Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas

Base Politics

Democratic Change and

the U.S. Military Overseas

Alexander Cooley

Cornell University Press

Ithaca and London

For Nicole Jacoby

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Preface

1 Political Change and the Overseas American Military Presence

2 Overseas Military Basing Agreements: Issues and Methodology

3 The Philippines and Spain: In the Shadow of the Dictator

4 South Korea and Turkey: From Common Defense to Political Uncertainty

5 Okinawa and the Azores: Island Hosts and Triangular Politics

6 Japan and Italy: The Politics of Clientelism and One-Party Democratic Rule

7 Central Asia and the Global Defense Posture Review: New Bases, Old Politics

8 Conclusion: America’s Past and Future Base Politics

References

Figures and Tables

Figures

1.1 Configurations of base politics within base hosts

1.2 Changes in base politics, Spain and Uzbekistan

3.1 Major U.S. military facilities, Spain, 1984

3.2 Major U.S. military facilities, Philippines, 1979

3.3 Evolution of base politics, Spain and Philippines

4.1 Major U.S. military facilities, South Korea and Japan, 1979

4.2 Major U.S. military facilities, Turkey, 1984

4.3 Evolution of base politics, Republic of Korea and Turkey

5.1 Major U.S. military facilities, Okinawa, 2000

5.2 Major U.S. military facilities, Azores, 1975

6.1 Major U.S. military facilities, South Korea and Japan, 1979

6.2 Major U.S. military facilities, Italy, 1984

6.3 Evolution of base politics, Japan (main islands) and Italy

7.1 Central Asia and major foreign military installations, 2004

8.1 U.S. troop levels, East Asian hosts

8.2 U.S. troop levels, southern European hosts

Tables

1.1 Location, size, and value of U.S. military installations, 2006

1.2 Effects of a host country’s political institutions on contractual credibility

2.1 Worldwide waivers of host-country primary authority in cases of concurrent jurisdiction

2.2 Selected host-nation support for U.S. stationing costs

2.3 U.S. troop deployments for selected major overseas hosts

3.1 Waivers of criminal jurisdiction in the Philippines, 1954–64

3.2 Criminal jurisdiction in Spain under the 1982 and 1989 agreements

4.1 Criminal jurisdiction and waiver rates under the U.S.-ROK SOFA

6.1 Japanese public opinion about U.S. bases, 1950–58

8.1 Permission by southern European countries to use bases for major U.S. military campaigns

8.2 Rates of public opinion (%) favorable to the United States among major U.S. military base hosts

Preface

Originally a scholar of post-Soviet politics, I was amazed when the United States established military bases on former Soviet territory in Central Asia to support its 2001 campaign in Afghanistan. As the security partnership between the United States and Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan strengthened over the next few years, I suspected that the internal consequences of the presence of U.S. bases were far more important than Western officials and the media acknowledged or cared about. Whether intended or not, the U.S. military presence in these countries functioned as a U.S. endorsement of host governments and their actions. Hence, as political challenges to these regimes mounted in 2005, the U.S. military found itself in the crosshairs of the region’s internal democratizing shifts and backlashes. Now, in late 2007, the United States has been evicted from Uzbekistan, and its position in Kyrgyzstan looks increasingly precarious.

The base politics of Central Asia are just the latest recurrence of a set of political dynamics that have surrounded U.S. bases in other eras and regions. Although U.S. policymakers and scholars have consistently overlooked the internal political dimension for host countries, U.S. overseas bases and their governing arrangements repeatedly have been implicated in those countries’ democratic struggles, authoritarian propaganda, populist election campaigns, and political infighting and factionalism. These internal political developments have also had tangible operational consequences, as several base hosts have challenged and evicted U.S. forces from their territory, often for reasons that had little to do with the conduct or policy of the United States. Given the hundreds of U.S. military installations scattered across more than a hundred overseas countries and territories, the dearth of comparative political analysis on the issue is puzzling.

