Anti-base movement

Map of U.S. military bases and troops deployed abroad.

Anti-base movement is a term which refers to various movements which focus on opposing aspects of military bases, which can range from opposition to specific activities of bases or base personnel, to opposing their presence or construction in particular locations, to opposing their existence in general. It can also refer to these movements collectively.

Given that the majority of foreign military bases around the world are United States bases, many anti-base movements around the world have been directed at U.S. bases.

Among the many grievances expressed by anti-base movement activists are issues such as criminal and negligent activity of base personnel, the environmental pollution and destruction generated by U.S. bases, the erosion of national sovereignty that occurs with the U.S. military presence in host locations, and the international provocations and tensions that occur when countries host US bases and collaborate with US military exercises (such as the biennial US-led RIMPAC exercises).

Background

Prevalence of US bases

Map of U.S. base presence around the world.

As of a 2021 estimate, the U.S. has approximately 750 bases around the world in at least 80 countries, with the largest concentration of them being in Japan (especially in Okinawa), followed by Germany and south Korea, resulting in many corresponding anti-base movements. There are also anti-base movements within locations claimed by the U.S. as its own territory, some examples being Guam and Hawaiʻi.

Additionally, some anti-base movements oppose bases which are not formally considered to be a US base by law, but which effectively serve as a US base. An example of this would be the Military-Civilian Port Complex in south Korea, technically a south Korean base, but which local activists have explained is a place where "strategic assets in the US military can stop by whenever they please according to American interests."

Another example of a legally ambiguous de facto base is the West Africa Logistics Network (WALN) at Kotoka International Airport in Ghana, a "cooperative security location" where the US military and related personnel are afforded numerous privileges, including the ability to conduct construction activities and store defense equipment, supplies, and materiel, enter into Ghana without visa or passport nor customs inspection for U.S. personnel, and protection for U.S. soldiers from being prosecuted by Ghanaian authorities for crimes, following a 2018 Status of Forces Agreement.

History of US bases

A map depicting indigenous nations in the territory claimed by the U.S., as well as numbers showing U.S. military forts.

The US settler-colonial state was established on North America through a series of military forts expanding across the continent. The settler state used its military force to defend and advance "civilian" settlers (and their volunteer militias) in their encroachment on more and more land, including punishing indigenous peoples' defense of their borders agreed on in treaties with the settler state, and used its military presence to "force compliance" when indigenous tribes and bands refused to live on reservations or make treaties on the invading settlers' terms. By this process of expanding military power across the continent, the US occupied much of North America, and then began expanding its base presence to numerous other locations throughout the world starting in the 1890s, leading to further resistance movements. For example, the US military "faced opposition and an insurgency seeking independence almost immediately after seizing the Philippines in 1898".

Author David Vine describes the dynamics of coercion and power imbalance which has accompanied the establishment of many of the U.S.'s post-WWII bases which have, "to one degree or another" been "consented to" by the host nations' governments:

Although the United States has been an empire occupying Native American lands with military bases since independence, its post–World War II collection of foreign bases has been distinguished by the fact that most national governments have, to one degree or another, consented to the country’s presence [...]  Importantly, however, this consent has come in a context of often gaping power disparities, where US officials have used US dominance, forms of political-economic coercion, and fears of the Soviet Union (at times, intentionally inflated) to ensure national governments consented to a US base presence.

Issues with US bases

Violence toward local population

The violent crimes of U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilian contractors working in base areas include numerous killings and sexual assault crimes committed against the citizens of the countries where they are stationed.

In addition to violence perpetrated by individual personnel against locals, negligence during routine activities of bases have also caused violent damage to local populations, such as people being seriously injured and killed by errant bombs.

Areas with a base presence also face issues of increased sex trafficking. For example, in south Korea, a legally-sanctioned prostitution industry was purposely encouraged and maintained by the government in special zones around US bases, with this system persisting for decades.

Environmental destruction

Toxic PFAS foam leak at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa.

