As war, economic crises and political unrest continue to sap the United States, maintaining the vast network of U.S. foreign military bases may become more tenuous. Tarak Barkawi writes in Al Jazeera:
But the US is divided and turned in on itself. Much of the government is hobbled by underinvestment, privatisation and party politics. Mainstream debate lacks little rational basis for effective foreign and strategic policy.
The presumptive Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has recently suggested China take over from the US in providing humanitarian aid.
The world is becoming a different place. Major US interventions, welcome or not, are unlikely to be on offer. We are perhaps one financial crisis away from the moment when the idea of maintaining even established bases abroad – when the iron web of empire since 1945 will itself be called into question.
This may be a moment for anti-militarization forces to push back against the war machine. Radio France Internationale reports that Kyrgyzstanʻs president-elect Amazbexk Atambayev has called for the U.S. to close its military base in Manas:
Kyrgyzstan’s president-elect Amazbexk Atambayev has declared that the United States must shut down its base in the central Asian country when the lease expires in 2014. Atambayev, who won Sunday’s election with over 63 per cent of the vote, said that the base’s presence is a security threat to Kyrgyzstan.
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Local politicians say that fuel dumps by US planes destroy crops and cause illness, claims that are denied by Washington.
But Atambayev, who resigned as prime minister to stand as president, invoked the country’s security to justify the ultimatum.
“We know that the United States is often engaged in conflict. First in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, and now relations are tense with Iran,” he said. “I would not want for one of these countries to launch a retaliatory strike on the military base.”
However, despite the pending withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the U.S. plans an expansion within the Persian Gulf region to maintain hegemony in the region. The New York Times reports:
The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran.
The plans, under discussion for months, gained new urgency after President Obama’s announcement this month that the last American soldiers would be brought home from Iraq by the end of December. Ending the eight-year war was a central pledge of his presidential campaign, but American military officers and diplomats, as well as officials of several countries in the region, worry that the withdrawal could leave instability or worse in its wake.
After unsuccessfully pressing both the Obama administration and the Iraqi government to permit as many as 20,000 American troops to remain in Iraq beyond 2011, the Pentagon is now drawing up an alternative.
In addition to negotiations over maintaining a ground combat presence in Kuwait, the United States is considering sending more naval warships through international waters in the region.
In Okinawa, despite Secretary of Defense Leon Panettaʻs recent trip to Japan to shore up a U.S. base realignment plan within Okinawa, Okinawans are not having it. Former Okinawa governor Keiichi Inamine, who had supported the base realignment plan, said that relocation of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within Okinawa was “impossible”:
‘Everyone in Okinawa thinks it’s impossible’ to relocate US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to a more remote part of the island, former Okinawa governor Keiichi Inamine told the Mainichi newspaper.
Inamine, backed by the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was elected governor in late 1998 and supported the relocation plan with some conditions, such as 15-year time limit on a new facility in Nago city, in the northern part of Okinawa.
‘Okinawa has completely changed,’ he said. ‘It’s time for the government to admit it’s impossible to relocate the base within Okinawa and ask the US to reconsider.’
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