military bases Archives - Page 4 of 9 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Postcard From…Futenma

by Jon Mitchell | Aug 24, 2010

This is shaping up to be the toughest year for Futenma Air Station since one of its helicopters crashed into a nearby university six years ago. That accident cemented calls to move the Marine Corps base from its current location in crowded Ginowan City to Henoko, a less populated area in the north of Okinawa Island, Japan’s southernmost prefecture. As details slowly emerged of underhanded construction deals and the potential destruction of Henoko’s ecosystem, though, public dissatisfaction with the plan grew. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan took advantage of this mood when they came to power last year on a platform to scrap the proposed relocation and move the base elsewhere.

Making the Invisible Empire Visible

by John Junkerman | May 26, 2010

It is the singular misfortune of the residents of Guam and the Northern Marianas to have been born on tiny islands of great strategic value in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The consequence has been their colonial subordination for four centuries to a succession of empires: Spain, the United States, Germany, Japan, and, since the Pacific War, the US again.

Okinawa and Obama’s Base-Based Addiction

by John Feffer | May 13, 2010

Japanese PM Hatoyama’s modified base relocation plan looks like a lose, lose, lose proposition for Okinawa, Japan, and President Obama.

Fortress Guam: Resistance to US Military Mega-Buildup

by Gwyn Kirk, Lisa Linda Natividad | May 12, 2010

United States presidents rarely visit the U.S. territory of Guam (or Guåhan in the Chamorro language), but President Obama may visit in June 2010. This will be a significant stop for residents of this small island, 30 miles long and eight miles wide, dubbed, “Where America’s day begins.” Guam is the southern-most island in the Northern Mariana chain that also includes Rota, Tinian, and Saipan. It is the homeland of indigenous Chamorro people whose ancestors first came to the islands nearly 4,000 years ago. Formed from two volcanoes, Guam’s rocky core now constitutes an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for the United States military in the words of Brig. Gen. Douglas H. Owens, a former commanding officer of Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base.1

Allied Regime Change

by John Feffer | Apr 27, 2010

Earth Day was a big event this year. Sting sang on the Mall here in Washington. The citizens of Qatar turned off their power for an hour. The U.S. Navy rolled out its new biodiesel-fueled Green Hornet fighter jet.

Environmental Protection of Bases?

by John Feffer, David Vine | Apr 22, 2010

Just weeks before today’s Earth Day, and for the second time in little more than a year, environmental groups have teamed with governments to create massive new marine protection areas across wide swaths of the world’s oceans. Both times, however, there’s been something (pardon the pun) fishy about these benevolent-sounding efforts at environmental protection.

Velvet Imperialists

by John Feffer | Mar 23, 2010

I’m not a big fan of Dana Rohrabacher, the grandstanding Republican congressman from California. But last week at a congressional hearing on U.S.-Japan relations, he ably cut through the Pentagon’s doublespeak.

The Cost of the Global U.S. Military Presence

by Anita Dancs, Miriam Pemberton | Jul 2, 2009

The U.S. military’s global presence is vast and costly. More than one-third of U.S. troops are currently based abroad or afloat in international waters, and hundreds of bases and access agreements exist throughout the world. At the beginning of the 21st century, the government pushed to expand this presence through a variety of mechanisms. Yet the Department of Defense’s budget presentations lack enough detail to make it possible to know the precise cost. The budgets don’t break down the numbers, for example, on maintaining bases at home and overseas.

Surrounding China’s String of Pearls

by John Feffer | Sep 29, 2008

In 1919, the English geographer Halford Mackinder argued that control of the “Eurasian heartland” was the key to world domination. Mackinder believed that Eastern Europe was the gateway to controlling this huge landmass stretching from his home country to the far shores of Asia. And indeed, Eastern Europe proved pivotal in the next conflagration, World War II, as well as in the US policy of containing the Soviet Union in the Cold War era.

Base-less Strategy

by Emily Schwartz Greco, Col. Daniel Smith (Ret.) | Apr 24, 2008

With nine months left in office, the Bush administration has opened negotiations with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that are expected to set parameters within which future relationships between Iraq and the United States will be conducted. The end product, as presently envisioned by Washington, will be either one document with two major sectionsÂsecurity issues and all othersÂor possibly two documents. The main thrust of the security document reportedly will be a traditional status of forces agreement (SOFA) that defines the extent to which Iraq’s laws will apply to U.S. personnel in Iraq. The other agreement will cover non-security issues.