The environmental destruction brought about by base presence takes a range of forms, arising from the initial construction of the base and how it alters the environment, to the ongoing activities of the base in that particular location, to the after-effects that remain even after a base has ceased operation. Some examples of environmental hazards are leakages of jet fuel into local drinking water, toxic PFAS foam leaks, litter from practice drills bleeding chemicals into the ground and water, and extreme noise pollution. In addition to physically hazardous pollution, culturally or spiritually significant sites can be destroyed or desecrated by base presence. A 2018 petition by World Can't Wait to stop RIMPAC exercises, addressed to the then-governor of Hawaiʻi, describes further examples:

Retired military ships are towed out to sea and then targeted with missiles and torpedoes until they sink to a watery graveyard on the ocean floor. There they leach toxic chemicals, including PCBs, which accumulate in the bodies of fish, dolphins and whales – and ultimately into our food. Amphibious landing exercises, which include heavy tracked vehicles, damage reefs, erode shoreline, and endanger wildlife. [...] Areas that have been used for live fire training and bombing practice are uninhabitable; bombing and live fire practice is not only continuing but escalating in the age of the “Pacific Pivot”. Indigenous Hawaiian cultural sites have been destroyed. U.S. Military fuel storage tanks are leaking poisons into the drinking water in Hawai`i's most populous city. Vast areas of land and water are so toxic as to be unusable.

National sovereignty concerns

Hawaiians protesting the occupation of their nation by the U.S.

Bases may be established and their continuing presence maintained by a variety of methods, ranging from mutual legal agreements to brute force and occupation. Often, a combination of these factors is employed in installing and maintaining a base's presence when its presence is based in imperialist, bourgeois interests not premised on local popular support or when local popular support diminishes and wavers over time.

The presence of foreign bases in one's territory raises concerns over the effect the base presence has on national sovereignty in the host (or occupied) nation. This may range from issues such as which nation has authority to prosecute crimes committed by base personnel in the host country, to what the land area, local resources, and local labor consumed by the base could be otherwise used for by the host nation's populace, to the potential consequences that large concentrations of foreign military personnel and their equipment being present in the location may have on the host nation's overall national security, domestic policymaking, and diplomatic bargaining power.

Status of Forces Agreements

The legal agreements made between countries to host foreign military personnel and how domestic laws apply to them are commonly known as Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs). There is no standard form of SOFA and they may include a variety of provisions. In the case of SOFAs made with the U.S., the most commonly addressed issue in a SOFA is legal protection from prosecution for U.S. personnel while present in a foreign country, and whether the U.S. will exercise sole jurisdiction over U.S. personnel or shared jurisdiction with the host. SOFAs are not themselves security arrangements nor basing agreements. As is noted by a Congressional Research Service report, "a SOFA itself does not constitute a security arrangement; rather, it establishes the rights and privileges of U.S. personnel present in a country in support of the larger security arrangement." The 2012 report noted that, at time of writing, the U.S. was party to more than 100 agreements that may be considered SOFAs.

Though SOFAs are not formally basing agreements, a 2021 article in The Tricontinental explains how Ghana's 2018 SOFA agreement nonetheless allows the U.S. such a level of authority over facilities in Ghana so as to be able to effectively set up a base through Articles 5 and 6 of the agreement, designating agreed facilities to be of "unimpeded" and "exclusive" use to the U.S. and that Ghana "shall also provide access to and use of a runway that meets the requirements of United States forces." Furthermore, the agreement gives the U.S. forces and U.S. contractors the ability to "undertake construction activities" and make alterations to agreed facilities and to "preposition and store defense equipment, supplies, and materiel" at agreed facilities and areas, gives U.S. soldiers the right to carry arms on duty, allows U.S. army and civilians to enter Ghana without a passport nor a visa but just identification cards, allows the U.S. army to not take responsibility for the death of any other person aside from U.S. military personnel, and third party issues involving U.S. military personnel will only be resolved according to the laws of the United States, among other preferential treatments. Such agreements between the U.S. and Ghana have led to the establishment of the West Africa Logistics Network (WALN) at Kotoka International Airport in Accra to "ferry supplies and arms to special forces troops across the region".

