Countries Where America Has the Most Soldiers

The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is the oldest overseas United States Naval Base. The 45-square-mile compound has been leased since 1903 and has endured through the 1959 Cuban Revolution that brought Soviet-aligned communists to power in the Caribbean Sea’s largest island country.

Since 2002, the base has housed an offshore detention camp for hundreds of prisoners from the global war on terror, mostly Afghans, Saudis, and Yemenis. According to a May report by Human Rights Watch, 36 prisoners still remain at the facility, and only two of them have been convicted of a crime.

As original members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S. and Norway have close military ties. Norway’s neighbors Sweden and Finland have remained unaligned to NATO until recently, making Norway the northernmost member of the military alliance. It is also a strategic area for the U.S. and other allies to maintain a military presence in and near Europe’s Arctic region in close proximity to northern Russia.

Australia was a fighting ally of the United States in every conflict of the past century, including World War I. The two countries cooperate in Eastern Hemisphere security operations and agreements. Since 2012, more than 8,000 U.S. Marines have trained alongside the Australian Defense Force, according to the U.S. State Department.

The U.S. maintains military operations in five European countries, including Belgium. Belgium hosts slightly more U.S. troops after Norway. U.S. bases in the fifth-smallest European Union country by population include U.S. Army Garrison Benelux, an abbreviation for Belgium and its neighbors Netherlands and Luxembourg. USAG Benelux is one of the most important in the area because it supports complementary bases located in France, Germany, and the U.K.

Relations between the U.S. and Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, have cooled considerably under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his authoritarian style leadership. But Turkey is also a strategic location for the U.S. military in a region wrought with instability. The future of Incirlik Air Base, one of the most important American outposts in the region, is murky as Turkey forges closer ties to Russia.

Nearly 11 years after the end of the Second Gulf War and more than two years after U.S. President Donald Trump began scaling down U.S. military presence in Iraq, the U.S. still maintains troops on the ground as Islamic State fighters are still active in the country and in neighboring Syria. Last year, Military Times described the U.S. presence as a “strict advise-and-assist role at the invitation of the Iraqi government.”

More than three decades after a U.S.-led coalition rescued Kuwait from Iraqi invasion and protected the area’s oil fields from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s clutches, the U.S. maintains a strong military presence in the Gulf state of 4.2 million people that is situated between Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The largest U.S. base is Camp Arifjan, south of Kuwait City, where members of all branches of the U.S. military as well as military personnel from allied countries are forward deployed.

The European Union’s fourth-largest country by population also has the third-largest U.S. military presence in the 27-nation trading bloc, after Germany and Italy. The U.S. presence is anchored by two large bases: Naval Station Rota in southern Cádiz province (aka the “Gateway to the Mediterranean”) and Morón Air Base near the southeastern city of Seville.

The tiny island in the Arabian Gulf has been designated by the U.S. a “major non-NATO ally.” Iran has periodically laid claim to Bahrain due to the island’s historic ties to Persia. Bahrain offers an enticing strategic location for the U.S. military, situated near Saudi Arabia’s major oil fields and vital shipping channels between two adversarial states, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Guam is an unincorporated territory of the United States whose people are American citizens, so technically U.S. military troops and bases in Guam are not “overseas.” However, the island is closer to the Philippines than to Hawaii, making U.S. military installations and troops there distant from the contiguous United States – much farther away from home than the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Guam’s strategic location – which puts it within range of North Korean missiles – has turned it into the largest U.S. military outpost in the Pacific Region outside of Japan.

The U.S. military presence in the United Kingdom is the largest outside of continental Europe and Asia and dates back to 1942, when Britain invited the Americans to use Royal Air Force airfields. Today, the U.S. operates numerous bases in Britain, such as the extensive RAF Alconbury military base in Cambridgeshire, about 60 miles from London. This and other bases are operated by the U.S., but the rules and regulations are created and enforced by the British government.

Italy’s proximity to the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe has made it an ideal location for the U.S. to plant one of its largest centers of military power abroad. While Germany remains home to Europe’s largest U.S. overseas military infrastructure, the U.S. has pivoted toward southern Europe since the global war on terror began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The U.S. maintains numerous military complexes in Italy, from Naples and Sicily in the south to Aviano and Pisa in the north.

Though the Korean War technically ended in 1953, the two Koreas have never signed a peace treaty, which has made the Korean Peninsula one of the world’s hot spots for a potential military eruption. The United States maintains one of its largest military presences abroad in South Korea, assuring that any attack from the Hermit Kingdom in the north would immediately involve the U.S. in direct military confrontation. The largest U.S. overseas military base is Camp Humphreys, a U.S. Army garrison located about 40 miles south of Seoul.

Germany has been vital to U.S. military strategy in Europe since the end of World War II, through the decade-long post-war Allied occupation of the county and the tumultuous years of the Cold War that divided Germany. The U.S. European Command, the coordinator of all American forces in 51 countries, is headquartered in the southwestern city of Stuttgart.

Germany remains home to the second-largest U.S. overseas military presence in the world, but the number of American active service members there has declined in recent years as the U.S. responds to a “shifting and increasingly global security situation,” reported German news agency Deutsche Welle in 2020.

Recent tensions between the People’s Republic of China and the U.S., which included a recent military exercise by China, including reportedly a ballistic missile launched into Japanese waters, all but assure a continued robust U.S. military footprint in Japan.

The country has long hosted the largest U.S. overseas military presence in the world. U.S. Forces Japan is headquartered at Yokota Air Base in Fussa city, in western Tokyo, where operations supporting the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command are centered. The command is similar to the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.