Anti-base Movement Research Articles

Activist Disconnect: Social Movements, Public Opinion, and U.S. Military Bases in East Asia

Do activists seeking to challenge the U.S. military presence overseas succeed in persuading the local population? While the comparative literature on base contestation often makes implicit causal claims about public opinion and behavior, these claims have never been tested empirically using individual-level data. Based on an online survey, experiment with residents of communities hosting U.S. military bases in Korea and Japan, we demonstrate a disconnect between anti-base movements and local residents. Local public opinion is most responsive to pragmatic framing of opposition by social movements and tangible information about the consequences of base expansion. Other common activist tactics have little effect and may even backfire. Our findings fill an important gap in the growing literature on the politics of U.S. military bases abroad.

No Bases? Assessing the Impact of Social Movements Challenging US Foreign Military Bases

Militarism and militarization have inspired opposition for millennia. In the post–World War II era, dozens of social movements challenging the existence and operation of US and other foreign (extraterritorial) military bases have provided a prominent example of antimilitarization activism. Movements from Okinawa, Japan, and Jeju, South Korea, to Vieques, Puerto Rico, and Vicenza, Italy, have struggled to close existing bases, stop the construction of new bases, and reduce or eliminate the harms that bases frequently inflict on local communities. This article reviews the history and effects of antibase movements, including recent efforts to create a global “No Bases” movement. While these movements have achieved varying degrees of success and had complicated impacts at individual, local, national, and global scales, this article shows that antibase movements collectively have been important actors in international geopolitics, with significant global influence. Specifically, movements have disrupted everyday military operations and reshaped the global deployment of US bases abroad. Antibase movements thus provide an example of how antimilitarization movements can check, slow, and in some cases reverse militarization—although militarization can continue after base closures. The article concludes with seven tentative hypotheses explaining why some antibase movements are more successful than others in achieving their stated aims.

Why do Anti-Base Movements Occur or are Revitalized? ―A Comparative Analysis of Multiple Case Studies in Turkey

Why do Anti-Base Movements Occur or are Revitalized? ―A Comparative Analysis of Multiple Case Studies in Turkey

Realism, critical theory, and the politics of peace and security: Lessons from anti-base protests on Jeju Island

AbstractDrawing on insights from International Relations and social movement theories, I explore anti-base protests on Jeju Island and the ensuing politics of peace. I find that the clash between activists and policymakers is fundamentally tied to different views regarding the legitimacy of state actions on security policy and whether actors see states or people as the primary object of security. These real-world differences are mirrored in realist and critical perspectives of international politics. Policymakers tend to view the naval base as a means of protecting national interests and enhancing maritime security. Meanwhile, anti-base activists seek emancipation from an illegitimate state project uprooting a peaceful community. However, the perpetuation of a powerful realist discursive structure within the South Korean security and foreign policy establishment presents significant hurdles for anti-base movements in advancing their cause. My findings are based on ethnographic research in Gangjeong village in July 2012, interviews with activists and policymakers in South Korea, and an analysis of state and activist discourse in both Korean and English language sources.

From Tokyo to Wounded Knee: Two Afterlives of the Sunagawa Struggle

The Sunagawa Struggle, a massive anti-US base protest in the suburbs of western Tokyo, had lasting impacts not only on the US–Japan security alliance, but also on the people who participated on both sides of the protest lines. This article traces the lives of two people who were profoundly changed by their experiences of the anti-base movement in Japan: Dennis Banks, a young airman who was tasked with guarding the base and would later help found the American Indian Movement; and Sunagawa protestor Shimada Seisaku, who spent a career as a Tachikawa city councilperson and remained committed to anti-base activism.

沖縄における自然保護と基地反対運動(シンポジウム 多様な「ヒト-生きもの」関係と地域,2009年度地理科学学会秋季学術大会)

沖縄における自然保護と基地反対運動(シンポジウム 多様な「ヒト-生きもの」関係と地域,2009年度地理科学学会秋季学術大会)

US Military Bases and Funshi : The Anti-Base Movement and Community Development in Yomitan Village, Okinawa

US Military Bases and Funshi : The Anti-Base Movement and Community Development in Yomitan Village, Okinawa

War over framing: base politics in South Korea

ABSTRACTWhen do anti-base movements manage to influence policy, and when do they fail to do so? Base scholars have largely overlooked what I argue is a significant factor that can shape public and government response to anti-base movements: political opportunities associate with framing efforts by key actors involved. Based on two cases of anti-base movements in South Korea, I show how framing battles between activists and media shape political opportunities afforded to anti-base movements and can ultimately influence movement success.

