Module 3 Blog - Military & Hegemony

     For this blog I chose to look at Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan. My dad was actually stationed here for about a year, right after my parents got married in 1985 and i enjoyed getting to learn a little more about the base and its history!

    According to the Military Bases website, Kadena was originally a small Japanese air field, but it was quickly overtaken by U.S. Marines and soldiers upon their invasion of the island (Kadena Air Force Base). After Okinawa entered into a shared cooperation agreement with mainland Japan, the U.S. was able to begin stationing permanent troops there, and in return the U.S. would shoulder some of the responsibility for the defense of the country (Kadena Air Force Base). While at first this sounds like a pretty nice deal, that changes a bit when considering this from a hegemonic view. Flint & Taylor (2018) explained that, "to represent its military actions as just, the United States represented its own actions as being in the name of the good of all humanity" and "it attempted to portray its actions as something other than national self-interest (p. 79). While this particular section was referring to their actions in Afghanistan, this is also relevant to their establishment of military bases in Japan. While it would be great to think that the U.S. wanted to establish bases purely out of wanting to help Japan, that would not be the full truth. It is likely the U.S. wanted to have some influence in the Pacific region, and being that they were able to begin stationing troops in 1960, they likely wanted to have the close proximity to the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War. At the time, the U.S. was one of two world powers, and they likely wanted to solidify their status and their hegemony. Unfortunately, the cycles of hegemony make it so the U.S. must maintain this influence and power, so it is unlikely that these bases will be abandoned any time in the near future.

Photo of Kadena Air Force Base

(Kadena Air Force Base)

Map of Kadena Air Force Base

(Kadena Air Base Force Support Squadron)

References: 

Flint, C., & Taylor, P.J. (2018). Political geography: World-economy, nation-state and locality 

    (7th ed.). Routledge.

Kadena Air Base Force Support Squadron (n.d.). Kadena Air Base Force Support Squadron. Retrieved 

    March 31, 2022, from https://kadenafss.com/map/ 

Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan (n.d.). MilitaryBases.com. Retrieved March 31, 2022, 

    from https://militarybases.com/overseas/japan/kadena/