As I pursued this topic, I was not fully prepared for the scale of the project to which I was committing myself. From 2003 to 2006, I conducted field research in ten base hosts, across Asia, Europe, and the postcommunist states; this research now comprises the main case studies of this book. Each trip yielded fascinating insights and fresh understandings of these political dynamics. I made it a point to interview as many actors as possible with different interests and stakes in the basing issue. U.S. political and military officials, host-country defense officials, local politicians, antibase activists, journalists, academics, security analysts, contractors, business representatives, and base workers all contributed to my research findings and the development of these arguments. I learned as much about these countries’ rich political histories and institutions as I did about the basing issue.

In short, I found that the U.S. basing presence means different things to different actors and that these views, even for the same actor, vary considerably over time. For some a basing agreement with the United States is a guarantee of security and alliance, whereas for others it may be a political endorsement of the ruling regime or a lucrative economic opportunity. Some politicians regard an American base as a symbol of violated national sovereignty, U.S. imperialism, and political struggle, whereas others aren’t particularly bothered by its presence or regard it as a routine matter for technocrats to manage.

From an academic perspective, the study of base politics is not easily slotted into either of the established political science subfields of international relations or comparative politics. Bases are the products of international security agreements, but as discrete communities they also interface politically, economically, and socially with their hosts. Moreover, many base-related issues traverse additional disciplines such as international law, international negotiation, institutional economics, sociology, and media studies. I suspect that the boundaries of our modern social sciences, as well as the persistent walls that separate specialists of different regions, are the reasons we don’t have more comparative studies on the subject.

Yet I am now convinced, even if we allow for historical nuance and regional specificity, that many of these political patterns can be analytically identified and even predicted. This book attempts to make some sense of base politics and provides a theory that explains some of its major trends across different countries and eras.

• • •

The funds required to complete this research have been considerable, and I deeply appreciate various organizations for their support and commitment to the project. A grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to Columbia University’s Institute for War and Peace Studies allowed me, along with my colleague Kimberly Marten (with Page Fortna and Tanisha Fazal as fellow grantees), to conduct field research in Okinawa and the Japanese main islands (May–June 2003), South Korea (June 2004), and Kyrgyzstan (January 2005).

I am also grateful to the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), which not only supported me as a research fellow during my academic leave (2004–5) but also awarded me a Transatlantic Fellowship that supported my residence at the GMF Transatlantic Center in Brussels in 2005 and provided a world-class network of resources and contacts. These greatly facilitated my trips to Spain (April 2005), Portugal and the Azores (May 2005), and Romania (July 2005). In particular I thank Ron Asmus, Bill Drozdiak (now President of the American Council on Germany), John Glenn, and Corinna Hörst. A travel grant from Barnard College, as part of my Special Assistant Professor Leave, supported these trips as well as my visits to Greece (October 2004), Turkey (November 2004), and Italy (April 2006). I also thank the Smith Richardson Foundation for awarding me a Junior Faculty International Security and Foreign Policy grant for 2007 that allowed me to update and finish the book in a timely fashion. Finally, publication of this book was made possible in part by Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, and I am grateful for the institute’s enduring support.

This research would have been inconceivable without the extensive network of contacts provided by generous colleagues. Fortunately, I had at least one such pivotal person to help me navigate the research terrain on each of my trips; I am indebted to Kim Byungki (Korea), Ambassador Angel Viñas (Spain), Takako Hikotani (Japan), Sami Kohen (Turkey), Miguel Monjardino (Portugal and the Azores), Leopoldo Nuti (Italy) and George Vlad Niculescu (Romania) for all of their organizational efforts and generous commitment to the project. I also thank representatives in the U.S. military from the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and Pacific Command (PACOM) for facilitating my interviews and base visits, as well as various U.S. embassy and defense officials for taking the time to organize meetings and conferences on the topic.