War provocations

The presence of military bases in a location leads to the concern of that location becoming a strategically significant location with regard to international tensions involving the host country, the hosted country, and their various neighbors, allies, targets, and/or rivals. People who live in the host nation are confronted with the potential wartime actions resulting from the presence of a base in their territory in addition to the peacetime concern of the base's potential to provoke international tensions, such as through military build-up, exercises, and shows of force. Individuals and organizations within anti-base movements may express a variety of perspectives on such issues, such as locals' urgent safety concerns over their location becoming a diplomatic pawn or wartime hotspot, general anti-war or pacifist sentiments, promotion of non-alignment, and explicitly anti-imperialist sentiment.

In the present-day context, of high concern in host locations of US bases is what this portends in regard to conflicts between the US-led imperialist bloc on one hand, and the imperialists' perceived or declared targets and rivals on the other, sometimes referred to as the New Cold War.

As political scientist and Guam independence advocate Kenneth Gofigan Kuper has described, writing about the highly militarized US colony of Guam:

In the coming years, I am afraid things will get worse for the people of Guam unless restraint enters the picture. [...] One of Guam’s former non-voting representatives in Congress, Ben Blaz, once said of our island, “We are equal in war, but not in peace.” I think he was only half-right. While we are clearly not equal in peace, as no colony can be, we are NOT equal in war. We in Guam bear the brunt of U.S. power projection in the Indo-Pacific, both as provocative threat and as a target. The task of securing a “free and open” Indo-Pacific is disproportionately on our backs.

Representing Oceania Rising at a 2017 talk about militarization and resistance in the Pacific, Kuper gave an example of the dynamic at play in US-occupied Guam, where the U.S. military presence threatens Guam more than protects it. Explaining that Guam is within range of China's IRBM the DF-26, as well as within the range of the DPRK's precision strike means, Kuper stated "I remember, when all this news was coming out, you had people on Facebook and social media saying, 'Thank God the U.S. military is here. They're gonna protect us from these threats.' And I countered, saying, 'Why the Hell are these threats here to begin with--in Guam? It's exactly the United States military presence.'" Kuper continued, clarifying that rather than offering protection, the military presence "makes everything so much more dangerous." He added that the people of Guam experience periodic threats over geopolitical tensions, stating "we are pawns in a game we don't even want to be a part of."

Bases and anti-base movements by location

Areas of responsibility of US combatant commands.

The United States Department of Defense (DOD) divides its commands into various areas of responsibility (AOR), with seven combatant commands covering geographic areas (one of them being US Space Command), while the remaining commands cover functions such as transportation and special operations. As US bases are generally managed and strategically conceptualized according to this structure, and likewise anti-base movements in different nations are thus strategically linked and affected by which areas of responsibility they fall under or adjoin, this section will be divided roughly following its scheme and some of its terminology.

Indo-Pacific

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility and selected U.S. bases.

The U.S. designates the area covering the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, and much of Asia as USINDOPACOM. It is the oldest and largest of the U.S.'s unified commands, and it has been referred to by the DOD as its "priority theater". The DOD has identified competition with China as the organizing principle of the Indo-Pacific posture since the early 2010s. Its area of responsibility covers more area than any of the other geographic commands and shares borders with all five of the other geographic commands.

U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific is headquartered in the occupied nation of Hawaiʻi, whose sovereign government the US Navy overthrew in an 1893 coup. Some of the US's most significant overseas bases and forces are in the Indo-Pacific, with many positioned in south Korea and Japan, as US strategy in this area targets China, DPRK, and Russia. This area is the location of the world's largest maritime exercise, the US-led RIMPAC.

In Oceania, the U.S. has significant air and naval bases on its occupied colony Guam, and operates the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Department of Defense is building a high-frequency radar system in Palau. Additionally, the U.S. military has ties with Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga. Also significant is the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, built after the forced displacement of the island's inhabitants through a joint US-UK effort.

