In recent months NATO and the U.S. have announced securing new air bases in Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia and Albania. Those acquisitions are in addition to U.S./NATO air bases in Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. The latter airfields have been modernized and expanded as will no doubt. the newer ones. That accounts for nine of the fourteen Eastern European nations inducted into NATO in the past twenty-three years. Only the Czech Republic (to the best of one’s knowledge) and the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, (North) Macedonia, Montenegro (population: 620,000) and Slovenia haven’t provided NATO with air bases for use against Russia and Belarus to date. (The Pentagon is moving a forward-based special operations forces headquarters to Albania as well.)
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NATO starts work to upgrade Albanian communist-era air base
NATO started work Thursday to upgrade Albania’s communist-era Kucova Air Base, which will allow it to be used for alliance operations.
The 45.8 million-euro ($52 million) upgrade will include renovating the runway, taxiways, and storage facilities and is designed to increase NATO interoperability and support airborne early warning missions over the western Balkan country.
The base in Kucova, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the capital Tirana, will serve Albania and also support NATO air supply operations, logistics support, air policing, training and exercises.
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Albanian Airbase Gets NATO Upgrade as Alliance Plays to Its Strengths in Balkans
Graveyard of obsolete MiGs to become refueling station for NATO planes projecting power eastward
KUCOVA, Albania—In this town once known as Stalin City, NATO is modernizing an air base to sharpen the alliance’s capabilities in the western Balkans, a region where it is nudging Russia aside.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is spending €50 million ($56 million) to upgrade the six-decade-old base, further cementing its foothold in a part of Europe racked by wars two decades ago. The alliance also aims to project power from here into the Mediterranean and Black Seas….
Anti-bellum 
Isn’t it amazing how the U.S. can find the money to do all this infrastructure in Europe, deploy thousands of troops there, give military equipment and armament to Ukraine but the infrastructure in America is crumbling, bridges, highways, government building, just to name a few. The students have to mortgage their future earnings to go to school to get training for jobs that won’t be there, citizens can not get health care because they can not afford the artificially inflated prices, people die because of no health insurance, they can’t afford the medications they need to maintain their health….yet America spends billions in other countries to project military might and subjugate other countries at the cost of the spiraling downward the quality of life for their citizens. What a country!!!
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Amen to all your points. I’m 70 years ago, worked for over 50 years and paid federal taxes all that time (and never took a penny in deductions). I recently had dental work done and had to use my credit card to charge the whole amount – over $6,000 – before anything was done. Medicare didn’t pay a penny even though it was an emergency – I didn’t have any upper teeth and couldn’t chew.
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I know what you are talking about. I am 74 and for the last eight years I have been going to the local dental school for all my dental care. It helps the students and it helps my pocketbook. I could not have afforded all the care I received during those last eight years, and continuing to do so. I did carry supplemental dental insurance at one time but it still left a hefty co-pay for things such as crowns, root canals, etc. The quality of life has sure decreased compared to the years I was in school and as a young man. The downward spiral is increasing at an exponential rate and I am waiting for the bottom any day now. Just think of how much we could have done in this country if all the presidents since 1991 had not embarked on their wars and foreign occupations these past 30 years!
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Right. Shouldn’t the self-dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union – the *alleged*** reason for the U.S. military – in 1991 have led to a colossal peace dividend (as it was then called)? I never expected it. I knew then that instead of disarming or closing overseas bases, the military metaphysic (C. Wright Mills’ apt term) would dictate that as the Pentagon was now uncontested it would go on the offensive in every part of the earth. And so it did. I did not expect it to employ NATO as an international strike force.
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