Suchergebnisse

The peacetime deployment of U.S. forces in foreign countries goes against traditional notions of sovereignty. How did such deployment become legitimate following World War II? This article examines the legal strategy that the U.S. military employed to make American troop presence more palatable to foreign publics and to critics at home: granting certain legal authority over offending troops to host countries, while seeking to shield troops from trials in host-country courts. The military also used local, informal ties with hosts to guarantee fair legal treatment for troops and worked to convince skeptics that U.S. troops faced no legal threat. The mitigating of legal tensions helped the military create conducive political conditions for its presence abroad and likely contributed to the durability of U.S. deployments. The Cold-War practice contrasts sharply with the contemporary desire of the United States to maintain complete jurisdiction over its troops.

U.S. forces abroad have often faced complaints about crimes committed by troops, yet we lack systematic quantitative information on such crimes. Based on newly discovered data compiled by the Army, this article presents a comprehensive and detailed picture of American troops' criminal activity worldwide during the Cold War (1954–1970). The data show that troops engaged in significant criminality, with a particularly high rate of violent crime—homicide, rape, and robbery—and a relatively low rate of property crime. Host countries treated offending troops leniently: Prison sentences were rare, and they averaged less than 2 years in duration. The data presented here hold far-reaching implications for our understanding of the relations between U.S. forces and host countries and the legacy of U.S. military deployments.

U.S. forces abroad have often faced complaints about crimes committed by troops, yet we lack systematic quantitative information on such crimes. Based on newly discovered data compiled by the Army, this article presents a comprehensive and detailed picture of American troops' criminal activity worldwide during the Cold War (1954–1970). The data show that troops engaged in significant criminality, with a particularly high rate of violent crime—homicide, rape, and robbery—and a relatively low rate of property crime. Host countries treated offending troops leniently: Prison sentences were rare, and they averaged less than 2 years in duration. The data presented here hold far-reaching implications for our understanding of the relations between U.S. forces and host countries and the legacy of U.S. military deployments.