Japan

Okinawa has more than half of the 54,000 U.S. troops based in Japan. Okinawa was once the independent Ryukyu Kingdom which was then colonized by Japan, later falling under the rule of the United States for 27 years (until 1972), and is currently regarded as a Japanese prefecture. Protests against US occupation and land seizures in Okinawa began within months of the end of the Second World War.

Sunagawa struggle

In the 1950s, a significant anti-base struggle emerged in the Tokyo suburb Sunagawa, in protest of the expansion of Tachikawa Air Base. The expansion was to occur via land expropriations on behalf of the U.S. Air Force, slated to evict 140 families from their homes and farmland. The local farmers began trying to prevent the work of land surveyors, such as by blocking the path of their vehicles and forming the Sunagawa Anti-Base Expansion Alliance. Over time, regional and national labor unions, student groups, Buddhist monks and nuns, lawmakers and other citizens became involved in the struggle as well. A report in The Japan Times explains that by 1956, "2,000 police officers were ordered to evict the farmers from the land that they continued to occupy, only to be met with 6,000 protesters, resulting in a clash that left roughly 1,000 people injured, many seriously." The struggle against the base expansion continued, and by 1968, the U.S. military "quietly announced it had given up on the planned runway extension" and returned the base to the Japanese government in 1977.

Dennis Banks, who would later be a co-founder of the American Indian Movement, was present during some of these events in 1956, while stationed in Japan at age 17. Banks described being ordered to "shoot to kill" if the demonstrators entered the base and did not respond to warning shots, and recounted feeling unable to comprehend the order: "We could not understand this. These people were nothing more than nonviolent demonstrators. This was their land that our Air Force was trying to take away." Banks then witnessed the Japanese police rushing the demonstrators "in a frenzy" and "cracking skulls with a terrible sound" and Banks saw "elderly nuns with blood streaming down their faces." Banks recounted, "I felt sick at what I had seen and ashamed of the uniform I was wearing. [...] That terrible scene has remained with me all of these years. I shall never forget those demonstrators were peaceful people literally being beaten to death. Since that time, during my struggles in the American Indian Movement, I have seen BIA police wield their clubs at Indians like that. Each time my memory flashed back to what I saw that day in Japan." Soon, following these and other experiences while "guarding the ramparts of the American Empire" in Japan, Banks went AWOL and "wanted nothing more to do with the military or the U.S. government."

Korea

The single nation of Korea has been divided by U.S. occupation since shortly after the Second World War, when the U.S. refused to withdraw its forces and helped orchestrate the holding of separate elections in the south, establishing the "Republic of Korea," a U.S. puppet state ruled by a series of right-wing dictatorships, which the U.S. continues to occupy and reserves control over the south Korean military during wartime. This puppet state is postured against the DPRK, which formed after the U.S.-sponsored separate elections in the south.

Anti-US and anti-base movements in south Korea have existed since the beginning of U.S. occupation in Korea and continue to this day, both on the mainland of the Korean peninsula and on Jeju Island, where locals and their supporters (including activists from other occupied nations in the Pacific) attempted to prevent the construction of a naval base for over a decade.

Diego Garcia

A map of Diego Garcia's location in the Indian Ocean, including labels of distances to various other locations.

Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, where a U.S. base is sustained on a British land lease. Over a ten year period beginning in 1965, a joint US-UK effort expelled the population in order to build a US military base. John Pilger, writing in Al Jazeera, explained: "People were herded into the hold of a rusting ship, the women and children forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertiliser. They were dumped in the Seychelles, where they were held in prison cells, and then shipped onto Mauritius, where they were taken to a derelict housing estate with no water or electricity. Twenty-six families died there in brutal poverty, nine individuals committed suicide, and girls were forced into prostitution to survive."

The strategically significant location of Diego Garcia enables the U.S. military to reach numerous locations, for example helping to launch the U.S. bombings of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Though not strictly an anti-base movement, there is a movement for the survivors of the forced expulsion to be able to return to their home. However, this has been blocked by various political maneuvers by the West, including by the establishment of a marine nature reserve in the area, which would prevent them from engaging in necessary subsistence fishing if they were able to return.