Comment by ethbr1
7 months ago
They're all pretty far from land and in the same general area.
If Diego Garcia were no longer an option, there would be alternatives. Especially with US levels of lease money.
That said, few of them are quite as remote as Diego Garcia. Which means not quite as easy to secretly fly RQ-180s or whatever the hell is more clandestinely based there.
I don't think geography is the challenge as much as politics. What country and populace will give up their ancestral land to a foreign military base. Would you?
Remember that the small islands don't have much land to begin with, and bases are large.
A country that's desperate for infrastructure investment and foreign reserves, because they don't have much usable land to start with?
At some point leasing away an island, so that everyone else can have a better quality of life, is an attractive tradeoff.