The project greatly benefited from the suggestions and comments I gathered when I presented earlier versions at Northwestern University, MIT’s Security Studies Program, Brown University’s Watson Institute, Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the University of Pennsylvania’s Brown Center, Princeton University’s Near East Studies Department, the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center in Brussels and office in Washington, D.C., the National Defense Academy of Japan, the Korea University Graduate School of International Studies, the Korean National Defense University, City University of London’s Public Policy Program, the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre, the City Council of Vila de Porto (Santa María, Azores), and the annual policy conferences of the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The book was critically shaped and vastly improved by the insightful comments of two anonymous reviewers for Cornell University Press. I also owe a great intellectual debt to my colleague Kimberly Marten, who not only conducted joint interviews with me in Japan, Korea, and Kyrgyzstan, but contributed to the formulation of these arguments, read and commented on an entire earlier draft of the manuscript, and supported the project at its every stage. She and the rest of my remarkable colleagues at Barnard and Columbia provide a wonderful research community and support network. Jonathan Hopkin (London School of Economics) conducted interviews with me in Spain and greatly contributed to my thinking about the case.

I am also fortunate that several distinguished experts, whose detailed understanding of these individual country cases greatly surpasses mine, generously read and commented on earlier draft chapters, although they are in no way responsible for the book’s remaining errors and shortcomings. I thank Fiona Adamson, Charles Armstrong, Henri Barkey, Ambassador Adrian Basora, Nur Bilge Criss, Renato De Castro, Richard Eldridge, George Gavrilis, Olimpio Guidi, Rajan Menon, Paul Midford, Miguel Monjardino, Katharine Moon, Leopoldo Nuti, Luis Nuno Rodrigues, Radu Tudor, Ambassador Angel Viñas, and Andrew Yeo for their expert feedback. Rawi Abdelal, Mark Blyth, Robert Jervis, Dan Nexon, and Jack Snyder offered insightful comments on earlier drafts of the theoretical and concluding chapters. For their helpful comments and input on the broader project, I also thank Deborah Avant, Gordon Bardos, Amy Belasco, Richard Betts, Alessandro Brogi, Bruce Cumings, Dan Deudney, Simon Duke, John Dyer, Page Fortna, Erik Gartzke, Robert Harkavy, Amy Holmes, Scott Horton, Ian Hurd, Patrick Jackson, Peter Katzenstein, Bradey Kiesling, Mark Kramer, James Kurth, David Lake, Stephen Larrabee, Robert Legvold, Catherine Lutz, Paul MacDonald, Guido Maranzana, Andy Markovitz, Katherin McInnis, Martha Merrill, Miguel Moniz, Carla Monteleone, Alex Motyl, Michael Mousseau, Barry Posen, Charles Powell, Dick Samuels, Ed Schatz, Hendrik Spruyt, Robin Varghese, Celeste Wallander, and Thomas Wood. Stephanie Boyum, Adelle Tilebalieva, and Laura Stoiffel provided excellent research assistance. Finally, I once again extend my appreciation to Roger Haydon, my editor. His refreshing candor, expert guidance, and intellectual challenges over many months have vastly improved every part of this work. I am privileged to have worked on another book with him and the outstanding production team at Cornell University Press.

For their continued unwavering support and remarkable generosity of spirit I thank my parents, John Cooley and Vania Katelani Cooley, as well as my relatives and friends at home and abroad who have endured more than their fair share of my babble about U.S. base minutiae. First among them is my wife, Nicole. The book is dedicated to her with my love and gratitude for her inspiration, support, and, above all, enduring good humor.

ALEXANDER COOLEY

CHAPTER 1

Political Change and the Overseas American Military Presence

In March 2004, just days after his surprising election victory, Spain’s president-elect José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero ordered the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. Zapatero’s dramatic decision fulfilled an election campaign pledge but also created acrimony between Spain and the United States; the previous administration of José María Aznar had offered nearly unqualified support for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Less noticed at the time was that during Spain’s withdrawal, the United States continued to fly daily sorties and logistical missions in support of OIF from the Morón airbase and Rota naval station on Spanish territory. Yet the Spanish media and major political parties ignored the matter, even though public opinion polls showed that a solid majority of the Spanish public opposed granting the United States this base access.¹ U.S. defense and policy planners had expected the new administration to withdraw its blanket authorization for the use of the bases and were surprised when no such request materialized.² After all, they reasoned, why would a regime that had withdrawn from a military campaign in response to domestic political pressures not also oppose the use of its territory to support the same unpopular war?

