Base Politics as an Emerging Research Program

Base politics, as defined by Geoffrey Gresh, is the “interplay between basing nations and host nations on affairs relating to the operation of local military facilities in host nations” (p. 5). Only a few countries including the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China lay claims to overseas bases today. But the vast majority of bases belong to the United States. There are 587 U.S. bases in 42 countries according to the Pentagon’s most recent count. ^{Footnote 2} All the books under review here focus exclusively on U.S. overseas military bases.

Scholarship on overseas basing during the Cold War period was relatively thin. This early generation of research offered macro-historical studies outlining structural trends in U.S. global military presence or presented narrow policy pieces examining the dynamics of overseas basing in specific countries. ^{Footnote 3} Very few books or articles dug into the underlying mechanisms driving the politics of bases from the bottom-up or from the perspective of host governments. Only in the post-Cold War period has an actual research program on the politics of overseas bases emerged. This second generation of base politics scholarship has only really taken shape in the last decade. ^{Footnote 4}

The increase in scholarly attention to base politics is undoubtedly a reflection of policy shifts following the end of the Cold War, and accelerated by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Both events set the tone for military transformation and a major restructuring of global troop deployments. The Pentagon’s 2004 Global Defense Posture Review (GDPR), the blueprint behind overseas base realignment, carried significant implications for regional and global security. In particular, the GDPR’s impact on relationships with allied host governments warranted more systematic, comparative studies on the politics of bases. At the same time, the end of the Cold War brought greater political opening to several host governments, enabling societal actors to mobilize against U.S. bases with less fear of repression.

This new generation of base politics research, including the three books examined here, distinguishes itself from earlier research on overseas U.S. bases in several ways. Theoretical arguments have become more nuanced, eclectic, and inter-disciplinary. Kawato, Holmes, and others have demonstrated that similar anti-base protests can occur in very different historical and cultural settings. ^{Footnote 5} In other research, scholars have found variation in base politics outcomes tied to alternative regime types. ^{Footnote 6} The discovery of similar patterns and different outcomes have driven base politics scholars to pursue more comparative, rigorous analysis of overseas bases from their predecessors.

Alexander Cooley states that the study of base politics “is not easily slotted into either of the established political science subfield of international relations or comparative politics.” ^{Footnote 7} However, as international relations as a field has shifted away from paradigms and more towards problem-driven research, students of base politics have intentionally blurred (sub)-disciplinary boundaries. Amy Austin Holmes’s Social Unrest and American Military Bases in Turkey and Germany since 1945 provides a good example of such work. She bridges insights from sociology with core debates in international relations to describe the eroding legitimacy of U.S. bases over time. Yuko Kawato’s Protests against U.S. Military Base Policy in Asia draws extensively on social psychology to understand the role of persuasion in anti-base protests.

Straddling across subfields is rather natural given that base politics often plays out simultaneously at the domestic and international levels. Some may argue that base politics involves three levels given that host governments must satisfy constituents at both the national and local level in addition to negotiating bilaterally with the United States. As Kawato writes, “host-state governments engage in negotiations with the United States with their domestic constituents in mind. An important part of base politics at the domestic level is whether and under what conditions local communities … accept state agreements” (p. 7). In a similar vein, Holmes identifies the tripartite structure of U.S. basing consisting of the U.S. military, host nation, and the host population (p. 5). Thus protests against base construction in northern Okinawa is as much a source of contention between Washington and Tokyo as it is between Tokyo and Okinawans. Likewise, in Gulf Security and the U.S. Military, Gresh notes how the sultan of Oman became more concerned with domestic backlash over U.S. violations against Omani sovereignty following Operation Eagle Claw (the failed mission in 1980 to free U.S. hostages in Iran) than maintaining security ties to Washington. Recent studies on base politics thus say as much about local politics and center-periphery relations as they do about the conduct of international relations at the systemic level. In short, the second generation of research on base politics has moved beyond analyzing military bases as a framework of grand strategy, power projection, and U.S. hegemony. Instead, it links these issues of hard security with theoretical and empirical problems related to social movements, democratic governance, and local authority.

