The Geostrategic Deployments of US Militarization in the World System: Territorial Transformations and the Strategic Production of Space from the Postwar to the 21st Century

Abstract

The American military presence in the world system has left in its wake the entire political geography of militarization, represented by an empire of military bases and settlements in strategic spaces. Since the end of World War II, military facilities have not fulfilled the role of safeguarding the United States’ national interests in the world, nor acting in favor of its position as a superpower. However, they have contributed to the strategic production of a global space through the fragmentary articulation of the different territorialities produced by these bases, which have availed themselves of the world system’s production on different scales. In this article, we analyze the role of military deployments in the production of the dominant space, both on a local scale, through the socio-territorial transformations perpetrated by the army bases in the different reception sites, and on a global scale, through the articulation of these bases with other instances of hegemonic power (political, economic, military), promoting the globalization of radical violence in social bodies through these exercises of strategic management and thus producing a new geography of world militarization for the 21st Century.