Just sixteen months later, the government of Uzbekistan formally notified the United States that it was terminating U.S. access to the KarshiKhanabad (K2) base in the south of the country. Since the fall of 2001, the U.S. military had used K2 as a major staging facility to support reconnaissance, combat, and humanitarian missions in neighboring Afghanistan. The eviction notice was the culmination of tensions that had been growing between the countries after the Uzbek government cracked down harshly on antigovernment demonstrators in the eastern city of Andijon in May 2005.³ Throughout June, the U.S. State Department and Congress had grown increasingly critical of the Uzbek government’s actions and human rights records, even while U.S. defense officials continued to support their Uzbek counterparts.

Despite their different geographical settings and political systems, these base-related episodes in Spain and Uzbekistan share important features. First, the processes of politicization and depoliticization of the U.S. military basing presence within each of these host countries varied considerably over time. Although the American use of bases on Spanish territory was depoliticized as an issue in 2004, eighteen years earlier another Socialist (PSOE) government headed by President Felipe González had aggressively denounced U.S. air strikes against Libya and prohibited the use of Spanish bases for the campaign. Why did a PSOE government curtail base access for one American military action unsanctioned by the United Nations against Libya in 1986 but not another against Iraq in 2004? Similarly, why did an Uzbek government that had so vigorously courted a U.S. military presence in September 2001 suddenly reverse its decision four years later?

The second common feature of these cases is that neither the broader security relations between the United States and the host country nor domestic public opinion determined the dynamics of these political shifts. In the case of Spain, a NATO ally, the Zapatero government allowed the use of bases for OIF even as bilateral security relations between the two countries were plummeting after the Spanish pullout. At the same time, anti-Americanism in Spain was high, and public opinion on basing rights was firmly against the government’s continued permissive stance. In the case of Uzbekistan, the security climate in Afghanistan had hardly changed in 2005 in a manner that would compel the Uzbek government to recalculate the external security benefits it derived from the presence of U.S. forces at K2. Moreover, local residents near K2 favored retaining the base because of its positive economic impact in an otherwise impoverished part of the country—although for the authoritarian Uzbek regime public opinion was scarcely important anyway. Neither security factors nor changes in public opinion can explain the depoliticization of the basing issue in Spain and its subsequent politicization in Uzbekistan. How, then, should we understand these and other cases of the changing politics of U.S. overseas bases?

This book develops a theory of base politics to explain when and why bilateral military basing agreements become accepted, politicized, or challenged by host countries. Rulers and political elites in base hosts use the benefits and political opportunities provided by basing agreements to promote their domestic political self-interest. Changes in a host country’s domestic political institutions—from authoritarian rule to democratic transition or from democratic transition to democratic consolidation—independently affect the types of benefits that elites can derive from the base issue and, in turn, their propensity to contest the bilateral basing contract. Certain political environments, especially periods of volatile democratic transition, afford considerable political benefits to elites who contest basing agreements. Conversely, the consolidation of a base host’s democratic institutions tends to lead to the depoliticization of the issue, regardless of prevailing public opinion or anti-U.S. sentiment. The exact causal mechanisms and political pathways through which the base issue is politicized or depoliticized vary and are the theoretical focus of this book. Accordingly, this work is certainly not the first comparative study of U.S. military bases abroad, but it is the first to focus on the changing domestic politics of bases and base access within hosts across different regions, rather than on the operational or security dimensions.⁴

Further, this book identifies and clarifies the variety of political issues that become associated with or activated by the presence of overseas bases. Granting base access for a U.S. military campaign against a third party, such as the 2003 military campaign against Iraq, is an enduring issue that relates to a host state’s sovereignty, but other base-related issues also can claim the national political spotlight. Domestic politicians or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) may campaign to prohibit the stationing of nuclear weapons or other types of weapons or may protest a base’s adverse environmental impact. U.S. troops involved in accidents with local populations increase media and public scrutiny of the special legal status granted to U.S. forces in the host country. And host countries may demand increased economic payments as a quid pro quo for accepting the American military presence. Such issues have periodically dominated U.S. bilateral relations with major and minor base hosts, yet we lack a systematic framework for assessing when and why these issues become politically paramount. In this book I offer some answers to these questions.