Anti-Base Contention

Whether focusing on protests or other forms of contentious politics, all three authors reveal the contested nature of overseas U.S. military presence. As Holmes argues, military bases are a source of both protection and violence (p. 19). Most U.S. policymakers (and host governments) tie the fate of their national security to U.S. bases. However, Kawato notes that many others find military bases as a threat to their community, nation, and regional security (p. 8). Even when citizens agree that U.S. bases contribute to national security, they may find that existing base policies “do not sufficiently protect the interests of host communities” (ibid.). This may stem from perceived inequalities in the application of the Status of Forces Agreement over issues such as criminal jurisdiction or environmental protection. Basing agreements are also often decided without the knowledge or input of local communities, thus undermining democratic procedures and trust in government. And as Holmes notes, far from protecting host nation citizens, bases may lead to greater insecurity as they increase militarization and fuel security dilemmas and arms races with other regional rivals. ^{Footnote 8}

To examine why and how anti-base opposition occurs and when they matter, the three authors all rely on comparative case studies. Studying anti-base opposition at the most micro-level, Protests against U.S. Military Base Policy in Asia examines twelve cases across Japan (Okinawa), South Korea, and the Philippines. Kawato’s research is guided by two simple questions: when do protests influence base policy outcomes, and how? To address these questions, she highlights norms persuasion as a means for protestors to press policymakers to address their grievances. Anti-base protestors invoke five different norms in response to violations related to U.S. bases. These include anti-war, anti-militarism, sovereignty, human rights, antinuclear, and environmental norms (p. 4). Normative persuasion is more likely to lead to policy change if a) domestic institutional settings are favorable; b) normative arguments comport with policymakers’ pre-existing beliefs; and c) policymakers see protest leaders and organizations as credible.

Although her theoretical argument hinges on norms and persuasion, Kawato is frank in concluding that protestors rarely manage to persuade policymakers on basing matters (p. 174). She cites only two out of the twelve cases as examples of successful persuasion: the Philippine Senate’s decision to remove U.S. bases in the Philippines in 1991 and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyma’s announcement to relocate Futenma Air Station outside of Okinawa in 2009. Even then, in the latter case, successful persuasion did not translate into significant policy change (p. 95).

This is not to argue that normative persuasion is a complete bust for activists. Even if persuasion fails, normative arguments may still make a difference if they manage to mobilize the masses, thereby pressuring elites and winning partial changes or symbolic concessions. Yet by Kawato’s own account, in many instances, shifts in basing policy stem from a “rational calculation of political and military costs and benefits than due to protesters’ normative arguments persuading policymakers” (p. 6). Although well-researched with extensive interviews conducted in the field for each of her country case studies, readers may be left wondering why normative persuasion is privileged over other variables/mechanisms in the study of base politics given the relative ineffectiveness of norms in persuading policymakers.

Kawato focuses primarily on the “vertical dimension” of base politics (the relationship between the U.S military, host nation, and host population according to Holmes), giving particular attention to local-national dynamics (Holmes, p. 5). However, further attention to horizontal security relationships (between the United States, host governments, and allies of host governments) at the level of nation states is also needed to explain the limits of persuasion on basing issues. Gresh’s focus on external/internal security conditions in his theoretical framework for base politics is instructive here.

Exploring base politics in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman, Gresh finds that host nations facing significant external threats are much more likely to accept U.S. bases, and by extension put up with norms violations. Conversely, when internal security threats outweigh external security considerations, host governments are more likely to terminate basing agreements in an effort to bolster its own domestic legitimacy. Thus Saudi Arabia in the 1950s and Bahrain in 1971, facing external threats from the Hashemites and Iran, respectively, were open to hosting U.S. forces. Yet in periods of domestic turmoil and internal strife, host governments either cut ties to U.S. bases or drove a hard bargain with U.S. negotiators to relieve pressure and reassert domestic control (p. 3).

Gresh’s security-oriented approach to base politics contrasts with Kawato’s norms persuasion argument. Applied to Kawato’ cases, we would not expect South Korean and Japanese policymakers to grant any major concessions to anti-base protestors given that South Korea and Japan face serious external security threats from North Korea, and to some extent China. In the Philippines, an increase in internal security threats, triggered by an uptick in armed leftist insurgencies and attacks from Islamic separatist groups, and coupled with a reduction in external security threats at the end of the Cold War, may have created a more permissible environment for U.S. military withdrawal by 1991.

Although Gresh and Kawato provide alternative arguments for similar basing policy outcomes, their explanations are still compatible if variables such as security perceptions and normative persuasion are fundamentally rooted in different levels of analysis. For example, to understand why basing access was granted or denied, one might first consider external/internal security perceptions as a structural condition shaping the probability of successful anti-base opposition. One might then turn to actor-centric arguments describing precisely how anti-base protestors take advantage of favorable circumstances (i.e., high internal threat/low external threats) and rely on norms persuasion to deny basing access rights.

