Pacific Pushback: Has the U.S. Empire of Bases Reached Its High-Water Mark?

[raccoon]

By John Feffer

For a country with a pacifist constitution, Japan is bristling with weaponry. Indeed, that Asian land has long functioned as a huge aircraft carrier and naval base for U.S. military power. We couldn’t have fought the Korean and Vietnam Wars without the nearly 90 military bases scattered around the islands of our major Pacific ally. Even today, Japan remains the anchor of what’s left of America’s Cold War containment policy when it comes to China and North Korea. From the Yokota and Kadena air bases, the United States can dispatch troops and bombers across Asia, while the Yokosuka base near Tokyo is the largest American naval installation outside the United States.

You’d think that, with so many Japanese bases, the United States wouldn’t make a big fuss about closing one of them. Think again. The current battle over the Marine Corps air base at Futenma on Okinawa -- an island prefecture almost 1,000 miles south of Tokyo that hosts about three dozen U.S. bases and 75% of American forces in Japan -- is just revving up. In fact, Washington seems ready to stake its reputation and its relationship with a new Japanese government on the fate of that base alone, which reveals much about U.S. anxieties in the age of Obama...

During the Cold War, the Pentagon worried that countries would fall like dominoes before a relentless Communist advance. Today, the Pentagon worries about a different kind of domino effect. In Europe, NATO countries are refusing to throw their full support behind the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In Africa, no country has stepped forward to host the headquarters of the Pentagon’s new Africa Command. In Latin America, little Ecuador has kicked the U.S. out of its air base in Manta.

All of these are undoubtedly symptoms of the decline in respect for American power that the U.S. military is experiencing globally. But the current pushback in Japan is the surest sign yet that the American empire of overseas military bases has reached its high-water mark and will soon recede...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175214/tomgram%3A_john_feffer%2C_can_japan_say_no_to_washington/#more

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Japan actually has a military force, the so-called Self Defense Force, which

is a full-fledged military force in all but name.

The prospect of anyone launching an attack against Japan that they couldn't repel is pretty far-fetched.

It's certainly not enough to justify all the military bases (three or four in the Tokyo area alone). Ninety? I didn't know there were that many, so it's doubly ridiculous.

During the Cold War era, there were real worries about China or Russia attacking Japan, but not now. The Japanese and Chinese don't like each other, but there's so much trade between them that a war would ruin a good thing. Russia can barely keep itself together, much less launch a war.

[Uncle Joe]

2. If the U.S. Government; was wise, it would quickly transition from

an overwhelming reliance on hard power to soft, or we will end up on the wrong side of history.

Two points re: the bolded portion below.

1. This would be the same Dwight Eisenhower that warned against giving the military industrial complex too much power whether sought or unsought.

2. "Hair line fractures" occur most easily in hard, rigid substances, I believe the same holds true for relationships; at all levels, micro or macro, give the Japanese what they want.

"Think globally and buy locally" isn't just for products or services, we need to start diverting more of our world record breaking, budget busting, defense dollars toward domestic infrastructure, sustainability, health care and education, so as to strengthen the nation here as home, lest we become a hollowed out shell continually collapsing upon ourselves with few International friends; that actually give a damn.

"The current row between Tokyo and Washington is no mere “Pacific squall,” as Newsweek dismissively described it. After six decades of saying yes to everything the United States has demanded, Japan finally seems on the verge of saying no to something that matters greatly to Washington, and the relationship that Dwight D. Eisenhower once called an “indestructible alliance” is displaying ever more hairline fractures. Worse yet, from the Pentagon’s perspective, Japan’s resistance might prove infectious -- one major reason why the United States is putting its alliance on the line over the closing of a single antiquated military base and the building of another of dubious strategic value."

Thanks for the thread, raccoon.