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"Early in the history of warfare,
“在战争史早期,
man learned that the best formula for victory was compounded in striking power, mobility, and self-protection."
人类意识到, 胜利的最佳公式等于惊人的力量、机动性加自我保护。”
The US is easily the most powerful country to have ever existed.
美国无疑是有史以来世界上最强大的国家。
And it certainly spends more on its military budget and any other country does today.
而且，当前，美国在军费开支上的投入也无疑比世界其他任何国家都多。
That's all pretty well-known,
这是众所周知的,
but less well-known is the fact that the US has around 800 military bases around the globe.
但鲜为人知的是, 美国在全球大约有800个军事基地。
This map can't even show that many dots.
这张地图还无法完全显示所有的点。
These are just 200 or so dots to give you an idea of where these bases are clustered.
这些差不多只有200个左右, 只是为了让大家对那些基地所在的位置有个大致的印象。
These bases are everything from massive military compounds to small airstrips in the middle of the ocean.
这些基地规模各异，既有大型军营，也有位于海上的小型简易机场。
If you combined all the foreign bases that every other nation has outside of its own borders, you get a total of about thirty.
然而，如果把所有其他国家的所有境外基地加在一起，也不过三十个左右。
There's never been a country with such a massive global presence.
从来没有一个国家拥有如此庞大的全球影响力。
And the big question is: how did these bases get there the first place?
然而，最大的问题是: 这些基地当初是如何形成的？
And how much is it costing US taxpayers to keep them open?
维持这些基地又花了我们纳税人多少钱？
Most to these bases cropped up after WWII,
这些基地大多是二战以后出现的,
when the US set up in places like Germany and Japan to help maintain peace, after an era of intense global war.
当时，在经历了一场激烈的全球战争之后, 美国在德国和日本等地建立起了各个军事基地，帮助维持地区的和平。
"But we cannot expect these people to discard Nazi ideas with the casual air with which they abandoned their uniform.
"但是, 我们不能指望这些人像脱下纳粹制服那么轻松地抛掉他们的纳粹思想。
Slowly, steadily they must be taught the fundamentals of democracy.
他们只能慢慢地，逐步地掌握民主的基本知识。
Our task is to supervise this training in democracy."
我们的任务就是监督这次民主培训。”
Even though these countries are now stable, robust democracies, and allies,
尽管这些国家现在已经是稳定而强健的民主政体，也是盟友,
US still has 50,000 troops in Japan and 54,000 in Germany.
但美国在日本仍有5万支军队, 在德国也有5.4万人。
The Korean War brought an influx of American military infrastructure to the Korean Peninsula, where we now have 28,500 troops stationed.
朝鲜战争给朝鲜半岛带来了大批美国军用基础设施, 我们现在在那里还驻扎着2.85万人的军队。
The Cold War made the US expansion to every corner of the globe imperative to US strategic goals.
冷战使向全球每一个角落扩张变得对美国的战略目标至关重要。
"Here, in Russia, you see the reason why we are spending billions of dollars in military production
"就在俄罗斯, 大家也可以看得出，我们花费上亿美元生产武器的原因，
and why your family is paying the highest taxes in our history."
看得出为什么大家要支付我们国家有史以来最高的赋税。”
But even now that the Cold War's over, there's not a place on Earth that's not still covered by US military influence.
但是, 即使现在冷战结束了, 我们也找不到一个没有被美国的军事力量覆盖的地方。
This includes everything from naval compounds like those in Guantanamo Bay,
无论是关塔那摩湾的海军军营,
to small drone bases like those in the Horn of Africa,
是非洲之角那种小型无人机基地,
to little-known posts in the middle and the Indian Ocean like that of Diego Garcia.
还是圣地亚哥·加西亚等印度洋中部鲜为人知的哨所。
And it's not cheap.
这些基地建设起来都不便宜。
Keeping the US foreign bases open, costs taxpayers between 70 and 100 billion dollars per year.
维护美国海外的军事基地,每年要花费纳税人70到1000亿美元。
That's more than any other government agency receives in taxpayer money, besides of course the Department of Defense itself.
这比其他任何政府机构收到的税赋还要多, 当然, 国防部本身除外。
Taxpayers pay between ten and forty thousand dollars more per soldier stationed abroad than they do for those stationed here domestically.
纳税人为一个国外驻兵的基地支付的钱要比一个国内的军事基地多1到4万美元。
But this cost seems to be worth it to most lawmakers.
但对大多数议员来说，这一成本好像都是值得的。
The idea that US military leadership provides an indispensable stability to the globe is now a fixture of our global strategy and our foreign policy.
美国作为全球军事的领袖在维护全球稳定中发挥了不可或缺的作用，今天，这一理念已经成了我们全球战略和外交政策中的一个内容。
"In an uncertain world full of breathtaking change, the one constant is American leadership."
在一个充满惊人变化，充满不确定性的世界里, 唯一恒定的就是美国的领导地位。”
"You can't have stability without American leadership.
"如果没有美国领导,世界就无法稳定。
there's only one nation in the world capable of rallying the freedom-loving people of this planet to confront evil."
世界上只有一个国家能够召集这个星球上热爱自由的人对抗邪恶."
"American leadership is not just respected it is required."
"美国的领导地位不仅仅得到了世界人民的尊重，也是大势所趋。”
So over the past seven years the US has set up bases all over the world in response to threats and then they just never left.
在过去的七年里, 美国在世界各地建立了基地以应对威胁, 之后就再也没有离开过。
These eight hundred bases around the world represent a massive system of military power that isn't often talked about,
这800个基地遍布全球, 是一个庞大的军事力量体系, 它虽然没有被经常谈论,
and it's us, the American taxpayers, that are financially supporting this.
但的确是我们这些纳税人在给予它们经济上的支持。
We've all decided that it's worth it to pump a hundred billion dollars out of our economy, to keep these bases open on the far corners of our globe.
我们都认为, 从我们自己的经济中抽出1000亿美元, 来维护这些位于世界各个角落的基地是值得的。