The Legitimacy of Overseas U.S. Bases

If there is a book on base politics that strikes the right balance between structure and agency, as well as the domestic and international dimensions of overseas basing, it is Amy Austin Holmes’ Social Unrest and American Military Bases in Turkey and Germany since 1945. In arguably one of the best scholarly treatments on the subject since Alexander Cooley’s Base Politics, Holmes broadens her notion of anti-base opposition beyond protests to include different forms of contentious politics. This includes non-violent civil disobedience, labor disputes, parliamentary opposition, and acts of violence and terrorism. Holmes also explores the security relationship between the United States and host governments and the difficulty in sustaining political legitimacy over U.S. bases in the long run. What distinguishes Social Unrest and American Military Bases from many other works is the author’s ability to deftly navigate the tripartite structure of base politics—the local, the national, and the international—into a single, coherent narrative.

Holmes is interested in understanding the rise of widespread opposition movements to U.S. military presence in Turkey and Germany during the height of the Cold War. Under the shadow of Soviet threat and the protection of the U.S. security umbrella, one would assume U.S. bases to be readily accepted. In fact, at the beginning of the Cold War, Turkish and German society regarded U.S. bases as a public good, thereby legitimating American military presence. Unlike foreign occupation during the age of empires, the United States “could claim legitimacy precisely because it renounced the forms of ownership that formal European colonialism entailed” (p. 16).

Adopting Charles Tilly’s concept of “legitimate protection,” the legitimacy of U.S. bases depends on the “consent of the protected” (p. 191). In the politics of bases, this refers to the consent of host societies in permitting the presence of another country’s foreign military force on their sovereign territory. Consent is more likely to follow if a state can “live up to its claim of offering protection” (p. 18).

For Holmes, so long as external levels of threats remain high, and the level of collateral harm caused by a U.S. presence remains low (i.e., accidents, crime, pollution, and other negative externalities), host nations will accept U.S. bases as a form of legitimate protection. Under such conditions, bases will not be contested. It is when external levels of threat begin to decline and collateral harm rises that opposition to U.S. military presence begins to rise. Holmes refers to this latter category of basing presence as a “protection racket”—when the United States provides “a shield against a threat that is either imaginary or that arose as a result of [its] own activities” (p. 17).

Holmes observes that military bases are sites that produce both protection and violence. On the protection side of the equation, the U.S. military defended Western Europe from Soviet aggression and continues to function as a critical element of NATO’s defense against Russian territorial advances. In East Asia, the U.S. military acts as an off-shore balancer, hence providing greater stability to the region and protection to its allies. ^{Footnote 9} Holmes, however, reminds readers that U.S. bases at times act more as a sword than shield. Bases are instruments of war that may appear even more threatening than the original threat against which bases claim to protect. The placement of missiles or stockpiling of nuclear weapons on bases may also endanger host nation communities as they become potential targets for war. Other forms of collateral harm such as sexual violence, crime, and environmental pollution may also diminish the legitimacy of bases as it risks the safety of the very people it claims to protect. In short, anti-base opposition and the instability of overseas U.S. military presence increases as the legitimacy of the U.S. protection regime begins to erode.

Turkey, and especially Germany, are hard tests for Holmes’ argument. Europe is generally not considered a hotbed of opposition to U.S. military presence. The Middle East or Asia usually come to mind as regions more susceptible to anti-base resistance, whether through violent or peaceful means. Moreover, U.S. forces in Europe are further legitimated under the multilateral framework of NATO. ^{Footnote 10} Yet as Holmes demonstrates, during the Cold War, the U.S. military began to lose credibility in Turkey from the 1960s over issues such as the U–2 spy plane incident and the Cuban Missile crisis. The sprawling excesses of U.S. bases also bore a burden on local workers and communities. In Germany, the narrative of benevolent occupation in the 1940s, and later legitimate protection force in the 1950s and 1960s began to erode in the late 1970s. The deployment of nuclear missiles, damaged infrastructure from training exercises, and environmental pollution related to bases triggered various forms of opposition. Violent attacks committed by the Red Army Faction (RAF) and Revolutionary Cells (RZ) against U.S. targets, and mass peace demonstrations in response to the deployment of Pershing missiles stand out as examples of anti-base opposition in Germany in the 1980s.

