end of the Mediterranean).That anticipated later U.S. use of “station fleets” in the Caribbean and the Far Eastearly in the 20th century, not to mention the homeporting of fleets during the ColdWar in places such as Yokosuka (Japan), Bahrein, and Naples (Italy) (Roberts, 1977).In the Portugese case as well, whole fleets of ships were actually constructed over-seas, for instance, in India, so that overseas fleets need not have been rotated backand forth between external bases and homeports in Portugal (Padfield, 1979). Evenwith extensive license-production of weapons systems all over the world by the U.S.in recent years, there has been no overseas or offshore production of capital shipsor submarines for use by the U.S. Navy (Germany under the Versailles regime hadproduced submarines offshore in Turkey and Spain) (Harkavy, 1975).

As it happens, and apparently beginning with Venice, the basing structures of theserial hegemonic powers have probably all had land forces associated with navalbases and fortresses that guarded harbors. The extent to which these were permanentgarrisons, as opposed to armed colonists, personnel from trading companies, or tem-porarily stationed personnel from fleets, is a question that needs further research.For instance, theAtlas of British Overseas Expansionavers that “from the mid-eighteenth century Britain began stationing permanent military garrisons in her col-onies, at first haphazardly and then routinely, as an adjunct to naval protection”(Porter, 1991: 118). That was seen as a qualitative shift, and these commitmentsconstantly overstretched London’s budget “at a time when Parliament begrudgedexpenditure on a large standing army in years of European peace” (Porter, 1991:118). France maintained large garrisons in places such as Algeria, Morocco andSenegal at the same time, as would the U.S. later in Germany, South Korea, Japan(to a lesser degree, Italy and elsewhere) during the Cold War, albeit on the basis ofalliances (hence, limited sovereignty over bases) rather than naked colonial control.

But skipping over the centuries, the 20th century was to see a vast proliferationof new basing requirements driven by the ongoing march of military technologicalinnovation. Before World War I, Britain and Germany had underwater cable systemsgoing to their colonies that required terminals in these overseas possessions, perhapsthe first of the C3I (command, control, and communications) technical facilities(Kennedy, 1971). By the interwar period, all of the major powers had external airbases — in the cases of the major colonial powers, mirroring the locations of majornaval bases. Britain even had an extensive network of mooring masts for long-rangedirigibles. The 1930’s saw the extensive proliferation of requirements for communi-


cations facilities (also, for communications intercepts) and the beginnings of externalaccess for radar stations.

But during the Cold War period, there was a truly staggering explosion of basingfunctions. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) hasdeveloped a typology of forward military presence functions with the following gen-eral categories: naval, air, land, missile, command and communications, intelligence,space-related, research and logistics (Harkavy, 1989). Each of these categories sub-sumes a host of others. Under air bases, there are forward fighter and bomber bases,tanker bases, maritime patrol aircraft bases, transport staging bases, etc. Under naval,there are surface ship and submarine bases, including a spectrum from homeportingand major drydocking facilities to places merely utilized for port visits. There areseparate facilities for strategic surface-to-surface missiles and surface-to-air missiles.Under intelligence are a host of basing functions, for example, nuclear detection,SOSUS (sound surveillance systems to locate submarines), early warning radars,satellite down-links and master control stations, etc. The U.S. also made extensiveuse of overseas facilities for such purposes as solar flare detection, tracking of others’satellites, weather forecasting, Voice of America transmission stations, etc. The fulllist was much, much longer. Whereas earlier, basing pertained only to the surfaceof the ocean, now its functions deal with the land, sea surface, the underseas, theatmosphere and outerspace, and increasingly, the links between all of these, so that,for example, there are land-based and space-based communications links to submar-ines patrolling under the seas.

Changing basing functions

Over the centuries, there has been somewhat of a shift in the general functionsof bases, and in the “norms” associated with their use. This ramifies into some verybroad issues of IR Theory and the relationship between security and economic affairs.

Nowadays, in assessing the recent (U.S. and Soviet) functions of bases in the mostgeneral sense, a typology of sorts may be assayed. First, there is the big dividebetween the nuclear strategic functions of bases on the one hand, and conventionalpower projection on the other. The former area pertains both to deterrence in timesof peace and (hypothetically) the use of bases for nuclear warfighting (or the use ofbases in a “protracted conventional phase” that might have seen efforts by both sidesto alter the nuclear balance, in part by interdicting or neutralizing the other side’snuclear-related bases). Conventional power projection pertains variously to directintervention (as with U.S. use of bases en route to Desert Storm); arms resupplyduring conflicts on behalf of client states (as with U.S. use of Portugal’s Azoresbases in resupplying Israel in 1973); coercive diplomacy, and “showing the flag”,i.e., symbolic issues of “presence”. The current use of forward bases for force inter-position or peacekeeping activities (see the U.S. use of bases in Hungary in relationto Bosnia) is still another modern category.

In the past, from Venice to the heyday of Britain’s empire, conventional powerprojection by way of interventions, coercive diplomacy, and “presence” were all


omnipresent, always utilizing naval forces (the U.S. nowadays uses AWACS(Airborne Warning and Control System) or JSTARS (Joint Surveillance and TargetAttack Radar System) planes in its ventures into “gunboat diplomacy”). But inaddition, bases were vital to commerce raiding and the activities of privateers. Thisis a difficult area for analysis here. A review of the extant literature on maritimehistory reveals the extensive use of overseas bases (for instance, in the Caribbean)by privateers or even pirates who, while nominally acting independently and mainlyfor profit, were nonetheless citizens or subjects of one or another European country,or acting de facto under such national control. It is possible that a detailed analysisof Chinese naval activities during the era of Zheng He would reveal similar analyticalproblems. France in particular, during the long period between the wars of religionand the Napoleonic wars, during which its continental military activities usually pre-cluded matching Britain’s navy, made extensive use of such “privateers” in aguerrede coursethat was conducted primarily around the English Channel and Bay ofBiscay, but also far afield in the Caribbean (Padfield, 1982: chapter 5). Nowadays,of course, privateers are long passe´; likewise, the practice of commerce raiding out-side periods of intense warfare bracketed by formal war declarations and treaties(privateers could seemingly conduct commerce raiding outside periods of declaredwarfare just because they could claim to be operating independent of nationalcontrol).

Finally, it is to be noted that earlier, “bases” and “factories” overseas were co-located (some of the historical maps use these terms interchangeably). That is, for-tresses and naval stations were co-located with economic enterprises overseas, withthe military presence needed on the spot to guard the “factories” or entrepoˆts.

The basis for basing: territorial control vs. quid pro quo

What, historically, has been the political basis for basing? Why or how do hegem-onic (or other) naval powers acquire such basing access? What have been the changesin practice over time?

Basically, this breaks down into a spectrum with two strong contending poles,and grey areas in between. Simply stated, basing access may be taken by force, i.e.,it is a function of imperial or colonial control; or, it may be acquired via variousforms of quid pro quo, diplomatic trade-offs, reciprocal albeit asymmetric trans-actions, etc. In the latter cases, some degree or another of coercion, albeit subtle andimplicit, may be involved.