The Enduring Significance of U.S. Bases

At first glance, the topic of base politics itself may seem anachronistic, for the term overseas bases conjures images of superpowers during the cold war maneuvering across the third world to secure geopolitical access and advantage.⁵ But securing overseas basing access remains a critical aspect of current U.S. defense policy and the global war on terrorism, especially as U.S. planners reconfigure the force structure and basing posture to cope with more regionally based threats.⁶ Moreover, for host countries, base issues can still dominate bilateral relations with the United States—a fact that is not always shared or sufficiently appreciated by U.S. officials—and the manner in which base-related issues are managed (or mismanaged) can symbolize the broader relationship between the base host and the United States. Finally, studying the politics of bases reveals some unexpected aspects of how U.S. allies and military clients engage with American unipolarism or the American Empire. Most important, this account of base politics reveals an emerging, if unexpected, tension inherent in the current U.S. strategy of promoting democracy abroad while maintaining an extensive global basing presence—the pursuit of one may actually undermine the viability of the other in any given base host.

Projecting American Power

U.S. overseas bases and access rights are the linchpin of American global power and its military supremacy of the global commons.⁷ Overseas bases in countries such as Spain and Uzbekistan act as force multipliers and enable U.S. planners to rapidly project power both within and across regions.⁸ Securing overseas bases and access agreements with a number of countries was critical for the recent U.S.-led military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.⁹ For example, the K2 base in Uzbekistan was staging facility for the OIF mission, whereas facilities in Spain were used for both the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Even when not used for combat purposes, bases are significant when they guarantee U.S. access to neighboring assets, territories, or resources that are of critical importance.¹⁰

Beyond their military roles and strategic functions, bases also provide service and repair facilities, storage, training facilities, and logistical staging posts. Bases can also be used to conduct surveillance, coordinate tasks, collect intelligence, and facilitate command, control, and communications (C3).¹¹ As it turns out, overseas bases such as K2 have been used to transport enemy combatants and terror suspects as part of the CIA’s program of extraordinary rendition and may even have been used as sites to detain and interrogate some suspects.¹²

The sheer number of U.S. overseas bases is staggering (see table 1.1). According to the Department of Defense’s 2006 Base Structure Report , the United States officially maintains 766 military installations overseas and another 77 in noncontinental U.S. territories. Fifteen of these facilities were estimated to be worth more than $1.6 billion each, whereas an additional 19 were valued at between $862 million and $1.6 billion.¹³ Of course, such official figures do not include the numerous secret installations and jointly operated bases and/or tacit governance arrangements that are scattered overseas.¹⁴ Not surprisingly, some commentators refer to this vast overseas network of bases and troop deployments as the U.S. Empire and compare it to the peripheral holdings of previous imperial powers.¹⁵

TABLE 1.1

Location, size, and value of U.S. military installations, 2006

The structure of this global basing network is also changing. The Pentagon’s current Global Defense Posture Review (GDPR) marks the first fundamental transformation of U.S. basing posture since World War II as U.S. defense planners adjust to new strategic imperatives such as the global war on terror.¹⁶ The GDPR will reduce U.S. forces in several major cold war base hosts—especially Germany, Korea, and Japan—and will establish a global network of smaller, more flexible facilities. These new-style bases or lily pads will be located in several regions where the United States has not traditionally maintained a presence, including Africa, Central Asia, and the Black Sea. As a result, the United States seems set to abandon its traditional role as an offshore balancer and, using its new basing posture, to more directly engage regional threats such as terrorists and insurgents.¹⁷ One explicitly political goal of the GDPR is to reduce the footprint and local friction caused by a large U.S. military presence and establish smaller facilities of a less permanent nature that will be less politically controversial and socially intrusive within host countries.