Holmes’ study of social unrest and U.S. bases reinforces existing accounts of anti-base movements. ^{Footnote 11} They include a strong “not-in-my-backyard” component driven by local communities and activists. They also rally around broader political ideals such as nationalism, sovereignty, and peace. Yet contrary to what most experts might assume, Holmes does not see ideology as the primary force driving anti-base unrest. Writing about German anti-base opposition in the 1970s and 1980s, Holmes states that “the U.S. protection regime disenfranchised, and at times even harmed the very people it claimed to protect. Anti-base activists were therefore motivated less by ideology than by what they saw as the necessity of limiting the very real harm caused by U.S. military activities” (p. 112).

The idea that anti-base opposition and greater instability to U.S. military presence correlates with the erosion of the U.S. protection regime is both intuitive and novel, and can be applied to examples in the Middle East and Asia presented by Gresh and Kawato, respectively. The ebb and flow of base politics in Saudi Arabia since the end of World War II, and in Bahrain in the 1970s do stem in part from a crisis in U.S. legitimacy. In the Philippines, a decline in the legitimacy of the U.S. protection regime following the People Power revolution and democratization in 1986, and conversely greater demand for U.S. protection today in the wake of renewed disputes in the South China Seas seems to corroborate Holmes’ thesis.

Although Holmes presents a compelling analytical framework for explaining trends in anti-base unrest, her framework is less persuasive in explaining the impact and consequences of societal opposition. This is particularly true of her analysis of the Iraq invasion and the different response to anti-war opposition in Turkey and Germany in 2003. Holmes suggests that the difference lies in the persistence of the U.S. protection regime in Germany, but its decline in Turkey. Later, Holmes provides a more straightforward explanation: in Germany, protests were generally anti-war protests directed at the invasion of Iraq. Turkey, however, was distinct from other global anti-war movements in that it had a “concrete goal to deny basing access to the United States” (p. 187). Towards the end of the book, she notes that the key difference “could be the level of collateral harm that the U.S. presence was believed to be causing in 2003” since the Iraq War may not have been “directly threatening to Germany as it was to Turkey” (p. 207). In the end, it is never really clear why Berlin granted U.S. forces the use of its bases, but Ankara did not, or whether the outcome was necessarily a result of pressure from below. Of course all of these explanations plausibly contribute to differing outcomes between Turkey and Germany in 2003. But the ad hoc nature of explaining specific consequences of anti-base movements in particular cases indicates both the multi-level complexity of base politics and the difficulty in finding any simple causal relationship between contentious politics and policy outcomes.

The Future of Base Politics

Research on base politics is policy relevant. As such, all three authors provide either brief observations or policy recommendations in their conclusion. Gresh and Kawato believe that a lighter military footprint, sweetened by additional U.S. technical or military assistance, will help reduce friction between the U.S. military and host nations. Kawato’s micro-level research also put her in a position to make specific recommendations on improving relations with local communities adversely affected by U.S. bases. One astute observation she makes is the problematic assumption that no protests equate with “no problems” in civil-military relations (p. 176). Rather than “wait[ing] until larger protests break out to respond to local grievances” and letting alliances become strained, policymakers should proactively manage relations between the U.S. military and local communities (p. 176). This includes developing greater partnerships with local governments and engaging in better public relations efforts to inform communities about U.S. military activities locally, nationally, and regionally.

Holmes’ research findings directly contradict recommendations made by Gresh and Kawato, thus revealing a diversity of views on basing policy. For Holmes, maintaining a lower profile or reducing the size of U.S. forces does not solve the underlying problem of anti-base unrest. Because the U.S. protection regime is tethered to the territory, airspace, and civilian infrastructure of host nations, Washington’s attempt to “create a monopoly on the use of international force” is ultimately infeasible if host nations no longer see U.S. bases as a legitimate means of protection. As Holmes argues, “simply put the issue is not the size or location of the U.S. presence, but whether the local population believes it is providing, or on the contrary, undermining security” (p. 209). This is bad news for the Pentagon, which has more or less internalized the idea that less contact and a lighter footprint may help depoliticize U.S. military presence.

