As far as I know they are usually a kinda touchy subject. Aside from being particularly unnecessary after so many years, apparently there is a bad reputation surrounding the personnel. Seems there's a stigma surrounding the presence of American soldiers in the areas around, but off, base, especially with regard to comparatively boorish behavior, and even more significant or violent crime not commonly seen on Japanese soil.
Or I don't know what I'm talking about and someone will come and correct me in short order.
Not necessarily correcting you, but having bases in the area has more value than just keeping those pesky Japanese in line (sarcasm). We have a lot of enemies in the region between NK and China, so having a presence there helps us support our allies, and our national interests.
Yeah, pretty much. If your an American strategist, bases in Japan can assist in power projection and ease the logistics of deploying into flashpoints in Korea and the West Pacific. From a Japanese strategist's perspective, the benefits are a bit more equivocal: on the one hand the presence of American bases essentially guarantees America will back you up when it comes to conflicts with rivals, if for no other reason then Chinese or North Korean attacks would be directly threatening American military personnel*, and this passing of security does mean Japan does not have to spend as much on armaments as it might otherwise. On the other hand, it does mean that if the US gets involved in a conflict with one of those countries over something that Japan otherwise has no stake in, then Japan's going to be in the firing line regardless of how it feels about the conflict because those powers have a vested interest in smashing those bases so as to reduce American ability to project military power against them.
Beyond the above strategic analysis, of course, there are the much more subjective views about American foreign policy. But whether American foreign policy is "desirable" or not is technically separate from those bases usefulness under current American foreign policy.
*One can see this theory in a similar manner during the Cold War with the West Berlin garrison and more recently with the American deployment of a brigade to the Baltic States: there is little likelihood that such small and strategically exposed forward forces could manage to be more then a speed bump, at best, against a serious Russian invasion. But then their job isn't to hold the line but to ensure that the US has a stake in the conflict via the mass spilling of blood of it's own soldiers. Obviously, the US bases in Japan aren't quite THAT vulnerable (the most we can expect are heavy air and missile strikes rather then them getting overrun by enemy ground troops) but the principle otherwise remains the same.
last edited at May 28, 2019 12:37AM
