Okinawa

Korean Bases of Concern

Last month the New York Philharmonic grabbed the world’s attention by performing Dvorak’s New World Symphony in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. The Philharmonic may well have chosen Dvorak’s piece as an overture for a new world of peace. With negotiations over security issues in Northeast Asia making some progress, the United States and North Korea have been inching closer.

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Gender and U.S. Bases in Asia-Pacific

The power dynamics of militarism in the Asia-Pacific region rely on dominance and subordination. These hierarchical relationships, shaped by gender, can be seen in U.S. military exploitation of host communities, its abuse and contamination of land and water, and the exploitation of women and children through the sex industry, sexual violence, and rape. Women’s bodies, the land, and indigenous communities are all feminized, treated as dispensable and temporary. What is constructed as “civilized, white, male, western, and rational” is held superior to what is defined as “primitive, non-white, female, non-western, and irrational.” Nations and U.S. territories within the Asia-Pacific region are treated as inferiors with limited sovereignty or agency in relation to U.S. foreign policy interests that go hand-in-hand with this racist/sexist ideology.

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