Bases as Diplomatic Symbols

Overseas bases, however, are not merely installations that serve a military purpose. For host governments and citizens, U.S. bases are also concrete institutions and embodiments of U.S. power, identity, and diplomacy. The physical presence of overseas U.S. troops and installations—from the large garrison towns in Germany that look like imported American counties to the small but restricted sites in Central Asia—serves as a daily reminder of the scope of U.S. global influence and signifies that the host country has sacrificed some of its domestic sovereignty.¹⁸ Negotiations over bases and their governing agreements can become the most pressing bilateral issue that host countries face with the United States, as they were in Spain in the mid-1980s and Uzbekistan from 2001 to 2005, and displace all other political and security concerns.¹⁹ Moreover, host countries often view the basing relationship as a symbol of the broader state of U.S.-host relations. Hence, Korean antibase activists campaign for a more equal relationship between U.S. forces and Korean sovereignty, whereas Romanian politicians proudly refer to the new U.S. bases on the Black Sea as symbols of the country’s new status as a strong partner in the U.S.-led Western security system. Politically, bases are the most immediate issue through which a host country’s politicians and its public experience, debate, and even contest U.S. global power.

Often, basing agreements may even signal political and social commitments that U.S. officials did not necessarily intend to make. For example, America’s western European allies strongly opposed the U.S.-Spain 1953 Madrid Pact and argued that the deal bestowed international legitimacy on the autocrat General Francisco Franco when he was otherwise ostracized from the international community. Similarly, although the basing agreement with Uzbekistan focused on fighting common terrorist elements in the Central Asian region, other states and publics across Central Asia saw the deal as a U.S. endorsement of the Uzbek regime’s repressive policies and undemocratic tendencies. Historically, U.S. officials have found it difficult to limit basing agreements from being perceived as broader political endorsements of host-country regimes and their domestic political and social practices.²⁰

Rethinking Debates about American Empire

A comparative study of the domestic politics of the base issue also challenges many of the conventional assumptions that we hold about the overseas impact of American hegemony and U.S. relations with global security partners and clients. Most prevailing studies of U.S. overseas bases or American Empire—whether supportive or critical—assume that the U.S. military is fairly unconstrained in its capacity to establish bases and project power from these various overseas installations.²¹

Yet, as events in Uzbekistan suggest, the considerable differential in military power between the United States and its overseas base hosts does not always guarantee enduring American access and influence. The U.S. military presence abroad, even in relatively weak countries, is more frequently politicized and contested by host states than is commonly assumed. Both supportive and critical accounts of American Empire usually ignore how otherwise weak base hosts often nudge, manipulate, and even resist the American presence, often for their own independent political purposes.²² As in other empires of the past, pericentric developments within a base host’s territory frequently constrain the preferences of U.S. policymakers.²³ U.S. planners certainly try to influence base-related developments, but the historical record suggests that often they do not adequately apprehend or cannot exert influence over these internal political processes.²⁴ The Uzbek eviction was one of the latest examples of this host-driven contestation of U.S. power, but it is certainly no exception.

On the other hand, a focus on base politics suggests that the transatlantic rift generated by the 2003 Iraq War may not be as acute as it is commonly portrayed, at least not in this important area of security cooperation.²⁵ When examined through the prism of securing base access, transatlantic cooperation has remained significantly high, even during the Iraq campaign. The Spanish policy of opposing the war while at the same time granting base access to the United States may seem paradoxical, but other European countries such as Greece and Germany did so as well. In fact, in 2002 German chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder used an antiwar plank to win reelection and then proceeded to grant base access to the United States for the very same campaign. As in Spain, basing issues in these other European countries have evolved from issues of high politics—that is, topics openly debated by political parties, the media, and elites—to routine and even bureaucratic issues not subject to public scrutiny or political debate. European governments, even those that have been openly critical of U.S. foreign and security policy, no longer question the purpose or role of U.S. facilities on their territory, even when they are used for politically unpopular purposes such as the Iraq War or CIA rendition flights.

Thus, focusing on base issues paints a picture of the overseas reception of American hegemony dramatically different from our conventional understanding. The political attitudes toward U.S. bases among those living in a host country often diverge from the prevailing state of bilateral security relations. Elites in otherwise weak states may be the best situated, as a result of their domestic political volatility, to challenge the United States on base rights, whereas stronger allies, usually consolidated democracies, are the most constrained in their capacity to contest base issues, even as they question the actual content of U.S. security policy. Accordingly, the politics of basing relations offers important new insights into how the United States, especially in this unipolar era, establishes, redefines, and renegotiates its relations with allies and military clients.