Much of the history of basing access derives from outright conquest or the impo-sition of foreign access upon unwilling “hosts”. Venice fought for and retained accessin various places in the eastern Mediterranean, which then had to be protected byfortifications, troops, and galley fleets. Earlier, Ming China under Zheng He’s admir-alship had obtained access in nearby Southeast Asia primarily by supporting clientsin key strategic positions such as Malacca. But its “bases” in Africa and the MiddleEast really were just fleet visit sites with permission by local rulers eager to trade(again, the blurring of military and economic functions). The later Portuguese and


Dutch seaborne empires relied on conquests and occupations of key strategicpointsd’appui, but with a mix of raw force and deals with local leaders who could bebribed, threatened into submission, or very often, needed the European power’s navyin its conflicts with nearby rival states. Portugal, for instance, did an effective jobof allying with some principalities on India’s west coast and playing off one localruler against another (Padfield, 1979: 65–69). In what would become a familiartheme, arms transfers were a particularly effective medium of exchange to securebasing rights. So were bribes and other subventions. Britain’s empire, mostly hingedon outright colonial control, also utilized subsidies to European allies in their myriadwars in exchange for naval base access; earlier after 1585, there were English basesin the Netherlands. As would become familiar to 20th century students, basing accesswas often granted as a way of securing support against contiguous regional foes,i.e., a trade-off of bases for security (Padfield, 1982: chapters 6 and 7).

In the twentieth century, which saw a transition from British to U.S. maritimesupremacy, there was a long-term trend away from access via colonial control tothat based largely upon various quid pro quo, i.e., security and economic assistance.In the interwar period, basing systems were almost entirely a function of colonialcontrol. Britain (now perhaps beyond the point of its maritime supremacy) had byfar the largest basing system, correlated with the size and scope of its empire. France,the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal followed. Germany, shorn of its overseas empireby the Treaty of Versailles had nothing. Neither did the Soviet Union. The U.S. hada few external bases in the Philippines, Hawaii, Samoa, Midway Island, Guam, etc.,mostly taken from Spain in 1898. In this case there was a lack of congruence betweenmaritime power, measured by capital ships, as per Modelski/Thompson, and bases.That lack of congruence was partly restored via the Anglo-American destroyers-for-bases deal in 1940 and the subsequent elaboration of the American basing networkduring World War II.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the basis for bases shifted from colonial control to diplo-matic quid pro quo. The U.S. (and later the USSR) first availed itself after 1945 ofa global basing network provided by its allies’ colonial control in places such asSingapore, Mauritius, Cyprus, Aden, Capetown, Mombasa and Malta. But as thosecolonial dominoes fell one by one, translating into more than 100 new states, boththe U.S. and USSR had to utilize formal alliances and arms transfers (often, thecement of security and economic assistance) to acquire and secure bases. Indeed, bythe 1980s, one could almost read into the basic numbers on security assistance toascertain where America’s most crucial basing points were: in Spain, Portugal (theAzores), Greece (including Crete), Turkey, the Philippines, Thailand, Morocco andKenya (United States Congress, annual). Some were afforded by tight alliancerelationships with nations not needing security assistance, i.e., Japan and Germany,which provided offsets to maintain a U.S. presence and commitment.

In the military and academic literature on this subject in the 1970s and beyond, adistinction was drawn between “bases” and “facilities” (Harkavy, 1989). The formerpertained to situations where the user (mostly the U.S. and USSR) had somethingclose to complete control over external ports and airfields. As the Cold War pro-gressed, however, what had been “bases” came often to be characterized as “facili-


ties,” whereby the host nation exercised its sovereignty and control over the use ofsuch “bases”. Thus the U.S. was able to use facilities in Taiwan, Okinawa and thePhilippines for combat missions in the Vietnam war, and British facilities for a raidon Libya in 1986. In 1998, Turkey and Saudi Arabia were reluctant to allow theU.S. Air Force to attack Iraq even from bases where U.S. aircraft were more or lesspermanently stationed. By the 1980s many nations hosting to U.S. intelligence gath-ering facilities were demanding a partnership in utilizing the “take” from such facili-ties. This is perhaps an important research question in longer term basing history,where alliances and related issues of sovereignty must presumably have come intoquestion when the user wanted to conduct military operations not approved of bythe host.

Generally speaking, bipolar systems with tight alliances and an ideological basisfor conflict (the Cold War) seem to have experienced more permissive basing accessfor the hegemons. Multipolar (and less durable) alliance structures seem to dictateless basing access for major maritime powers. In the 1930s, outside the realm ofcolonial control, only Japan’s use of Siamese naval bases and Germany’s submarinebases in Spanish-controlled islands (Canary and Balearic Islands) constitutedexamples of basing access provided one independent nation by another (Harkavy,1982: chapter 3).

Though a full discussion is not possible here, it is worth noting that throughoutlong cycle history, islands along the rimland littorals have been important to basing.Malta, Minorca, Cyprus, Socotra, Mauritius, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, various Indone-sian and Pacific islands, etc., have been critical to naval basing through several longcycles. More recently, one notes the crucial importance of Central Pacific islands tosupport Japan’s onslaught in 1941–1942, and the critical roles of Guam, Diego Gar-cia and Ascension in recent U.S. and British military operations or the extent towhich Ethiopia’s Dahlak Archipelago became a strategic prize for the USSR (andearlier perhaps, Israel). In recent years, some of these small islands have formed thelast remnant of “colonialism” just because they may have been too small for indepen-dence but have been of critical military value.

System leader lineage

In some recent work, William Thompson has written about the various aspects of“system leader lineage,” conceding, however, that “strictly speaking, the previoussystem leader does not give birth to its successor” (Thompson, 1997: 19). Yet, heavers, “there are clear lineage patterns in the technological innovations that providethe foundations for systemic leadership”, “a long history of assistance and resourcetransfers from the old leader to the new that could be likened to parental nurturingand offspring learning”, and “an even longer history of interaction in the securityrealm that paints system leaders as a special community in international relations —not unlike a kin or clan relationship linked by some real or imagined bloodline”(Thompson, 1997: 19). He even refers loosely to a longitudinal “geopolitical com-munity formation”, whereby despite the wars between the Portuguese and Dutch,


the Portuguese and English, the Dutch and the British, and the British and the Amer-icans (Genoa and Venice are left out here), there are also historical security linkages,primarily among the British, Dutch and Americans. He concludes that “the statesthat have become system leaders have been unusually prominent suppliers of protec-tion and security assistance before, during, and after the recipients’ periods of sys-temic leadership” (Thompson, 1997: 19).

In this same vein, one may point to the lineage aspects of the serial basing net-works of the Chinese, Venetian, Portuguese, Dutch, British, and U.S. maritimeempires. Some of these links are stronger than others, i.e., there are no links betweenthe Chinese and Venetian networks, and none either between Venice and Portugal.Nonetheless, some obvious longitudinal linkages may be cited, on two related levels.First, in the progression from Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain and the U.S. thereis a tendency for some naval bases or strongpoints orpoints d’appui(either preciselyor in the vicinity) to be passed along from one empire to the next. In some casesthat has resulted from conquests, the results of wars; in other cases, the inheritancehas been more peacefully acquired. Second, it is noted that throughout this longhistory, certain areas, certain littorals, have been the primary foci of basing networks,i.e., the Mediterranean, the entire African littoral from Morocco around the Cape ofGood Hope and on to the Bab El Mandeb; the entire arc of the Indian Ocean fromsouthern Africa to Southeast Asia bracketing the South Asian sub-continent; and theAsian littoral running from present day Vietnam on up to China, Korea, and Japan.Access to and control over strongpoints throughout these areas has been a consistentbone of contention throughout most of this past millenium. The relation to Mahanand Spykman, i.e., sea control and control of the rimlands or (in Saul Cohen’sterminology) “shatterbelts”, is fairly apparent (Spykman 1942, 1944; Cohen, 1963).

Interestingly, many of the naval access points that were established by Zheng He’sChinese navy in the early 15th century were those later re-established by Portugaland the Netherlands; indeed, were later contested for by the U.S. and the USSRduring the heyday of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s: bases near and aroundthe crucial Indonesian Straits, Sri Lanka, India; Hormuz, Aden, and Jidda near andaround the crucial chokepoints of the Straits of Hormuz and Bab El Mandeb. (TheJapanese navy tried to take over many of these same positions in its attempt atsupplanting the British Navy in the Indian Ocean in 1942.)

