Anti-U.S. base protests, played out in parliaments and the streets of host nations, continue to arise in different parts of the world. In a novel approach, this book examines the impact of anti-base movements and the important role bilateral alliance relationships play in shaping movement outcomes. The author explains not only when and how anti-base movements matter, but also how host governments balance between domestic and international pressure on base-related issues. Drawing on interviews with activists, politicians, policy makers and U.S. base officials in the Philippines, Japan (Okinawa), Ecuador, Italy and South Korea, the author finds that the security and foreign policy ideas held by host government elites act as a political opportunity or barrier for anti-base movements, influencing their ability to challenge overseas U.S. basing policies.

Since the end of World War II, protests against U.S. military base and related policies have occurred in several Asian host countries. How much influence have these protests had on the p;olicy regarding U.S. military bases? What conditions make protests more likely to influence policy? Protests Against U.S. Military Base Policy in Asia answers these questions by examining state response to twelve major protests in Asia since the end of World War II—in the Philippines, Okinawa, and South Korea. Yuko Kawato lays out the conditions under which protesters' normative arguments can and cannot persuade policy-makers to change base policy, and how protests can still generate some political or military incentives for policy-makers to adjust policy when persuasion fails. Kawato also shows that when policy-makers decide not to change policy, they can offer symbolic concessions to appear norm-abiding and to secure a smoother implementation of policies that protesters oppose. While the findings will be of considerable interest to academics and students, perhaps their largest impact will be on policy makers and activists, for whom Kawato offers recommendations for their future decision-making and actions.

Read an interview with Robyn Rodriguez. Filipino American Transnational Activism: Diasporic Politics among the Second Generation offers an account of how Filipinos born or raised in the United States often defy the multiple assimilationist agendas that attempt to shape their understandings of themselves. Despite conditions that might lead them to reject any kind of relationship to the Philippines in favor of a deep rootedness in the United States, many forge linkages to the “homeland” and are actively engaged in activism and social movements transnationally. Though it may well be true that most Filipino Americans have an ambivalent relationship to the Philippines, many of the chapters of this book show that other possibilities for belonging and imaginaries of “home” are being crafted and pursued.

What challenges and risks do Chinese and Russian bases pose to the United States’ military strategy? How do the military postures of great powers interact and with what consequences for regional and global security? This book examines the emerging dynamics of geostrategic competition for overseas military bases and base access. The comparative framework adopted in this volume examines how the geopolitical interests of the United States, China, and Russia and their respective underlying force posture interact in different regions including the Indo-Pacific, Europe, sub-Sahara Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and the Arctic Circle. By exploring the security, political economic, and domestic political dynamics of specific regions, the contributors to this volume reveal varied motivations for overseas military bases and base access among great powers. With analysis on the particular dynamics of overseas bases in major regional theaters, the book offers a valuable window into the nature and scope of the broader “great power competition” underway in the twenty-first century.

"When do we see social movements against the American military overseas, and what explains their varying intensity? Despite increasing interest in the global network of U.S. military bases on foreign soil, we still do not understand why some host communities mobilize against the American bases in their backyards, while others remain compliant. This book addresses this puzzle by investigating the contentious politics surrounding twenty U.S. military bases across Korea and Japan - faithful U.S. allies and two of the largest U.S. base hosts in the world. In particular, it looks at municipalities hosting these bases and differing levels of community acceptance and resistance over time. Drawing on fieldwork interviews, participant observation, and protest event data (2000-2015), the book shows that activists in base towns successfully build broad-based anti-base movements when they (1) take advantage of quotidian disruption (i.e., major changes at these bases), (2) adopt culturally resonant - but surprisingly mundane - protest frames, and (3) ally with local political elites. These activist strategies, however, sometimes end up reinforcing the widely presumed inevitability of the American presence. Ultimately, this book sheds light on marginalized actors in international politics - far removed from elite decision-making processes that shape interstate base politics, and yet living with their consequences - who sometimes manage to complicate the operations of America's military behemoth. In doing so, the book also reminds readers that American military bases overseas, often discussed in the rather abstract terms of American power projection, have concrete local and human consequences"--

After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, leaders in China and the United States had high hopes of a lasting partnership between the two countries. More than 120,000 U.S. servicemen deployed to China, where Chiang Kai-shek's government carried out massive programs to provide them with housing, food, and interpreters. But, as Zach Fredman uncovers in The Tormented Alliance, a military alliance with the United States means a military occupation by the United States. The first book to draw on archives from all of the areas in China where U.S. forces deployed during the 1940s, it examines the formation, evolution, and undoing of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of China during World War II and the Chinese Civil War. Fredman reveals how each side brought to the alliance expectations that the other side was simply unable to meet, resulting in a tormented relationship across all levels of Sino-American engagement. Entangled in larger struggles over race, gender, and nation, the U.S. military in China transformed itself into a widely loathed occupation force: an aggressive, resentful, emasculating source of physical danger and compromised sovereignty. After Japan's surrender and the spring 1946 withdrawal of Soviet forces from Manchuria, the U.S. occupation became the chief obstacle to consigning foreign imperialism in China irrevocably to the past. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek lost his country in 1949, and the U.S. military presence contributed to his defeat. The occupation of China also cast a long shadow, establishing patterns that have followed the U.S. military elsewhere in Asia up to the present.

US military presence in twenty-first century in Latin America has recently been characterised by rapidly intensifying militarization alongside under-supported anti-military activism. This book redirects recent debates about twenty-first century social mobilization by taking seriously those who actively resist the social movements in their midst.

This edited volume provides a vehicle for the expression of geographical and historical perspectives on the militarisation of East Asia and the Pacific. Among the questions the authors explore are: How have groups and individuals variously enforced, justified, supported, resisted, and acquiesced in military occupation? How have concepts of nationality, identity, and self-determination been shaped, reshaped, and erased by historical processes? How can communities escape from their perceived or actual dependence on centralised loci of power? Chapters draw upon philosophical, theoretical, empirical, and anecdotal evidence. The book is aimed at, inter alia, activists for social justice and researchers in international and strategic relations, colonial and post-colonial studies, Asian, Okinawan, and Pacific island studies, critical theory, and ethics. Contributors to this volume include David Vine, Douglas Lummis, Miyume Tanji, Kyle Kajihiro, chinin usii, Leevin Camacho, Andrew Yeo, Mitzi Uehara Carter, Gwisook Gwon, Christopher Melley, Yukinori Tokuyama, Kiyomi Maedomari-Tokuyama, Nika Nashiro, Chie Miyagi, Makoto Arakaki, Peter Simpson, and Daniel Broudy.

This book sheds light on the mechanisms of base politics that surround US overseas military bases, comparing several countries across different regions. Analysing cases from Japan, Greenland, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Singapore, the contributors paint a detailed and complex picture of the role and impact of US bases. In times of war they project military power, and in times of peace they deter the emergence of general and latent threats. Furthermore, they are used to secure access to resources, and as a means of politically and economically influencing small and mid-size countries. From the viewpoint of the countries that host them, military bases allow the host many benefits of the US security umbrella, but can cause internal problems, including accidents and noise pollution that accompany the functioning of a base, as well as constraining their own sovereignty. Military bases do not simply serve to bring America strategic and security benefits - as symbols of the hierarchical structure of the international system, they influence power relations in the entire world. An invaluable resource for scholars of International Relations with an interest in the practical and theoretical challenges of the US’s relationship with its allies.

This book shows how historical experiences have affected East Asian security debates, as reflected in enduring concerns with sovereign autonomy.