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Quintijn Kat

Quintijn Kat is a PhD student at the Institute of the Americas, University College London, researching the causes of decline of US hegemony in Latin America since the end of the Cold War. Particularly he looks at the interaction between failure of US foreign policy in the region and Latin American cooperation initiatives that exclude the US. He is also a member of the UCL Americas Research Network and can be found here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/americas/people/research-students

Book Review: U.S. Military Bases, Quasi-Bases and Domestic Politics in Latin America by Sebastian E. Bitar

Since 1999 all attempts by the US government to open formal military bases in Latin America have failed. This leads one to assume the US has lost much of its military influence in the region. However, the existence of so-called quasi-bases, or informal bases, discussed in Sebastian Bitar’s book, demonstrates that the US has managed to maintain its military influence. Quasi-bases differ from formal bases in no other way than that they lack a formal lease agreement for use of facilities. Essentially, quasi-bases serve the same purposes as formal bases, but exist in a cloud of secrecy.