- [first lines]
- Narrator: Beginning in the 1990s, a belief has slowly taken over the world: that neo-liberal globalization with its built-in self-regulating mechanisms would finally do away with old institutions like the state and the military and would usher the planet into an era of relative peace and prosperity. 9/11 and the current economic crisis have shown that belief to be largely a myth.
- Narrator: America's transformation from republic to an economic superpower following WW-2 was accompanied by the creation of a global network of military bases unlike any other in history. According to the Pentagon's 'Base Structure Report' today these amount to 716 in 38 countries. More than 250,000 soldiers are stationed on these bases.
- Catherine Lutz: To focus on war and not war-preperation is to simply shovel after the elephant.
- Chalmers Johnson: Certainly, the unit of empire in the classic European empires was the colony. The unit for the American empire is not the colony, it's the military base.