Visits of Goodwill and Training Purposes

Abstract

The background to plans for a postwar system of American defence bases can be traced back to President Roosevelt’s idea of an International Police Force. Roosevelt’s idea was taken up in a Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) study prepared in December 1942 with Great Britain itself as one of the policemen. Similar ideas were proposed by Colonel George F. Schulgen, providing for a World Security Force consisting of ‘fifty heavy bomber bases at mutually supporting base areas determined by the location of the world’s energy resources’.1 Roosevelt expressed a very strong interest in postwar basing and saw the policing concept of bases as central to future world security. Even at this stage it was obvious that it would be a long-range air force that would be the guarantor. Britain and the Soviet Union were to take care of their own spheres of influence. Although the idea was seriously entertained Congress ‘shied away from explicit endorsements of such a force, and in public Roosevelt hid behind vacuous generalities’.2 It became clear at the Joint Staff Planners Conference (JSPC) of January 1943 this ‘international police force’ with the A-bomb as its backing was intended to be the backbone of the new international order. The JCS drew upon the four policemen concept in its first postwar base plan, JCS 570/2, which Roosevelt signed in November 1943 (known in some circles as ‘the base bible’).