they're just nice places for the military to relax, have fun, and garden
don't you want to go?
That link is being hugged to death, it appears. I just finished Asia's Cauldron; it's a hell of a book and I highly recommend it. Kaplan makes the point that Vietnam doesn't hate the US for the "American War" even though it killed like a third of their population because on balance, the Chinese have invaded Vietnam like twenty times and remains Vietnam's biggest trading partner so they kinda gotta deal so a US war really ain't no thang. Dunno. He also argued that expecting the Chinese not to dominate the South Pacific is like expecting the US not to dominate the Caribbean. The US is on borrowed time and will be the oppositional power and interloper against the Chinese. There's no other realistic geopolitical outcome. We see "manmade military bases" they see Guantanamo Bay.