US Military Bases

A Niscemi (Caltanissetta) sta per essere installato uno dei quattro  terminali terrestri mondiali del MUOS, il nuovo sistema di telecomunicazioni satellitari della Marina militare Usa. Si tratta di uno dei progetti chiave per le guerre globali e automatizzate del XXI secolo, dai devastanti effetti sul territorio, l’ambiente, la salute delle  popolazioni. Il MUOStro di Niscemi incarnerà tutte le contraddizioni della globalizzazione neoliberista: ucciderà in nome della pace e dell’ordine sovranazionale; dilapiderà risorse umane e finanziarie infinite; arricchirà il complesso militare-industriale-finanziario transnazionale e le imprese siciliane in odor di mafia; rigenererà le ingiustizie; esautorerà ogni controllo dal basso, esproprierà democrazia e priverà di spazi di libertà e agibilità politica. L’imposizione del MUOS in Sicilia è la storia di raggiri e soprusi di Stato ma è pure la narrazione di una vasta mobilitazione popolare contro le logiche di morte e il paradigma dell’Isola fortezza armata e di grande lager per detenere indiscriminatamente rifugiati e migranti. Per rivendicare – a partire dai propri corpi - il diritto di vivere in un Mediterraneo mare di mezzo e mare di tutti.

Over more than sixty years since the 1953 Atoms for Peace program was launched, the dominant tendency in public discourse to separate nuclear power into peaceful and military uses has obscured the fact that both aspects of nuclear power (pithily known as " dual-use ") are mutually dependent and inextricably tied. Moreover, the commanding presence of nuclear weapons in the high-stakes nuclear brinkmanship that has dominated the post-1945 strategic and geopolitical landscape has masked the important interlocking relationship between fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries that has been central to the consolidation of a U.S.-led global power bloc. If we are to properly understand the dynamics of energy within contemporary geopolitical formations, I argue in this chapter that we must include considerations of both oil and gas (" black " and " blue gold ") and nuclear in an inter-operable system of power relations. This system not only informs an international hierarchy of states, but it also is based and derived from control over access, flows, and distribution of energy and its capital accumulation. The primacy of energy in capital power relations and the ensuing conflicts to secure control over it that have been integral to the accumulation process suggests that alternative methods of renewable energy generation, distribution, pricing, and use may undermine the perpetuation of this system.

""This article explores the relationship between prostitution, nationalism and foreign policies using a feminist analysis framework. Although scholars have dealt with the theoretical role of women in nationalist projects, there is little work factually supporting these theories.There is also a paucity of works demonstrating the role of prostitution in national security policies. This article rectifies these shortcomings and demonstrates that, although prostitution is illegal in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, these governments have played an active role in supporting and maintaining the prostitution industry geared at servicing US troops. The US troops, in turn, have protected the national security of each of these countries for all of the post-Second World War era. In this context, it seems clear that ‘national security’ does not include the physical, economic, legal and social insecurity of Japanese, Korean and Filipino women despite their contribution to the most quintessential Realist policy – national security.

Keywords: feminism; foreign policy; gender relations; nationalism; prostitution; realism""

This study analyzes the perpetuation of US hegemony through its overseas military bases. It takes a Marxist-Gramscist hegemony approach as its theoretical basis and discusses the political processes, ideological debates, security perceptions; economic goals and hegemony seeking attempts when these bases are deployed. The study claims that the US used all its military deployments towards achieving its goals, with many military invasions being launched through the bases to perpetuate the hegemonic order in favor of US interests. In short, the US overseas military base structure forms part of its hegemonic expansion and is a reflection of hegemony " s coercion component.

Born in Okinawa of Okinawan mothers and Filipino fathers, many Nisei who were brought up in the Philippines have returned to Okinawa as adults to seek economic mobility, acquire Japanese citizenship, and search for part of their roots. However, their mixed heritage, lack of proficiency in the Japanese language, and reliance on the US military bases for their livelihood put them in an ambivalent position in Okinawan society. Concerning the controversial US presence in Okinawa, the Nisei have ambivalent sentiments, which reflect their own uncertain position in Okinawan society, but this ambivalence also mirrors the conflicted views of other Okinawans.

MCAS Futenma *(Marine Corps Air Station), is a United States military aviation facility located in a dense urban neighborhood in southern Okinawa. Okinawa is an island, sandwiched between the East China and Philippine Seas, of just over 1200 square kilometers. It is composed of coral and igneous rock. The island houses the seat of the government of Okinawa Prefecture, the southernmost political unit of the island nation of Japan.
    In 1996 the US/Japan Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO) agreed to move the Marines from Futenma. The potential closure and functional relocation presents an opportunity to re-make the land, at one time the site of five agricultural villages. Future possibilities excited the public imagination, institutional attention and commercial interest. This study seeks to employ Dr. Carl Steinitz’ geodesign framework to assess the viability of existing proposals and explore 'interstitial' change proposals to the landscape; such changes could include transportation engineering projects, variances allowing some alternate uses, and even tenant/owner farming, which can be activated prior to reversion. Bringing peace and health to the human and physical geography of the place is the ultimate aim of this exercise.

Civilian employees on military bases are hardly given attention in literature on military basing, particularly in the context of the U.S. presence in Japan. Most of these employees are Japanese nationals, but a large number of them are returnees, who have returned to Okinawa—their birthplace—in the 1970s to the early 1980s. While these workers have become part of the U.S. presence in the prefecture, these individuals occupy a rather contentious position in Okinawan society—they are Japanese nationals, but of part-Okinawan and part-Filipino parentage. Their presence in these military bases point to the migrations that occurred starting in the post-war period between Okinawa and the Philippines. This phenomenon also calls to mind the significance of ethnicity as cultural capital in return migration.