The Dutch eventually took over many of the bases established first by Portugal:Colombo and Jaffna (Ceylon), Calicut and Cochin (India), Malacca, Macassar(Indonesia), several places in southwest Africa, Capetown, and also Recife and Bahiain Brazil (the latter have not entirely been part of a system lineage, but note the useof air bases in Northeast Brazil by the U.S. in ferrying aircraft to the British in theMiddle East in 1942) (Harkavy, 1982: 111). Later, Britain was to inherit much ofwhat had been the Portuguese and Dutch naval basing networks in the IndianOcean/South China Sea area, establishing naval bases at Capetown (Simonstown),Mauritius, Mombasa, Aden, Muscat, Basra, Bombay (near the former Portuguesebase at Diu), Colombo, Singapore (near Malacca) and Hong Kong (near Macao).

During the early part of the Cold War, the U.S. used many of the British basesin this area. But as the Cold War progressed, the Soviets made competitive inroads,


establishing naval bases or lesser forms of access in Nacala and Lourenco Marques(Mozambique), Berbera and Mogadiscu (Somalia). Aden (South Yemen), Port Sudan(Sudan), Vishakapatnam (India) and Haiphong and Camranh Bay (Vietnam) even asthe U.S. maintained access at Capetown, Mombasa (Kenya), Muscat and MasirahIsland (Oman), Bahrein, Colombo, Singapore and Subic Bay (the Philippines),among others. There was a competitive, rival conflict over access points just as therehad been in the 17th century as the Dutch only gradually took over much of whathad been the Portuguese seaborne empire.

The entire Mediterranean littoral has been an area of competition over basingaccess over a long stretch of time, even though neither the Portuguese nor Dutchseaborne empires penetrated into this inland sea area (Portugal had bases at theAtlantic entrance at Tangier and Ceuta). But it is striking to note that in the strugglesbetween Venice and the Ottoman Empire, then later between Britain, France andSpain, and still later between the U.S. and USSR, many of the same naval strongholdswere contested for. Venice, for instance had important bases on Crete (as did theU.S. throughout most of the Cold War, inheriting the former British base at SoudaBay) and at Ragusa on the Adriatic (later a Soviet point of access) and on the Turkishcoast. Britain, at the height of its empire, established important bases first at Gibraltarand Minorca, later at Malta, Crete, Cyprus, Alexandria and Port Suez. During thepeak of the Cold War, U.S. main naval and air bases at Rota (Spain), Sigonella(Sicily), La Maddalena (Sardinia), Naples, Piraeus, Souda Bay (Crete) and Izmir(Turkey) were balanced off by Soviet access to Annaba (Algeria), Tripoli (Libya),Alexandria and Port Said (Egypt), Tartus and Latakia (Syria), and several ports alongYugoslavia’s Adriatic coast (Dismukes & McConnell, 1979). Perhaps further afield,one might note that the rivalry among Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands(ending up with British dominance after the Napoleonic wars) for points of accessaround the Caribbean Sea was somewhat followed upon by the U.S.-Soviet rivalryduring the Cold War, with Moscow establishing naval base access in Cuba (and theU.S. fearing further incursions in Guatemala in 1954, the Dominican Republic in1965, Nicaragua in the early 1980s, and acting accordingly, for good or worse). Inshort, there has been a form of system leader lineage as pertains to what Saul Cohenrefers to as the “world that matters”, some consistently contested over strategic seas,strategic regions and strategic basing points whose importance has been remark-ably enduring.

It may be worth pointing out that the Pentagon has already begun to sweat overearly adumbrations of China’s putative desire for long range power projection capa-bility in the Indian Ocean area. A few years ago, reports (true or false) of Chinesebargaining for access to some islands off shore of Burma inspired scenarios bearingan eerie resemblance to Zheng He’s westward thrust in the direction of the PersianGulf, albeit then absent the oil factor.

Technological change, basing requirements and global networks

Needless to say, changes in military technology have had a huge impact on basingrequirements over the 500 or so years since Venice and then Portugal were (regional


to semi-global) hegemons. This is a large subject, but several main preliminary pointsmay be made.

First, there is the important impact of the progression, as regards naval propulsion,from galleys to sail to coal to oil and then nuclear naval propulsion. Each phase hashad its own requirements regarding bases. During the age of sail, for instance, parti-cularly as applied to Portuguese naval activities all around the Indian Ocean andacross the Atlantic to Brazil, the major sailing routes were greatly altered or determ-ined by patterns of wind and currents. Hence, the famous “Carreira da India”.5 Thussome base locations in West and East Africa derived their importance. The baseswere then utilized, variously, for reprovisioning, R and R (Rest and Recreation) (allthe more important before antidotes for scurvy were developed), and ship repair andrebuilding. Later, during Britain’s reign in the 19th century, the development of coal-powered, steam-driven ships led to requirements for networks of coaling stationswhereby coal was stockpiled even on islands in the middle of oceans (Kemp &Harkavy, 1997: chapter 2). That became an important diplomatic desideratum, asthe Russians learned in trying to move a fleet from Europe to the Sea of Japan in1905 and having to rely on British coaling stations. Oil powered ships and the devel-opment of fleet oilers to accompany fleets changed this equation again, lesseningoverall requirements for bases but still in some instances retaining the use of facilitiesfor refueling.

The development of aircraft added a whole new dimension to basing requirements,while the need for naval bases was retained. But over the past half century or more,the development of longer range aircraft and ships, plus the development of tech-niques for aerial refueling of planes and at-sea refueling of ships has had the effectof greatly decreasing the number of basing points required by major powers tomaintain global access networks. In 1942, the U.S. needed an extensive basingchain (Florida–Cuba–Trinidad–British Guyana–Recife–Takoradi–Kano–Khartoum)to ferry aircraft and other supplies to beleaguered British forces in the Middle East.In 1973, the U.S. was able to resupply Israel with arms using just one transit pointin the Azores. In 1991, U.S. B-52 bombers, with the aid of tankers, conducted bomb-ing raids over Iraq all the way from a base in Louisiana. Further, the number ofaircraft and ships in the inventories of all major nations has declined (more combatpower per ship and plane, fewer of each), and this too has militated toward lesserbasing requirements in aquantitativesense.

In the modern world, of course, the development of satellites and the advent ofan array of new communications and information technologies has spawned numer-ous new basing requirements: satellite down-links, radars for early warning, signalsintelligence (SIGINT), satellite-tracking, nuclear detection, etc. This has meant amassive long-run trend, whereby major powers require fewer naval and air bases,but a proliferated array of global networks for various “technical functions”.

5 Boxer (1965: 54–55) provides a map of the “Carreira” replete with patterns of winds and currents.


Rival basing networks and “command of the sea”

There is the familiar albeit arguable Mahanian dictum about “command of thesea” that posits a tendency for maritime hegemons to maintain complete mastery ofthe high seas. That mastery is said to be based at any time on the hegemon’s mainbattle fleet’s ability to defeat a rival’s main battle fleet, rather a Clausewitzian notionapplied to naval warfare. For a long time, in a related vein, Britain maintained apolicy of fielding a navy equal at least to the two next most powerful navies, apolicy only reluctantly abandoned after World War I in the face of the growth ofthe U.S. Navy.

