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On September 5, 1995, three United States military personnel abducted and raped a 12-year-old schoolgirl on Okinawa, an island in the Pacific that houses roughly 75% of the U.S. military facilities in Japan. After a month and a half of smaller rallies, more than 85,000 demonstrators gathered in late October that year to protest not only the crime itself but also the presence of the U.S. bases on this string of islands that sit a thousand miles south of mainland Japan. Despite the enormous tragedy of this incident, the widespread international attention it received, and the Okinawan governor's refusal afterwards to renew land to the bases, more than 48,000 U.S. military personnel, their dependents, and civilians remain today on the island, which is roughly the size of Los Angeles. Tragedies at other U.S. bases overseas have similarly not altered the bilateral contracts with the host nation. In 1998, for example, a marine airplane accidentally severed a ski-lift cable for a gondola in Cavalese, Italy, killing all 20 passengers aboard, but this incident did not negatively impact the presence of the U.S. military in that nation.
Yet only a few years earlier in 1990, Philippines President Corazon (Cory) Aquino completed negotiations that required all U.S. forces to pull out of that nation within a year (although the actual withdrawal was not completed until November 1992). There had been no well-publicized crimes committed by U.S. personnel, nor were there strong strands of anti-Americanism among nearby residents. Further, the United States had maintained a military presence in the Philippines since soon after World War II. In 2005, American forces were evicted from Uzbekistan despite the absence of any major international incidents. What forced Americans out of Subic Bay and Uzbekistan, but kept them in Okinawa and Italy? This well-written, extensively researched book focuses on the conditions under which host nations contest or honor U.S. military base agreements. Given the current North American military presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the book provides some uncomfortable predictions for planners hoping to both democratize these nations and maintain U.S. military bases in them.
To explain whether bases in foreign nations will be accepted, politicized, contested, or ignored, Alexander Cooley focuses on the role of two...