Suchergebnisse

Abstract
In a recently published article, Allen et al. (Outside the wire: U.S. military deployments and public opinion in host states', American Political Science Review, 114(2), 326–341; 2020) argue that US military deployments nurture favorable attitudes toward the United States among foreign citizens. Their claim is based on social contact and economic compensation theories, applied to a large-scale cross-national survey project funded by the US government. However, their analysis disregards the geographical concentration of US military facilities within the host countries. To examine the relevance of geography and assess both positive and negative externalities, we focus on Japan – a notable case given its status as the country hosting the largest number of US military personnel in the world. We show that residents of Okinawa, a small prefecture hosting 70% of US military facilities within Japan have considerably unfavorable attitudes toward the US military presence in their prefecture. They hold this negative sentiment specifically toward the bases in Okinawa regardless of their contact with Americans and economic benefits and their general support for the US military presence within Japan. Our findings support an alternative theory of not-in-my-backyard. They also shed light on the importance of local foreign public opinion for foreign policy analysis and call for a more balanced scholarly debate on the externalities of the global US military presence.

Three questions loom large in the study of civil-military relations, and are fruitfully asked of the United States, Japan, and China. What accounts for the subordination of the military to political authority? To what extent is the military reflective of societal values? How do civilian and military leaders think about and manage the central function of the military, namely the use of force? We find that despite the very different record of civil-military relations across these three cases, models and conceptual tools originally developed to explain American civil-military relations do have analytical leverage over the Japanese and Chinese cases. These tools, however, must be modified to adjust to the cultural and historical context of each case, and lead to different conclusions about prevailing civil-military relations in each setting. (Asian Perspect/DÜI)