But even though the serial hegemons have maintained “command of the sea” inMahan’s terms, and even though there has been a tendency for each hegemon toinherit the previous one’s global basing network, basing access has never been theexclusive preserve of one power. Rather, there have been asymmetries in varyingdegrees, and also constant competition for basing access in periods of peace as wellas war. At the conclusion of hegemonic wars, large shifts in the balance of basingaccess have occurred, but not always to the point of total exclusion of losers fromsuch access. And, there have been some rivalries — U.S.–USSR during the ColdWar, Portugal–Spain in the 1500s — when more than one maritime power has beenavailed of significant levels of access on a global or quasi-global basis. The historyis complex and not so easily reduced to simple generalizations.

Venetian and Genoese basing structures

In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, just as Portugal was embarking on whatwould be its expansion around Africa and into the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean(then the sub-global cockpit for naval rivalry among the extant rival major powers)saw what was perhaps a four-way competition for basing access, and which compe-tition was at the heart of the security and economic rivalries of the period. BothGenoa and Venice lost important prior bases after the Ottoman Turks’ takeover ofConstantinople in 1453 — the former lost bases on the Black Sea and then lost mostof the chains of eastern Mediterranean coastal bases which formed the other leg ofthe Levant operation. Venice too gradually lost access in the Mediterranean, with aturning point in 1503, when she made naval base concessions for peace with Turkeyin order to devote herself to the new power balance brought about by the rivalry ofFrance and Spain in Italy. That entailed the loss to the Ottoman Empire of the greaterpart of a chain of seaside fortresses in Greece and the Aegean, even at the gates ofthe Adriatic Sea. Spain, meanwhile, by around 1505, had established bases in NorthAfrica at Mers El Kebir, Oran, Mostaranem, Tenes, Algiers, Velez, and Bougie, andwas constructing a fortress at Algiers. The Ottomans, moving westward, built for-tresses on the island of Goletta, which commanded the harbor at Tunis. And, in anearly example of basing diplomacy (as contrasted with outright conquest), Turkishfleets were granted the use of French ports, principally Marseilles. The Venetians,seemingly fading as a power, retook, for a while, bases in Greece and the Aegean.


The Ottoman capture of bases in Crete caused Venice, Spain and the Papal Statesto create the Holy League. But Genoa retained a base at Chios in the Aegean, seem-ingly with the approval of the Ottoman Sultans, while Venice retained only baseson Crete and Cyprus.

The early 1500s saw a complex pattern of alliances and basing access in theMediterranean involving Spain, France, Genoa, Venice and Turkey, with Spain andVenice often but not always aligned against Turkey and France (Padfield, 1979:chapter 3). Genoa ended up firmly in the Spanish orbit in 1528 (Spain itself hadbecome part of the Habsburg Empire in 1516). Earlier, in 1503, Venice, losing itspower, had made naval base concessions for peace with Turkey, and lost to the latterthe greater part of its seaside fortresses in Greece and the Aegean. Spain during thisperiod was engaged in a struggle with France, but also with Turkey pressing upfrom the Balkans along the Danube, Turkey was engaged with Persia to the east,but mounted attacks on the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean from its Red Sea andSouth Arabian bases. According to Padfield (1979: 87),

“the struggle for the Mediterranean was never a simple matter of Christianityagainst Islam; it was more of a struggle between the two great empires of Spainand Turkey counterpointed by the feud between Spain and France and the extra-ordinary alternating hostility and mutual dependence of Turkey and Venice. Whenthe two conflicts coincided and France joined with Turkey against Spain, or Spainjoined with Venice against Turkey, the alliances were never satisfactory becauseeach partner had different objectives; it was no part of Charles V’s plan to smashTurkish naval power so decisively that Venice would become undisputed masterof the eastern Mediterranean, nor was it Venice’s idea to assist Charles to gaincontrol of all Italy by helping him against his French rivals or the Algerine corsairswho interfered with his lines of communication. In short, the two halves of thesea each supported its own system of trade rivalry and conquest, and the powersof the other half, together with small independent squadrons from the Knights ofSt. John, the Papal States of central Italy, the Princes of Savoy, Tuscany andMonaco, were called in by subsidy and diplomacy to tilt or redress the balancewhen it was threatened.”

In 1538, a joint Papal-States–Venice–Spain fleet was defeated by the Barbaryadmiral Kheir El Din and the Turks, causing Venice to sue for a separate peace inthe aftermath and leading to Turkish use of the French port of Marseilles. The battleof Lepanto in 1571 reversed this earlier Turkish victory, after which Spain and Tur-key reverted to interests in their own separate spheres.

The naval wars in the Med in the 1500s are characterized as having “settled intoa series of amphibious assaults to gain, retake or defend the bases useful for thestruggle for ‘command’ as in naval historical dogma, but for the capture of basesfrom which attack and defense of trade and coasts could be mounted”. Fought overin campaigns were Algiers, Tripoli, Bougie, Djerba, Malta, and Tunis, the latterdefended in an epic of resistance by the Maltese Knights before they were relievedby a Spanish squadron. By the 1570s, Venice had made a separate peace with Turkey,


giving up its position on Cyprus, and Spain and Turkey maintained control of mostlythe opposite ends of the Mediterranean. There was no hegemon during this transitionperiod as the Portuguese access network grew outside of the Mediterranean cockpit.

Portugal’s and Spain’s basing structures

Portugal’s basing network in the Indian Ocean and in West Africa and across theAtlantic to Brazil evolved gradually from the late 15th into the 16th century. Andit was uncontested by other powers, even though Portugal was defeated in its attemptsto take Aden by local Arab rulers. The three main fortress bases in the Indian Oceanwere Ormuz, Goa and Malacca, but with a string of “tributary ports” and “fortressfactories” down the Malabar Coast of India, the Muscat coast of Arabia, and theeast coast of Africa from Sofala to Mombasa and Malindi. In the 1530s bases wereacquired in Brazil, Macao, and Ceylon. Portugal’s rivals were the local fieldomswhom it was trying to subdue (Padfield, 1979: chapter 2).

But at the same time as the 16th century progressed, Spain acquired a string ofbases along the Spanish Main in the Caribbean — at Santo Domingo on the south-west coast of Hispaniola, Nombre de Dios on the Panama Isthmus, Vera Cruz andSan Juan de Ulloa in Mexico, Havana and on the Florida coast, with a fortress beingbuilt at St. Augustine in 1564 (Padfield, 1979: chapter 4). The bilateral Portugal–Spain Treaty of Tordesillas, later confirmed by a Pope, had created a virtual globalcondominium regarding sea control, basing access, resource control, etc., but inwhich the respective hegemonic domains of Spain and Portugal were sharply andfully demarcated. Hence, it was distinct from the kind of rivalrous bipolarity exem-plified by the Cold War. As it happens, the Spanish basing network in the Caribbeanwas, around the time of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, under pressure fromupstart Britain, whose navy sacked Santo Domingo and Cartagena (the Britishplanned but did not succeed at this juncture in taking over the Azores, so as to betterinterdict Spanish shipping en route home from the Caribbean and South America)(Padfield, 1979: 130). Scholars argue whether Spain deserves to share with Portugalthe role of global hegemon during this period. There is a contrast here with the lateroverlapping and more directly confrontational basing networks of the U.S. and USSRduring the Cold War.

The Dutch basing structure

During the 17th century, the Dutch took over most of what had been the Portug-uese seaborne empire (Portugal had been taken over by the Spanish monarchy inthe 1580s, but continued to operate semi-autonomously abroad). Most crucially, theDutch took over previous Portuguese bases at Tidor (Halmahera Islands), Ternate,Malacca, Amboina, Macassar, Colombo, Cochin, the Cape of Good Hope, severalplaces along the West African coast in Angola and the Gold Coast, and Pernambucoand Bahia in Brazil (Padfield, 1979: chapter 5). But it is important to note that the


takeover was not complete, as the Dutch failed militarily to take over bases in Macao,Timor, and Mozambique (the Dutch also established a new main base in the EastIndies at Batavia, and also took the Portuguese West African fortress of El Mina(the base of the Guinea gold trade and a major slaving center). Spain meanwhile,even as its power waned, hung onto some positions in South America and the Carib-bean, while the important Portuguese base at Hormuz was taken over (in 1622) byPersia, which was re-establishing some traditional trade routes between South andSoutheast Asia and Europe via the Middle East. Persia was helped by the Dutch inthis venture (Padfield, 1979: 70–71).