Beyond the State as “Black Box”: Anti-Base Movements

Activists, Alliances, and Anti-U.S. Base Protests. By Yeo Andrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 222 pp., $27.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-17556-2). Methodology determines the direction of science (whether natural or social) and its conclusions. The book under review—an ambitious attempt to link the very different approaches of international relations with studies of social movements—is difficult to position in the literature since it challenges methodological conventions. This is what makes it so interesting and useful. Andrew Yeo uses as case studies the US bases in the Philippines, Japan, Ecuador, Italy, and South Korea to investigate why some antibase activist undertakings succeed and others fail. Related issues are how host governments balance domestic tension with international pressure from the United States on foreign policy issues and how international security relations affect host government responses to antibase pressure. Some context illuminates what is at stake and why this book carries great import. The United States has about 900 overseas bases in 45 countries, by far the largest international footprint of any state. These bases provide strategic deterrence, territorial control, logistics and transportation capabilities, and alliance support. At these facilities, munitions are stored, and equipment and troops prepositioned. From the point of view of the host state polity, bases provide jobs, boost the local economy, and establish relations of solidarity with the sending state. More negatively, bases cause “externalities,” such as noise, environmental pollution, crime, accidents, and prostitution. Two basic questions …

Can Okinawa be the “catalyst” for peace in East Asia?

Starting with the introduction of pressing issues faced by the “deplore war and advocate peace” anti-base movement in Okinawa, the essay considers Okinawa's history since the Second World War, as well as earlier times, so as to investigate “what Okinawa is”—a historically and culturally unique place which both is and is not Japan. This essay goes on to propose the idea of a “sphere of living” as a perspective going beyond the national boundary, in the hope of acquiring a historical understanding as well as the vision for a future in which people can coexist with each other.

“The Empire Will Compensate You”: The Structural Dynamics of the U.S. Overseas Basing Network

Many commentators refer to the U.S. overseas network of military installations as an “empire,” yet very few have examined the theoretical and practical significance of such an analogy. This article explores the similarities and differences between the basing network and imperial systems. We argue that American basing practices and relations combine elements of liberal multilateralism with “neo-imperial” hegemony. Much, but far from all, of the network shares with ideal-typical empires a hub-and-spoke system of unequal relations among the United States and its base-host country “peripheries.” But Washington rarely exercises rule over host-country leaders and their constituents. Historical examples suggest that this combination of imperial and non-imperial elements has rendered the United States vulnerable to political cross-pressures, intermediary exits, and periodic bargaining failures when dealing with overseas base hosts. Moreover, globalizing processes, especially increasing information flows and the transnational networking of anti-base movements, further erode U.S. capacity to maintain multivocal legitimation strategies and keep the terms of its individual basing bargains isolated from one another. Case studies of the rapid contestation of the terms of the U.S. basing presence in post-Soviet Central Asia and post-2003 Iraq illustrate some of these dynamics.

Protesting the Expansion of US Military Bases in Pyeongtaek: A Local Movement in South Korea

Since World War II, US military bases have become a global phenomenon and generated complex responses from their “host” societies. For these past six decades, South Korea has functioned as one of the major hubs of the global network of US military bases, yet organized local movements against US military bases did not develop until the late 1980s when the country began its transition to procedural democracy. This essay examines one of the major antibase movements in South Korea that took place in Pyeongtaek from 2003 through 2007. This local movement is chosen for two reasons. First, the city has become the primary hub of the United States Forces Korea after the restructuring of the global US military presence. Second, the democratic South Korean government’s use of coercive and violent measures in dealing with the local movement sets an alarming precedent for global base politics, pitting the vested interests of transnational political elites against the interests of local men and women in living a safe, everyday life. This essay first provides a brief history of two major military bases in the provincial city of Pyeongtaek. Then it examines how the antibase movement by local residents and political activists from outside reemerged and declined in Pyeongtaek. Finally, it analyzes lessons that can be drawn from the case study of Pyeongtaek for antibase movements and a critical understanding of the global US military presence.

