The United States has started using a new model for its military outposts abroad, according to Kwesi Pratt Jr., managing editor of the Insight newspaper.
Pratt claims that the military base’s new structure differs from the previous one, which saw the US build massive complexes in allies.
The host of Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana, Dr. Randy Abbey, questioned Pratt’s assertion that the US has created a military base in Ghana, forcing him to explain the nature of US military facilities.
Kwesi Pratt elucidated that the lily-pad style of bases has become the preference for the US as it is more efficient and cost-effective.
Below is the conversation on GMG
You remember Nkrumah’s statement that Africa should be a land without bombs but we’ve messed it up completely. Now we have a US military base on your soil, where is your Non-Alliance?
Randy Abbey: Kwesi, do we really have a military base in Ghana?
Pratt: You don’t know, you didn’t read the agreement in Parliament
Randy: You mean that chochopua (insignificant) thing?
Pratt: It is not chochopua at all.
Randy: When I see US military bases, I see what I see
Pratt: You are so conservative and out of date that is why you talk like that. The new concept of military bases is called the lily pad. The lily pad is not a huge infrastructure with buildings. What we have here is on model of the lily pad. The lily pads are perhaps more effective.
What are lily pads
The lily pads according to a Huffington Post story in 2012 are “small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.”
Context
Kwesi Pratt was lamenting government seeming flirtations with the United States at a time when it is discussing with China over debt cancelation.
Pratt was concerned that the posture of government with respect to its relationship with US could scupper any chance of China cancelling its death with the country.
He cited the visit of the Vice President of the US, Kamala Harris as another evidence of Ghana’s preference for the US over China.