Even at the peak of Dutch maritime and commercial power and its (incomplete)rout of the Portuguese basing network, the other main powers, i.e., Spain, Britain,and France, retained some overseas basing points. Spain, as noted, kept its chain offortified bases that allowed the annual Spanish fleets and their treasure to get home.English and French companies, meanwhile, established settlements in North Americawhich in some cases were used as bases to attack Spanish shipping. The Britishestablished bases in Bermuda, Barbados, St. Christopher, Nevis, and Antigua; Francein Martinique, Guadeloupe and half of St. Christopher. The English, of course, settledNova Scotia, New England, Maryland, Virginia, etc; France was installed in Quebecand the St. Lawrence Valley. Meanwhile, the Dutch took over Manhattan and estab-lished entrepoˆts at Curacao, St. Eustatius, St. Martin, and Aruba, much of whichinvolved the trade in sugar and tobacco. During this period, that is with referenceto bases and to the establishment of colonies, there was a degree of “multipolarity”even as the Dutch were for a time the wealthiest and strongest trading nation therehad ever been, dominating world commerce and the carrying trade, via a single-minded war of attrition on the hitherto Spanish and Portuguese oceanic monopolies.6

The British basing structure

Britain succeeded the Netherlands as the next great maritime hegemon, and itestablished an even more extensive global basing network, first defeating Hollandat sea, then joining it via dynastic marriage. In the eighteenth century, first duringthe reign of Louis XIV up to the treaty of Utrecht and then later in the Seven Years’War, it established an unrivalled basing network. But the Dutch, Portuguese, andSpanish retained some olderpoints d’appui, as did France even after the majordefeats that cost it most of its colonies and bases in North America.

Even at the peak of the British Empire in the late 19th century, its basing accessnetwork, while dominant, was not exclusive. Indeed, Germany entered the fray inthe latter part of the century, with access to Tanganyika, Southwest Africa, Togo,and some islands in the central Pacific.

To some extent, the asymmetric rivalries for global basing networks may be encap-

6 The considerably multipolar nature of rival basing networks during this period contrasts somewhatwith long cycle theory’s assumption of unipolar hegemony or bipolar rivalry (Scammell, 1989).


sulated by Padfield’s rather crude three-way typology, in which he characterizes thevarious aspirants for hegemonic power as “sea creatures”, “territorial animals”, and“hybrids” (Padfield, 1979: 14–16). The long-cycle hegemons — Venice, Portugal,Netherlands, Britain, and the U.S. — have all been “sea creatures” in the sense thattheir respective drives for maritime hegemony were not diluted or diverted by theneed to maintain large armies for continental wars. The “hybrids” on the otherhand — Spain, France in particular — always had to bifurcate their security strategiesbetween issues of naval mastery and land threats from nearby powers not hinderedby water barriers such as the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean (the Dutchwere threatened on land and that cut into their naval strength; Britain was threatenedby invasion by the Spanish in 1588, the Dutch, French, and later, the Germans). Thereal “territorial animals”, i.e., Germany from the late 19th century up to 1945, theUSSR during the Cold War, both tried to match British and American naval power(and to establish rival basing networks), all the while tied to the massive budgetarycosts associated with the need to maintain large land armies that could dominateCentral Europe. Japan in the 1930s, seemingly a “sea creature” and one that soughtmajor naval basing access in Southeast Asia (it had navy bases in Siam before WorldWar II) also ended up de facto a “hybrid” due to the extent its army was tied downin China beginning in 1931.

Theoretically speaking, there is the interesting question of the relationship betweenthe long cycle literature associated with Thompson and Modelski, and the by nowvenerable tradition of geopolitical theory running from Ratzel to Mackinder andMahan, and on to Spykman and the more contemporary writers such as Saul Cohen,Geoffrey Parker, and Colin Gray (Cohen, 1963; Parker, 1985; Spykman, 1944; Gray,1977). Taylor (1989), in his general workPolitical Geography, discusses long cyclesand geopolitical theory in tandem, but not much by comparison or with regard towhether, relatively, they complement or contradict each other.

Among the numerous definitions of what geopolitical theory is or has been about,Osterud (1988: 191–192) offers the following:

In the abstract, geopolitics traditionally indicates the links and causal relation-ships between political power and geographical space; in concrete terms it is oftenseen as a body of thought assaying specific strategic prescriptions based on therelative importance of landpower and seapower in world history.

or

This geopolitical tradition had some consistent concerns, like the geopoliticalcorrelates of power in world politics, the identification of international core areas,and the relationships between naval and terrestrial capabilities.

or

The endemic antagonism between the British-American seapower and Russianlandpower; the inherent dangers of the German “drang nach Osten”; the strategic


importance of different geographical areas; the re-shuffle of geostrategic relation-ships by technological innovations in warfare and transport% or, the debatebetween the Blue Water school of strategists and the advocates of vast continentalareas as the strategic key to world power.

What then is the relationship of long cycle theory to geopolitical theory and towhat extent can a review of basing networks over the past half millenium or soinform us about this nexus? First off, of course, it is clear that the long cycle theorists(but also Colin Gray in his eminent work on seapower) come down on the side ofMahan in seeing seapower as having been the key, consistently, to global militaryand commercial hegemony. Stated otherwise, and except for brief transition periodsin which major wars have been decisive in establishing long-term hegemonies, longcycle theorists are less inclined to see long term, bipolar dualisms between landpow-ers and seapowers (indeed, Thompson and Modelski, and also Padfield, stress thatdominant European landpowers are normally, crucially tied down by continental mili-tary requirements and, hence, can not easily conjur up the resources required forseapower dominance).

But as noted elsewhere here, the long cycle periods of successive maritime hege-mons have often seen real contests both for maritime supremacy and for basingnetworks between predominantly naval and predominantly land powers. The MongolEmpire, centrally a land-based military power, built a navy, invaded Japan and theEast Indies, presumably involving basing access in what now is China, Vietnamand Indonesia.

France, a landpower in the 18th and 19th centuries, challenged British naval domi-nance and constructed a fairly formidable basing network in the Caribbean, NorthAmerica, and in the Indian Ocean and India. Germany’s challenge to British navaldominance involved (before 1914), bases in Africa and the Central Pacific, andindeed, even after Versailles, in the Canary and Balearic Islands in the late 1930s.The Soviet Union, of course, succeeded in building an elaborate global basing struc-ture hinged on Cuba, Guinea, Angola, Somalia, India, South Yemen, and Vietnam,among other places. Napoleon and Hitler embarked on their conquests after theirnations had lost major wars (1759 for France, 1918 for Germany) and had largelybeen stripped of overseas basing assets.

Long cycle phases and global basing networks

George Modelski, William Thompson (and Richard Rosecrance emendating theformer) have devised schemes delineating the phases of long cycles. Though a simpleversion of this has the serial hegemons deemed dominant for approximately a centuryapiece (Portugal from 1494–1580; the Netherlands from 1580–1688; Great Britainfrom 1688–1792 and again from 1792–1914; and the U.S. from 1914 onward), theperiods of dominance have contained several phases in a consistent manner. Model-ski claims actually that each of these periods has four phases: 1) global war; 2) theemergence of world power; 3) delegitimation of power; and 4) deconcentration of


power. These are summarized for the period since 1494 in Table 1 drawn fromRosecrance’s review of long cycle theories (note Venice is absent here).

