Great Power Competition and Overseas Bases: Chinese, Russian, and American Force Posture in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Andrew Yeo and Isaac Kardon. Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers/Brookings Institution Press, 2024. 236p. $85.00 cloth, $32.00 paper: Book review

The volume “Great Power Competition and Overseas Bases” centers on comparisons between different strategies of “basing” by great powers. In a world of great power competition, bases matter, because they are a means to “project power and influence abroad, meet logistics requirements, secure economic access and trade flows, forge and maintain alliances and partnerships, and deter adversaries” (p. 2). The international security system is witnessing a growing Chinese and a renewed Russian interest in overseas bases and base access (p. vii), coupled with increasing appetite for friction and confrontation (p. 4). The editors argue that Russia, the repeat contestant and China, the newcomer, will not necessarily follow the Twentieth Century example of permanent, exclusive, and armed-to-the-teeth external locations. In the new era, bases instead could look like a location with professional personnel and a light military footprint, or an inconspicuous commercial port with a double-use function, or a private contractor run infrastructure in a friendly state (p. 8). In other words, even such a solid piece of military infrastructure as an overseas base has entered a hybridization phase—the bases of the late Twenty-First Century may well be disguised, unremarkable, stealthy, unattributable, and unclaimed. And nothing worries the conventional security champion—the U.S.—more than a hybrid, asymmetrical challenge.