Countries should rethink hosting foreign military bases, says US expert

2026-03-16 - 09:44

Jeffrey Sachs said overseas military bases, particularly US ones, offer no real security to host countries. (Bernama pic) PETALING JAYA: Countries should reconsider hosting foreign military bases, particularly US ones, said American economist Jeffrey Sachs. Speaking at a panel discussion at Sunway University here today, Sachs described the concept of overseas bases as “very bad for the world as a general principle”. “I would recommend that every country that hosts a military of another country should ask them to go home, because there is no security that comes from hosting a US military base. “I think it’s something that Bahrain and the UAE and Saudi Arabia have learned in the last few weeks,” he said, referring to how the military facilities in those countries have come under Iranian attack. Sachs also noted that Britain, France, Russia and China maintain overseas bases, though in far smaller numbers. “If you have a navy and it needs to be serviced, it can be serviced in someone else’s repair docks, but you don’t need an overseas base for that,” said the former adviser to the United Nations. According to the International Peace Bureau, there were an estimated 1,247 foreign military bases worldwide as of 2025, with the US maintaining 877 of them, or about 70% of the total. The remaining 370 bases were operated by 18 other nations, including the UK, France, Russia and China, spanning more than 100 countries and territories. Earlier, in his lecture, Sachs said current geopolitical tensions reflect a broader shift in the international order, with power moving away from Western dominance towards a multipolar system driven by Asia’s rise. “We are being driven by a very irascible and unstable US in crisis, and it is overwhelmingly caused by the US,” he said, arguing that tensions stem from Washington’s “petulance” and poor strategic decision-making. “I said that between 1995 and 2025, the share of Asia in world output would rise by 20%, that Asia’s share would go from 30% to 50% of world output. This is exactly what happened,” he said. Sachs also pointed to the increasing influence of emerging economies, with the BRICS bloc now exceeding the G7 in global output. BRICS is a group comprising 11 countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Iran. Malaysia has been a partner country of BRICS since Jan 1. Despite growing tensions among major powers, Sachs remained optimistic, describing the period as a “difficult transition” rather than a permanent state of instability. “I don’t see this as a general fragmentation of the world, I see this as the pain of a transition and a mentality shift that is needed that hasn’t occurred,” he said.