An American not-really-a-base

""The city is now a "lily pad" (the base America has when it doesn't need to build a mini-city, just permanent access to a subordinate state’s geographic and strategic resources), adding to the largest empire of "not-really-bases" the world has ever known." "Of course, well before becoming a lily pad for the Pentagon's pivot to Asia, Darwin became an important part of the global-technological security apparatus when, in the 1950s, mining began at Rum Jungle, 60kms to Darwin's south, to supply uranium to the British and American nuclear weapons programs.""