This scheme then raises some interesting questions about the relationship of thelong cycle phases to the ebbs and flows of basing access. For instance, it raises thequestion of whether the periods of “global war phase” have been those where basingstructures have been developed or where one hegemon has taken over basing net-works previously belonging to the earlier hegemon. Or, have some maritime hege-mons lost some of their basing assets during periods of where one hegemon hastaken over basing networks previously belonging to the earlier hegemon? Or, havesome maritime hegemons lost some of their basing assets during periods of delegi-timation and deconcentration? Generally, has the loss of bases led to delegitimation,deconcentration and then the loss of hegemonic wars, or has the loss of bases resultedmostly at the close of hegemonic conflicts? Have there been consistent tendenciesthroughout the period since 1494, or have different cycles seen different relationshipsbetween basing access and the phases of long cycle hegemony? On a general level,has the acquisition of global basing networks tended to be rather sudden and compactin time (during the global war phases), or has that been more stretched out over thewhole of the cycle? Further (and beyond the scope of this paper), how have the sizesof navies, measured by capital ships, varied according to basing structures as wellas the phases within the cycles?

There is no easy or simple way to summarize a response to these questions, norany obvious consistent and overall patterns. Indeed, there have been strong variationsacross the various long-cycle hegemonic periods and the transitions between them.

Table 1World Events Since 1494, According to Modelskia

Global War Phase World Power Phase Phases of Delegitimization andDeconcentration

1. 1494–1516: France is the 1516–1540: Portugal is leader 1540–1580challenger during Italian andIndian Ocean Wars2. 1580–1609:Spain is the 1609–1640: Netherlands is leader 1640–1688challenger during Spanish–DutchWars3. 1688–1713: France is the 1714–1740: Britain is leader 1740–1792challenger during wars of LouisXIV4. 1792–1815: France is the 1815–1850: Britain is leader 1850–1914challenger again during againRevolutionary and NapoleonicWars5. 1914–1945: Germany 1945–1973: United States is 1973–?challenges during World Wars leader

a Source: Rosecrance (1987).


The Portuguese long cycle

For instance, to the extent Portugal replaced Venice as a hegemon in the early16th century, there was virtually no direct military confrontation between them;rather, political and commercial rivalry, accompanied by diplomatic maneuvers andcovert action. As noted, while Venice was part of an essentially quintipolar strugglefor the Mediterranean around the early 1500s (Venice, Genoa, Spain, France, Otto-man Empire), Portugal was building its maritime empire that eventually stretchedfrom Recife to Nagasaki (west to east). But it did not defeat any previous hegemon;rather, it established an empire gradually via conquest and diplomacy in what hadbeen somewhat of a strategic vacuum, or rather, in a large swathe of global territorycontrolled by myriad empires and principalities in Africa, Asia, Brazil, etc. Hence,what Modelski cites as the “global war phase” of Portuguese hegemony, from 1494to 1516, was really the peak of Portugal’s conquests in a series of clashes, not withanother major power, but with smaller, weaker and unrelated political entities allaround the globe.

Some of these conquests actually preceded this “global war phase”. Ceuta wastaken in 1415, which acted as a jumping-off place for operations further south inAfrica. By around 1470 Portugal had occupied various fortified trading posts andslave pens in West Africa; had seized the Canaries and taken over the Guinea trade.Regarding the latter, they erected a castle at Sao Jorge da Mina on the Gold Coast.But in the early 1500s, there was the major burst of Portuguese expansionism, withbases and entrepoˆts established in Benin, Diu in India, Axim in West Africa (1503),Sofala (1505), Mocambique (1507), Goa (1510), Malacca (1511), and Ormuz (1515).Goa was the site of a major dockyard and repair facility for Portugal, the only onein the Indian Ocean area. There were also failures to capture Socotra Island in 1510and Aden (1513) from the Muslims, as Portugal tried to close the spice route throughthe Red Sea (note both of these would become Soviet bases in the 1970s). Portugalalso failed to extend its power along China’s coast, although it did establish a foot-hold later at Macao in 1577 (Boxer, 1965).

This ended up a very extended empire that peaked between 1516 and 1540, andwhich at its peak involved a chain of about 40 forts and coastal settlements betweenSofala in east Africa and Nagasaki, and many more in West Africa (Ceuta, Tangier,Mazagao, Cape Verde, etc.) (Boxer, 1965: 53). Some bases were established duringwhat Modelski defines as Portugal’s phase of delegitimization, i.e., Luanda in 1575,Macao in 1577. Much of it was acquired and maintained via local alliances andrelated balance of power politics. Portugal acquired Mombasa and Malindi on theSwahili coast, but Portugal later allied with the latter against the former. Its positionin India depended on playing off the rulers of Calicut and Cochin; likewise, thesultans of Ternate and Tidore in the Moluccas region, three different rulers in Ceylon,Sunni Turkey vs. Sh’ia Persia etc. And meanwhile, the Pope-enforced treaty of Tor-desillas in 1494 effectively separated Portugal’s seaborne empire from the corre-sponding and co-existent Spanish seaborne empire stretching from South Americaand the Caribbean across the Atlantic to a basing network inside the Gibraltar Straitsin the Mediterranean.


The Dutch long cycle

Later, Portugal’s seaborne empire would be attacked and substantially cut backin size by the Dutch in an extensive and lengthy war that some have characterizedas the first global hegemonic war. This one was often head to head, with the Nether-lands fighting both Portugal and Spain, now joined by dynastic relations, but stillfunctioning as somewhat separate powers. The fall of the Portuguese seaborne empireactually occurred over 80 years, though Modelski points to a “global war phase”from 1580 to 1609 as leading to a period of Dutch ascendancy up to 1640. In Brazil,the Dutch captured Bahia in 1624–1625 and Pernambuco in 1630. Indeed, many ofthe Dutch conquests of Portuguese imperial possessions took place during Modelski’scharacterization of a “world power phase”, after the Dutch had defeated Spain. Forinstance, between 1638 and 1658 the Dutch conquered Portuguese settlements inCeylon and its Asian strongholds in Cochin and along the Malabar Coast. Theyblockaded the Straits of Malacca from 1634 to 1640, with Malacca falling in 1641.In Africa, they took Sao Jorge da Mina in 1638, the coast of Angola and Benguelain 1641, but Dutch attacks failed also against Macao and in the Lesser Sunda group(Timor, Solor, Flores) and Mocambique Island (Boxer, 1969). But the Portugueseempire during its phase of decline was also attacked by Omani seapower (expeditionagainst Mombasa in 1660–1661; Diu sacked in 1688, Bombay raided in 1661) andby the Marathas in West India.

The overall picture here is of a very protracted maritime conflict that ultimatelyresulted in the supercession of one empire by another, yet which was not entirelyconclusive with the Portuguese retaining some remnants of empire, indeed, all theway up to the 20th century in the cases of Macao, Goa, Timor and Mocambique,albeit later without the trappings of empire. The bases and settlements, and relatedtrading benefits, were a major focus or object of the conflict. And, the changes incontrol of bases were, cumulatively a major reason for the outcome of the struggleas the Dutch used captured bases as jumping off points for new conquests in theEast Indies, India, Ceylon and Brazil, much as had the Portuguese in their earlyconquests over a variety of “local powers”.

The British long cycle(s)

Next, Britain moved toward the assumption of the role of maritime hegemon. Itwas involved in several naval wars with the Dutch in the later 1600s. Followingthat, with the assumption of the British monarchy by the House of Orange, therewas a reasonably peaceful transition from the Dutch to the British maritime empires,with Modelski citing the period 1688–1713 as one of “global war phase” with Britainand the Netherlands fighting France, followed by a British “world power phase”from 1714 to 1740 following the Treaty of Utrecht.

