Opinion The empire of bases By Douglas Lummis	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
基地もまた「帝国」として膨張する 沖縄の米軍基地キャンプ・ハンセン内で実弾を使う市街戦訓練場の建設が始まった。基地はもう米帝国を支える手段ではない。 それ自体が帝国となって拡大している…。

In a recent ST column (April 9, 2004) I mentioned Chalmers Johnson's new book "The Sorrows of Empire" (2004). Many books have been written criticizing the "U.S. Empire," especially now that empire has become the acknowledged goal of U.S. foreign policy. But Johnson has an interesting hypothesis about what this empire actually is.

Johnson notes that the United States has (at least) 725 overseas bases in (at least) 38 countries. Of course, these bases are there to support U.S. imperial interests. But Johnson argues that the bases are not only a means to empire; they are an empire. While many of them may have had some strategic purpose, when the situation changes and they are no longer needed "the Pentagon must constantly invent new reasons" for keeping them. The real reason is lust for power: "an impulse on the part of our elites to dominate other peoples largely because we have the power to do so ... ."

Johnson became interested in U.S. bases in 1996 during a visit to the Okinawan town of Kin, most of whose land is occupied by the Marine Corps' Camp Hansen, and which was the site of the 1995 gang rape of an elementary-school girl by three GIs. He was disturbed not only by the ugliness and arrogance of the U.S. base presence, but also "by the fact that no serious American strategy could explain the deployment of 38 separate bases on the choicest 20 percent of the island." Gradually he concluded that the bases are not a means to some strategic end; rather, keeping them is a goal of strategy. They themselves are an empire: "the empire of bases."

As it happens, this same Kin is presently in the midst of a new anti-base struggle. The Marine Corps wants to build another facility inside Camp Hansen for urban-warfare training. What they would build is a small town for live-fire training. My guess is that it would work like a computer game with real bullets. The Marine walks down the street, and pop-up targets appear in doors, windows and alleyways, which he is supposed to gun down instantly. It sounds like great fun, but opponents point out that the building site is only 250 meters from a public highway and 300 meters from a residential area. Bullets will be flying every which way, and some will surely find their way out to the highway and into people's homes. (Opposition leaflets show photographs of bullet holes outside the base caused by the live-fire ranges that already exist in Camp Hansen.)

Following Johnson's insight, we can ask: Is there any strategic reason for building this facility on Okinawa, rather than at, say, Camp Pendleton in the United States?

The answer would presumably be: The Marines are here and they'ｖe got to do something. They're not fighting any war here, and they're not defending anything, so what they do is train. Therefore training facilities must be built for them.

But if Johnson is right that the U.S. bases have no strategic reason to be in Okinawa in the first place, the above reasoning is empty. It amounts to saying, "The bases exist, therefore they must be expanded." This is the essential logic of empire: "The empire exists, therefore it must be expanded." This is not something happening on a TV show; it's happening now, today, in Okinawa.

Shukan ST: Aug. 27, 2004

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