The Argument

Political Survival and Two-Level Politics

To better understand the interplay between domestic political imperatives and these bilateral security contracts, we must go beyond traditional security-based theories and apply a number of seemingly disparate concepts in political science—including studies of democratic transition and consolidation, hierarchical relations among patrons and clients, and new institutional theories of contracting—to the basing issue.

This book assumes that rulers of base-host countries value and pursue, above all else, their own domestic political survival.²⁶ Rulers certainly value other things, such as following their political ideologies, improving domestic conditions, and securing the national interest, but rulers wield power in both the domestic and foreign policy arenas in order to maximize their own political benefit and maintain their office.²⁷ Base contracts provide a variety of benefits, resources, and opportunities to elites in host countries for these ends.

Host states enter into basing agreements by voluntarily signing a contract or by having such an arrangement imposed on them by a stronger power in the aftermath of war or a military occupation. Whether initially established by contract or by imposition, all basing agreements are, to some extent, a hierarchical security contract in which a base host legally cedes part of its sovereignty when it accepts a foreign military presence on its territory.²⁸ Of course, not all agreements are hierarchical to the same degree. Contracts can vary from arrangements of almost pure hierarchy, in which the sending country occupies or imposes all of the terms and conditions on the base host, to one of modified hierarchy, in which the host country retains some sovereignty and exercises decision-making authority over the use of the bases.²⁹ Nevertheless, rulers of host countries are involved in two sets of hierarchical political relationships, or nested hierarchies, in that they manage relations with the sending state while simultaneously providing public goods and selective incentives to their domestic political clients and supporters, who are also known as the selectorate.³⁰

These dual imperatives interact in a two-level game in which rulers use base-related issues and resources for their domestic political purposes but can also invoke domestic constraints in their negotiations with the sender.³¹ For example, when in December 2001 the United States established the Ganci airbase in Kyrgyzstan, it awarded multi-million-dollar refueling contracts to a firm controlled by Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev’s immediate family. The deal provided a significant revenue stream that the regime used to dispense patronage to domestic political allies and consolidate its rule.³² However, after Akayev was ousted in 2005, the new Kyrgyz government insisted that the United States significantly increase its baserelated lease payments to compensate the Kyrgyz people for supporting the corruption and antidemocratic practices of the Akayev regime. This continuous interaction of domestic and international factors is a hallmark of basing politics, with its nested nature, and makes two-level games as important for hierarchical settings as they are for anarchical ones.

Specifically, the contractual politics of any prevailing basing agreement are usually shaped by two such interactions: the host regime’s dependence on the contract for its political survival and the credibility of the base host’s political institutions. The host regime’s political dependence on the contract determines the degree of hierarchy or balance of terms within the basing contract, whereas the host country’s political institutions determine the agreement’s legitimacy, credibility, and susceptibility to renegotiation.

Base Benefits and Regime Dependence

Basing agreements provide a range of benefits and resources to host regimes. Of these, the most obvious benefit to the host nation is security. The presence of foreign troops can deter aggressors and permits a host to spend less on its national security than it otherwise would. In his study of hierarchy in international politics, David Lake finds that base hosts and subordinate states in security arrangements tend to spend less on their security than do states with no such foreign troop deployments.³³ In turn, spending less on security allows regimes to spend more on goods that will enhance their political survival. For example, the bilateral security guarantees and military bases offered by the United States to East Asia in the postwar periods allowed Japan and Korea to minimize security spending and instead pursue state-led neomercantilist policies under the U.S. security umbrella.³⁴ Moreover, a foreign military presence can offer internal security and a guarantee that the host regime will survive an internal threat. In the 1950s, regimes in Japan and Italy signed basing agreements that actually allowed for U.S. military intervention in their internal affairs.

Security need not be the only, or even the main, base-related benefit for a host country’s regime. Economic aid and assistance packages can be granted in exchange for securing basing rights. For example, during the 1970s then president Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines extracted billions of dollars in economic and military assistance from the United States, as well as loan guarantees from international financial