But actually, the British accrual of a global network of bases was a gradual processamidst a multi-sided, complex struggle for colonial empire involving Britain, France,the Netherlands, and declining but still powerful (in terms of empire) Spain (Portugal


had by this time become a marginal actor, albeit often allied with Britain). And eachof the powers retained extensive basing assets even as Britain, during the 18th cen-tury, assumed the role of the leading maritime power.

As it happens, the early phase of expansion of British naval access saw some useof base acquisition by diplomacy rather than by conquest. Britain under Blake’sleadership used Lisbon as a base to blockade the Spanish coast, and received as adowry for the 1662 marriage of the British King to the sister of the Portuguesemonarch, fortresses at Tangier and Bombay. Negotiations with Norway allowed foruse by British ships of the port of Bergen. Still in the 1600s, the British establishedpositions in New York and Cape Verde and Gore´e Island in Africa.

But in the period 1688 to 1713, Britain moved toward maritime supremacy vis avis primarily French power, with the Netherlands having by now become alignedwith Britain. Britain also nibbled away against the remnants of Spanish maritimepower, as France and Spain came most often to be aligned against Britain. Aroundthe turn of the 18th century, Britain concentrated on establishing dominance in thewestern Mediterranean, particularly involving control over Gibraltar and Port Mahonon Minorca. By the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Britain retained Gibraltar andMinorca; also retained Acadia, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia (seized in 1710),and the coveted slaving Asiento in Africa. Britain emerged from the wars as thedominant naval power; according to Padfield, “her retention of key naval bases, heracquisition of the slaving Asiento and her penetration of both the Portuguese (1703)and Spanish trading areas were the rewards of her great naval power” (Padfield,1982: 191) (referring, respectively, to the Indian Ocean and Caribbean areas).

British power surged again in the 1740s and 1750s (a period characterized byModelski as one of deconcentration) amidst a protracted, back and forth struggle fornaval supremacy with France and Spain. There was a mixed and shared pattern ofcontrol and basing access in the key areas in contention, i.e., the Indian Ocean andSouth and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and North America, as of 1750. Even thenfaded Dutch and Portuguese empires retained important factories, colonies and bases.Britain failed to take Cartagena, and temporarily lost Minorca and Gibraltar. Onewar ended inconclusively in 1747, causing Britain to hand back Louisbourg (CapeBreton) to France while the latter handed back Madras to Britain. Britain achievedeffective control of much of India at this point.

But subsequently, the tides turned, and by the time of the Treaty of Paris in 1763(following major British victories at Quebec, Lagos, and Quiberon Bay), Britain’swinning position was made clear. She got the whole of Canada; in the West Indies,Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica and Tobago, Senegal and Minorca, also Florida, andin exchange returned Belle Isle, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, and Gore´e andpart of the St. Lawrence area. Also, Britain had to give back to Spain its conquestsof Cuba (it had stormed Havana in 1762) and Manila (Padfield, 1982: 248).

As Britain became aligned with the Netherlands after 1688, it did not capture andtake over the hitherto Dutch basing network as did the Dutch previously from Portu-gal in the Indian Ocean and Brazil. Some exceptions: Britain’s takeover of NewYork before 1688, and its later takeover of former Dutch positions in India andCeylon, particularly the major naval bases at Colombo and Trincomalee in the latter.


At the end of the American War of Independence, Britain suffered some setbacks,which no doubt account for Modelski’s attribution of this period as one of powerdeconcentration. Florida and Minorca went back to Spain, Ceylon and Senegal tothe Dutch, St. Lucia and Tobago to France.

Then came the Napoleonic wars, during which Britain established control of theseas and was able to expand its overseas empire and corresponding basing network.At the end of it, and as part of the settlement, Britain acquired bases that were the“keys which locked up the globe”: Heligoland, Malta, the Ionian Islands, Gambia,Sierra Leone, Ascension, Capetown (perhaps the most strategic position in the worldin the age of seapower), Mauritius, the Seychelles, Ceylon, Malacca, St. Lucia, Tob-ago, Guiana. It by then possessed major bases in every part of the world save perhapsin the central Pacific. There were later additions as the 19th century progressed:Singapore (1819), the Falklands (1833), Aden (1839), Hong Kong (1841), Lagos,Fiji, Cyprus, Alexandria, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Wei-hai-wei (Kennedy, 1976: 154–155).

By the turn of the 20th century, Britain had an unrivalled global network of basesand coaling stations, all of it on the basis of raw conquest and/or protectorates. Themain bases were Esquimalt (British Columbia), Halifax, Bermuda, Jamaica(Kingston), St. Lucia, Capetown, Mombasa, Malta, Gibraltar, Freetown, Alexandria,Aden, Bombay, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, and Auckland (Kennedy, 1976:207).

As it had during the Napoleonic wars a century before, Britain used its bases atthe outset of World War I for the favorable prosecution of the war, while also trans-lating its (in a coalition) victory into still more extended basing access. At the war’soutset, Britain was able to cut communications cables to Germany’s outlying fewcolonial possessions in Togo, Cameroon, Southwest Africa and the island groups ofthe Central Pacific (Kennedy, 1971). Britain’s basing structure was crucial to theprosecution of a blockade against Germany and its allies. Its basing structure inthe Mediterranean–Middle East–South Asia region enabled it to conduct militaryoperations in the Mediterranean (including the failed invasion at Gallipoli) andagainst Turkey in the Middle East. At the war’s close and on into the interwar period,Britain was availed of important new basing access, particularly in Iraq, Jordan, andPalestine (air bases in Iraq and at Jordan’s Aqaba, naval access at Haifa, etc.). Ger-many lost all of its overseas possessions at the war’s close, while France, the Nether-lands, Spain and Portugal all retained colonial possessions and bases, albeit muchless than Britain’s.

But Britain had, according to Modelski, entered into a phase of delegitimizationand deconcentration in the period 1850–1914. This was not then reflected in a dimin-ished global basing network. Rather, it pertained to the growth of German industrialand military power on the European continent (as well as the growing German navalchallenge embodied in Tirpitz’s “risk strategy”); to a lesser degree, perhaps, Russia’srising power, albeit the maritime weakness so openly revealed in the defeat by Japanin 1905.

After World War I (reflected by, among other things, the ratios established by theWashington Naval Treaty), Britain abandoned its long-term policy of fielding a navy


equal to the next two possible rivals. In effect, it conceded naval parity with theU.S. In the process, during the late 1920s (a matter as much related to budgets assheer strategic considerations), Britain abandoned its naval bases in Jamaica andTrinidad (always thought to provide a basing point in proximity to the Panama Canal)and at Esquimalt in British Columbia. There was a transition from British maritimedominance to a joint Anglo-American condominium, howsoever merely implicitamidst Washington’s return to a form of isolationism. As World War II began, theU.S.–U.K. Lend-Lease Agreement traded some aging destroyers for a 99 year Amer-ican lease on a string of naval bases along the U.S. Atlantic littoral, from Labradorto Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Antigua, Trinidad, and British Guyana.It was the first big step towards a U.S. global basing network, and in Thompson’sterms of “system lineage”, reflected a shift in maritime hegemony, albeit betweenallies, as had earlier been the case in the hegemonic transition from the Netherlandsto Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Noteworthy is the fact that colonial controlremained primarily the basis for basing access up to and beyond World War II.