Challenging US Military Presence in the Philippines

This essay examines antibase movements in the Philippines, giving attention to the development, organization, and role of antibase movements leading to the ouster of US military forces in 1991. Additionally, I discuss how the return of the US military in the late 1990s under a visiting forces agreement rekindled mobilization efforts, albeit more weakly than during the early 1990s, against US military presence. Although no permanent US base exists in the Philippines today, peace activists continue to rally against the US military influence both at home and abroad.

Distant allies, proximate enemies: Rethinking the scales of the antibase movement in Ecuador

In this article, I analyze the processes by which transnational peace activists opposed to the U.S. military's largest “forward operating location” (FOL) in Manta, Ecuador, came to be read by some of that city's residents as more imperialist than the U.S. Air Force itself. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2008, I argue that this “inversion” was the product of disparate “scale-making practices” on the part of both activists and military officers. Whereas the former encouraged city residents to think of the facility as part of a global military network, the latter successfully pushed for more localized topographies and “geographies of blame.” Attention to these scale-making practices complicates social movement theory about “vertical scale shifts.”

Not in Anyone’s Backyard: The Emergence and Identity of a Transnational Anti-Base Network

Providing an overview of the emergence, characteristics, trajectory, and potential limitations of the transnational anti-base network, this article focuses on two broad questions relevant to transnational politics. First, what processes and mechanisms enabled local and transnational activists to form the international No Bases network? Second, how did activists juxtapose existing local anti-base identity and frames to emerging transnational ones? Following existing transnational movement theories, I argue that the global anti-base network slowly emerged through processes of diffusion and scale shift in its early stages. The onset of the Iraq War, however, injected new life into the transnational anti-base movement, eventually leading to the inaugural International Conference for the Abolition of Foreign Bases in 2007. Although loose transnational ties existed among anti-base activists prior to 2003, the U.S. war in Iraq presented anti-base activists the global frames necessary to accelerate the pace of diffusion, scale-shift, and brokerage, and hence, the consolidation of a transnational anti-base network. Paradoxically, however, even as No Bases leaders attempted to forge a new transnational identity, anti-base activists, as “rooted cosmopolitans,” continued to anchor their struggle in local initiatives.

The social imperative of pacifism in postwar Japan: Shimizu Ikutarō and the Uchinada movement

Postwar Japanese history is often analyzed from the perspective of peace and democracy. Both ideas represented an interpretation of the war experience on the part of postwar progressive thinkers that saw postwar pacifist activism assume an anti-State character. But another important part of this intellectual context was its pro-society inclination. Social agency and autonomy became the main objectives of postwar progressive thinking, and it was this that drove the intellectual activism and advocacy of postwar pacifist movements. But how did intellectuals conceptualize society, and what were the consequences of this conceptualization for the actual development of pacifist movements? Through examining the intellectual leadership of postwar pacifist movements we can begin to appreciate how the peace-democ-racy paradigm actually worked. A pioneering thinker in this respect was Shimizu Ikutarō, who was a central figure in Japanese pacifism in the 1950s, and a leading activist in the first anti-base movement at the village of Uchinada in 1953–54. It was in the context of this movement that Shimizu developed and articulated his ideas about society and peace. In the process, he revealed the dissonance in his thinking concerning “commoners,” and commenced his own intellectual disintegration as a progressive thinker. The consequences of the Uchinada protest for postwar popular and intellectual movements for peace would be formative, eventually leading to the cataclysm of the failed anti-security treaty movement of 1960.

Meeting of the dugongs and the cooking pots: anti-military base citizens' groups on Okinawa

This paper documents six anti-military base citizens' groups on Okinawa, Japan to demonstrate the existence of an anti-military base social movement on Okinawa. The author contends that three ‘incidents’ involving the US military on Okinawa—the 1995 Kin Town rape, the 1997 Nago City Heliport transfer proposal, and the 2001 Chatan Town rape—have solidified the groups into a social movement. This has occurred with the incorporation of broader perspectives into the anti-military base campaign including environmentalism, feminism, and anti-militarism. The author concludes that comparison of the Okinawan anti-base social movement with other social movements and the application of social movement theory to the Okinawan example will facilitate theorising about the future direction of the Okinawan anti-military base social movement.