Strategic and economic imperatives have driven the United States to move away from large Cold War bases stationed with thousands of troops to “lily pad” bases: small lightly staffed facilities with pre-positioned equipment for use as “jumping-off points in a crisis.” ^{Footnote 12} However, the political and diplomatic benefits of relying on a lighter footprint through cooperative security locations (CSL) and forward operating bases (FOB)—the technical jargon for lily pads—have not been lost on policy planners. As Douglas Feith, then the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy stated in 2004, “we want our posture to enrich our ties with our defense partners around the world—making it easier for us to cooperate, lightening our footprint, eliminating unnecessary irritations, helping them as well as us to modernize our armed forces.” ^{Footnote 13} Similar arguments were reiterated in key documents outlining twenty-first century U.S. basing strategy, including the Pentagon’s 2004 Global Defense Posture Review and the congressionally mandated Overseas Basing Commission’s review of U.S. overseas military facilities in 2005. ^{Footnote 14} A more recent manifestation of this strategy is the rise of secret drone bases used for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa since 2011. ^{Footnote 15} These lighter facilities, often operating as CSLs, exist in locations such as Niger, Ethiopia, Seychelles, and Djibouti. They are part of a growing network of new bases to counter the spread of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

Holmes is correct to note that even bases with a lighter footprint are still susceptible to domestic backlash. For instance, in Djibouti, a series of drone crashes near Camp Lemonnier resulted in local officials requesting the United States to push a fleet of drones to a makeshift airstrip in a more remote area of the country in 2013. As reported in the Washington Post, “the Djiboutian government’s growing unease over drone flights casts doubt on its commitment to host the aircraft over the long term. It is unclear whether the temporary drone base can be transformed into a permanent home or whether the U.S. military will have to hunt for another site in the region.” ^{Footnote 16} Moreover, globalizing processes have made it easier for anti-base activists to share information and reduce the ability of the United States to “maintain multi-vocal legitimation strategies” necessary to prevent anti-base unrest from spreading from one locale to another. ^{Footnote 17}

However, Gresh and most military planners operate on a different set of security assumptions from Holmes. Whereas Holmes finds that “there is no longer an outside threat” looming large for Turkey and Germany, and thus they “no longer require U.S. protection,” Gresh indicates that significant external threats continue to plague member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council requiring continued U.S presence (Social Unrest and American Military Bases, p. 210). Threat perceptions of several host nations in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East appear sufficient enough to legitimate U.S. military presence globally. The Philippines and Iraq are just two examples out of many. Although it remains to be seen whether the new president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, accepts the return of U.S. forces, for now the Philippine Supreme Court, in a 10-to-4 decision, approved its government’s decision to permit the return of U.S. troops and weapons to Subic Bay. ^{Footnote 18} And reversing Baghdad’s earlier rejection of continued U.S. military presence in 2012, gains made by the Islamic State in 2015 convinced the Iraqi government of its need for greater U.S. military commitment, including boots on the ground.

The end of the Cold War has made it harder to find international consensus about common threats or how they might be addressed. This suggests greater challenges and more frequent contestation over a U.S. global military presence. Such challenges are corroborated by the recent stream of scholarship on base politics that give particular attention to anti-base unrest.

But given change and uncertainty in various regional security environments, both host governments and communities may still find U.S. bases as the best form of protection against outside threats. Although the number and aggregate size of U.S. bases have shrunk in the post-Cold War era, the establishment of new bases, and particularly basing access and rights with host nations, counters the narrative that U.S. global military presence is on the decline and is unwanted. One only need ask citizens of several former Soviet Republics and satellite countries—from the Baltic nations to the Ukraine, to Poland and Romania—whether U.S. forces are welcome.

As Holmes and others note, anti-base protests do reveal the limits of the U.S. basing network. For all the renewed attention to the contentious nature of overseas U.S. bases, however, the boundaries of U.S. global reach may actually stem from within rather than abroad. Support for greater foreign policy restraint, if not retrenchment, has grown both within U.S. academic and policy circles. ^{Footnote 19} Donald Trump, during the 2016 U.S. presidential race, repeatedly stated his preference for a reduced global military presence. He accused South Korea and Japan of free-riding on the U.S. military and ridiculed NATO as “obsolete.” Such sentiments are partly a reflection of growing fatigue among the American public of U.S. involvement in unending conflicts, particularly in the Middle East.

But calls for retrenchment have also grown among more mainstream foreign policy circles in an era of fiscal austerity. Conservatives such as Republican senator Tom Coburn and the liberal Center for American Progress proposed reducing troop deployments in Asia and Europe by one-third to save billions of dollars to be spent domestically. ^{Footnote 20} Rather than do more with less, the Department of Defense budget cuts since 2010 suggests that certain members of Congress, and even those within the defense establishment, simply want the military to do less.