The American long cycle

After World War II (Modelski sees the U.S. entering its “world power phase”after 1945 and after a “global war phase” running from 1914–1945), the U.S. quicklyacquired the world’s most elaborate basing network, corresponding to its role aspreeminent naval power. Much of the basing structure was acquired during WorldWar II, though it is worth noting that the U.S. was made to withdraw from somebasing points after 1945 by recalcitrant wartime allies such as Brazil and Australia,respectively involving naval and air bases in northeast Brazil and some southwestPacific island bases such as Rabaul. And to only a small degree relative to Britainin 1815 and 1919, the victorious U.S. benefitted only minimally from “imperial pick-off”, constrained by new “norms” of international organization regarding the illegit-imacy of wartime conquests. The exceptions were to be U.S. control via a U.N.trusteeship over important island bases in the former Japanese island mandate groupsin the Central Pacific, i.e., the Marshalls, Marianas, Carolines, and Belau.

The subsequent history of the U.S. elaboration of a giant global basing networkran on two levels, as previously noted. First, the U.S. was able to utilize, at leastfor a decade or two, the ever-dwindling basing networks of its allied European col-onial powers, i.e., Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. That was awasting set of assets, particularly as Britain’s empire gradually eroded as had thePortuguese and Dutch empires in earlier centuries. But the U.S. compensated viaarms transfers, economic assistance and formal alliances, including a host of Euro-pean and Asian members of the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization),CENTO (Central Treaty Organization), SEATO (Southeast Asia TreatyOrganization), and ANZUS (Australia–New Zealand–United States) alliances, plusimportant bilateral relations with nations as disparate as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan,Ethiopia, Liberia, Morocco, Bahrein, Oman, etc., not without various ebbs and flowsregarding gains and losses of access.


Beginning in the late 1950s, but accelerating and continuing on to the end of theCold War, the USSR acquired a formidable and near-global network of bases: navaland air bases, submarine bases, technical facilities in various areas of C3I. Thosebases were in all cases hosted by ideological client states that came to be allied withthe USSR: Syria, Egypt (up to around 1975), South Yemen, Somalia (up to 1978),Ethiopia (after the Horn War), Cuba, Vietnam, Mongolia, Angola, Mozambique,Guinea, Algeria, etc., primarily, with some additional states providing for temporaryaccess (port visits, air overflights) — India, Cambodia, Peru. Correspondingly, theSoviet navy grew into a formidable “blue water” force, matching the U.S. Navy interms of deployments (measured in ship-days) in the major bodies of water, i.e.,Indian Ocean, the Med, Caribbean, etc. As had become the case for the U.S., armstransfers greased most of the basing arrangements.

A few major points emerge, retrospectively, concerning the Cold War “base race”as they relate to long cycle history and previous cycles of maritime supremacy. First,virtually none of either the U.S. or Soviet basing assets were taken by force orconquest; rather, access resulted from diplomacy and as a quid pro quo for securityassistance, albeit on both sides with an ideological “cement”. That appears to haveno historical precedent. Second, by comparison with the previous Portugal–Spainbipolar basing structures, the U.S. and Soviet bases were not sharply demarcatedgeographically, i.e., there was no analogy to the Treaty of Tordesillas. Rather, thebasing structures overlapped in various regions, were cheek by jowl (the Soviets inCuba and the U.S. in Puerto Rico; the Soviets in South Yemen and Somalia, the U.S.in Ethiopia). There was, however, little if any direct combat or military confrontationinvolving the two superpowers. The U.S. used its bases in conflicts against Sovietclients (Vietnam, Korea, various efforts at coercive diplomacy); the Soviets usedtheirs in relation to conflicts — sometimes by proxy — in Ethiopia and Angola.Both sides utilized strings of air transit bases to conduct long-range arms resupplyoperations on behalf of clients and friends. It was indeed, from this perspective, a“cold” war.

Myriad pundits routinely characterize the current period as one of overwhelmingU.S. global hegemony — economically, militarily, and culturally — following aperiod, after 1973, in which “declinism” was in vogue. Meanwhile, the Cold Warover, the U.S. has seen an extensive stand-down of its hitherto far more extensiveglobal basing network, what with the considerable withdrawal of forces from Europe,and the shutting down of previously critical facilities in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Thai-land, and the Philippines, etc. Whereas earlier, in the cases of Portugal, the Nether-lands and Britain, victories in global war cycles had left the victors with enhancedand unrivalled basing networks, the U.S. “victory” in the Cold War resulted in itslosing much of its basing structure, although as the USSR lost all of its overseasbases, the U.S. ended up in a more hegemonic position, relatively speaking. Butwith alliances frayed and the increasingly prevalent “norms” about sovereignty andcontrol of others’ territories, it was not surprising that in the 1998 crisis over Iraq,that the U.S. had evidenced great difficulty regarding access in places like SaudiArabia, Egypt, and Turkey. Whether that constitutes the beginnings of “delegitimiz-


ation” or “power deconcentration” in Modelski’s terms may be argued, pro and con,in historical context, with the jury still out.

Conclusion

Recent years have seen a number of research foci in the general domain of Inter-national Relations Theory (IR) related to the concepts of hegemony and internationalsystems structure. More specifically, with respect both to conceptualization andempirical measurement, this has involved such questions as the measurement of theexistence and degrees of global hegemony, the thesis of hegemonic stability (stabilityis posited as more likely in periods of hegemony), measurements of comparativepower at the big power level, the attribution of constructs such as unipolarity,bipolarity and multipolarity to the structure of the international system, and measure-ments of “polarization” (the amount of conflict between the poles). In one way oranother, all of these problems are related to or addressed by the foregoing discussionof long cycle theory, and its (ideological?) rival, world systems theory. Confusionand disagreement are rampant.

Heretofore, hegemony has tended to be measured by various combinations ofGNP, military expenditure and other standard measures of national power, albeit thenear absence of historical data in these categories prior to the 20th century. As noted,Modelski and Thompson utilized capital ship construction and orders of battle as aprimary measure of naval power and, hence, global hegemony through several cycles.And, as noted, rival long cycle theory and world systems theorists have disagreedsomewhat on the identification of hegemonic periods, particularly in the instance of16th century Portugal and Spain, wherein these powers constituted somewhat of abipolar system albeit with a low degree of “polarization”.

This paper has bruited the approach to these questions from a newer angle, thatof global basing systems and “global reach”; i.e., the geography of power projectionthrough several long cycles running from Venice (or earlier, the Mongol Empire)up to the current American hegemony. It is a subject that has received too littleattention, theoretically speaking, and where there is a total dearth of organized his-torical data.

An analysis of the basing systems of the successive hegemons and their rivalsshould shed more light on the phases of long cycles proffered by Modelski andThompson; i.e., how basing systems have been reflective of phases of “rise and fall.”Such an analysis might, for instance, shed some light on the rival claims of earlierPortuguese and Spanish hegemonies; i.e., which had a more developed global reachand with what implications. An analysis of how bases have been acquired, whethervia outright conquest or diplomacy, may also inform us of major shifts in the practiceof international politics, including the evolvement of the current international system.

For geographers, further research on global basing systems might be particularlyvaluable in illuminating the aforementioned problem of “system leader lineage”,whereby certain regions or places in the world — islands, choke points, littorals —have maintained a consistent strategic centrality through centuries of hegemonic


cycles, even as earlier rivalries based primarily on surface naval fleets have nowgiven way to a spatially more multidimensional situation, involving the relationshipsbetween outer space, the underseas and the surfaces of the oceans and large conti-nents. In a way, this brings us back to traditional geopolitical theory, Saul Cohen’sconcept of “the world that matters”.

Note: Lack of space precluded inclusion of what would have been a lengthy tabularpresentation of all the hegemons’ bases with dates, types, etc. The author is in theprocess of constructing a data base that will be available in subsequent publications.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Thomas Kozlik, former Penn State undergraduate, forresearch assistance in connection with this work.

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