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On Nov. 17, at GMF’s Washington headquarters, Transatlantic Fellow Alexander A. Cooley presented the results of his research on the politics of U.S. bases abroad.  The presentation was part of a bigger book project that Cooley has been working on about how the United States deals with the balance between maintaining military bases in non-democratic countries and its broader commitment to promoting democracy.  He was joined by the Romanian ambassador, Sorin Ducaru, to discuss pending base negotiations between the United States and Romania.   Cooley’s talk began with historical examples from East Asia and Europe and then focused on the current bases in Central Asia and the Black Sea region.  Citing basing arrangements in Spain and the Philippines in the last half century and the July air base closure in Uzbekistan, he said that maintaining bases in authoritarian regimes undermines the United States’ ability to encourage these governments to democratize and bears a lot of hidden costs.  He explained that these regimes are unreliable hosts as their policies shift to preserve self-interests, and that political backlash can be severe when a country undergoes democratic reforms for the first time.   However, the situation in Romania is different, Cooley said.  Romania bears the hallmarks of a healthy democracy — stability and respect for international agreements — and has signaled that the American base will be received warmly.  He cautioned that public enthusiasm was unrealistic; the base was unlikely to boost the region’s economy as expected.  He also warned that in the young democracy, the media are prone to be overcritical of possible military accidents.   Amb. Ducaru agreed with Cooley’s analysis that nondemocratic regimes are unreliable in the long term and echoed his doubts about the economic impact of opening a base in Romania.  He was, however, more optimistic about public reaction in the case of an accident, pointing to the death of a local pop star, where a U.S. marine was involved, to show that accountability by the United States could assuage the media’s outrage.   Alexander A. Cooley was a Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund from March to August of 2005.  He returns to teaching at Barnard College at Columbia University in New York City, where he will resume teaching courses on international politics.  His first book, Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States and Military Occupations, will be published by Cornell University Press in November 2005.