At the beginning of the 1990s the United States commitment to NATO is being reassessed on both sides of the Atlantic, to take account of a less prosperous American security guarantor and an increasingly uncertain political environment in Europe. As a contribution to this debate, SIPRI has explored the effect of an American withdrawal from Europe. Analysts from both sides of the Atlantic were asked to assess the impact on the United States and on Western Europe of two hypothetical withdrawal options: option A assumed that US forces were withdrawn with no commitment to return; option B assumed a skeletal US military presence in Europe in peacetime with a commitment to return to reinforce NATO in time of war.

Europe after an American Withdrawal analyses the economic costs and benefits to the United States and to the individual host nations of removing US military forces and facilities from Europe. It also explores the military gaps that a withdrawal would create in the northern, central, and southern regions of Europe, as well as the gaps in command, control, communications, and intelligence facilities, and examines how the United States would cope without bases in Europe and how Western Europe would cope without a US military presence

From a transnational feminist perspective, this essay studies the genocide of civilians during the Korean War and prostitution around U.S. bases in South Korea as the legacy of the war. By examining the Korean military prostitutes' social activism, the chapter also offers a feminist theo-ethical discourse on peace and war.

Pakistan has recently witnessed an increase in incidents of terrorism especially in Balochistan ─ where key CPEC projects such as Gwadar port are hosted. Though Pakistani security forces have thwarted such attacks, the likelihood of further terror attack cannot be ruled out. If the menace of terrorism continues, it will carry negative implications for CPEC. For example, trans-regional foreign investment from the Gulf countries may get deferred. Similarly, the situation in Afghanistan is still unstable where the humanitarian crisis is affecting innocent lives on a daily basis. The US has reportedly decided to allocate half of the 7 billion frozen Afghanistan’s financial assets to the victims of 9/11 and the remaining half to be put in the fund for Afghanistan, and not to the Taliban. China and Pakistan need to engage the US and its allies such as from Scandinavia in a meaningful manner to help Afghanistan have its funds back – along with the much-needed global economic assistance to feed the poor and hapless Afghans. In addition, Pakistan and China need to talk about trade in sports goods too. Pakistan has exported high-quality sports products to, for example, the European Union in the past and it can do the same with China whose interest in hosting mega sports events such as the Beijing Olympics has doubled in recent years.

Prior to World War II, Australia had relied heavily on Britain for foreign and defence policy guidance. Disagreements which had developed between Australia and Britain in the inter-war years had not been serious enough to undermine Australia's loyalty to Britain. The Pacific War had driven Australia inexporably towards an alliance with the major Pacific power - the United States. Later events in Britain made it increasingly apparent that the British were no longer willing or able to function as a world power in the Indian Ocean-Pacific region.

This study draws on ethnographic and archival evidence from the Italian Archipelago of La Maddalena, offshore from the northeastern corner of Sardinia, where in 1972 the U.S. Navy installed a base for nuclear submarines. It addresses two questions: (1) How do non-experts make sense of radiological risk absent knowledge and classified information about its instantiations and consequences? (2) How do objectifications of risk change and stabilize within the same community over time? STS scholarship has emphasized the epistemic and relational dimensions of lay/expert controversies over risk assessment. Many case studies, mostly focused on the Anglo-Saxon world, have assumed lay and expert ways of knowing are incompatible due to clashing cultural identities. I use Keane's concept of “semiotic ideologies” and Peircean semiotic theory to critically reassess the validity of that assumption and examine the role of material evidence in processes of signification to explain how experts and...

Over more than sixty years since the 1953 Atoms for Peace program was launched, the dominant tendency in public discourse to separate nuclear power into peaceful and military uses has obscured the fact that both aspects of nuclear power (pithily known as " dual-use ") are mutually dependent and inextricably tied. Moreover, the commanding presence of nuclear weapons in the high-stakes nuclear brinkmanship that has dominated the post-1945 strategic and geopolitical landscape has masked the important interlocking relationship between fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries that has been central to the consolidation of a U.S.-led global power bloc. If we are to properly understand the dynamics of energy within contemporary geopolitical formations, I argue in this chapter that we must include considerations of both oil and gas (" black " and " blue gold ") and nuclear in an inter-operable system of power relations. This system not only informs an international hierarchy of states, but it also is based and derived from control over access, flows, and distribution of energy and its capital accumulation. The primacy of energy in capital power relations and the ensuing conflicts to secure control over it that have been integral to the accumulation process suggests that alternative methods of renewable energy generation, distribution, pricing, and use may undermine the perpetuation of this system.

In 2016, a group of five people calling themselves “Peace Pilgrims” entered a prohibited zone around Pine Gap, a US military base in Australia. They were arrested and tried for trespass. The story of this action and its aftermath is told with care and sympathy by Kieran Finnane in a new book titled Peace Crimes: Pine Gap, National Security and Dissent. I tell about Pine Gap and the Peace Pilgrims and how their experiences can be understood from a variety of perspectives.

The Ford Institute for Human Security and the Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies hosted a panel discussion on September 7, 2011 to celebrate the recent publication of the book African Security and the US African Command. The book is based on the conference, “Conflict, Human Security and Energy: African Reaction to the New US-Africa Command,” held at University of Pittsburgh in March 2009.