Communities Do Not All Respond to Basing in the Same Way

The articles that we read for Wednesday, except perhaps Ahn's, show quite clearly that large-scale military basing, whether foreign or domestic, creates a system of dependency with respect to the local community where they are located. Especially economically, but to some extent culturally and socially as well, communities that are home to bases come to rely heavily on those bases and the soldiers stationed in them in their day-to-day affairs. In some cases, such as with Guam, communities may be effectively defined by their bases. Though we have become familiar with anti-American base sentiment such as in Okinawa, Diego Garcia and now Korea, the cases of Schweinfurt and Connecticut provide examples of instances in which most fear base closure and depend on the presence of them for their livelihood. Not all decry a local military presence. Indeed, I have no doubt that many members of communities that question basing such as some in Okinawa very much depend on their bases and would hate to see them go.

What can be said about basing whether welcome or unwelcome is that it has an enormous effect on communities where it occurs. It is difficult to judge the value of basing in general. It seems rather that the worth of bases and attitudes toward them need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Though in the long-term and greater scheme of things perhaps we can determine that the overall effects of basing on a community are more often than not negative, to fail to understand the particular situations characterized by each U.S. base and instead assume that they are all the same would be a mistake. It is important to tread carefully when dealing with institutions which have such wide-ranging impacts on people's lives, such as large military bases.