Why the "Next Great American Base" is a Betrayal of the Public Trust

In late September 2026, the Department of Defense unveiled a plan that sounds more like the plot of a futuristic novel than military procurement. The initiative calls for the construction of a massive domestic military installation, which the government is calling "Fortress America."

The Pentagon plans to house up to 25,000 troops and their families at the facility.  This will be the first entirely new domestic base built since the 1980s. While defense officials pitch the project as a necessary upgrade for national security, a closer look reveals a deeply troubling subtext: the Pentagon is actively planning to survive a national collapse while leaving the rest of the country to fend for itself.

For decades, the American military operated on a model of absolute security for the homeland. The continental United States was viewed as a sanctuary—a safe rear-guard from which global power could be projected.

Fortress America flips this assumption on its head. Under the new guidelines, major U.S. military installations must be engineered to operate independently from external civilian infrastructure for at least 90 days. This means they must generate their own power, draw their own water, and stockpile massive reserves of food, fuel, munitions, and medical supplies.

In essence, the Pentagon is building a network of self-sustaining doomsday bunkers for the elite. This extreme pivot toward radical self-reliance suggests a chilling realization: the government has lost faith in the stability of the United States.  Its response is to build a life raft exclusively for government personnel. This base is designed to defend the continuity of the government, while abandoning the American people to potential civil chaos.

We do not want – nor should we accept – an army that is engineered to comfortably survive behind fortified gates while the civilian population is left starving in the dark. If the military expects to lock its gates and survive entirely on its own reserves while the outside world goes dark, it represents a catastrophic failure of leadership and a betrayal of the social contract.

It’s not difficult to determine the cause of the Pentagon’s fears.  The vulnerability of the U.S. dollar is the ultimate cause of predictions of American collapse.  National debt and the world’s movement away from the dollar place unprecedented strain on the greenback. If the world’s oil markets were to trade in a currency other than the dollar, the dollar would plunge in value overnight – leaving Americans paying $10 a gallon for gasoline.  That is the future our leaders have foreseeably created for us. 

Now our leaders want to retreat behind Fortress America, leaving Americans to negotiate a world where the United States can no longer afford imported goods, such as clothing, oil and auto parts.  The Pentagon is trying to survive in a Mad Max world, where "just-in-time" supply chains, logistics networks, and utility grids could possibly collapse along with the U.S. dollar.

Bunker-building is a cowardly and deeply flawed response to a foreseeable economic crisis. Washington is wasting billions of dollars treating the symptoms of monetary instability rather than the disease. Rather than funneling vast public resources into planning for an eventual, catastrophic collapse, the underlying structural issues would be far better addressed through a controlled, deliberate devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

A planned devaluation, managed through international agreements, would spread the collapse over months or years, instead of happening overnight.  Yes, there would be pain, but the United States would not face a doubling of the cost of oil and imported goods, when the petrodollar system foreseeable collapses. 

A weaker dollar would instantly make American exports more competitive globally, revitalizing domestic manufacturing and rebuilding the very civilian industrial base that the Pentagon is currently trying to insulate itself from.  This is important.  We can make America great again.  Doing so comes from being the low-cost bidder in world markets – not the consumer of last resort. 

In addition, by intentionally reducing the purchasing power of the dollar in a controlled, orderly manner, the real value of America’s national debt would shrink, making it easier to service in real-world terms.

A strategic reset of the dollar would protect the entire nation, ensuring that civilian utility companies, food distribution networks, and public institutions remain functional for everyone. It eliminates the need for the military to isolate itself from the population it is sworn to protect. Planning for total collapse assumes failure is inevitable and abandons the public, whereas a controlled devaluation actively works to restructure the economy for long-term civilian viability.

Ultimately, the Next Great American Base represents a grim and unacceptable tactic by military leadership. The defense establishment is ensuring that even if the broader United States experiences a severe systemic crisis, their command centers will stay online, their aircraft will fly, and their tables will be full. For the rest of the country, however, the sight of the military preparing to weather a 90-day storm alone is a warning that our leaders would rather build an umbrella for the Pentagon than implement the fiscal strategies necessary to protect the American people from the storm itself.

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Elliott J. Schuchardt is the author of America's Achilles Heel: How to Protect Your Family When America Loses the Reserve Currency. In 2026, Schuchardt was a candidate for the Tennessee General Assembly.