The book in question is Embattled Garrisons: Comparative Base Politics and American Globalism by Kent Calder (Princeton University Press, 2007), translated as Beigun saihen no seijigaku. Calder is an expert on Japan; he is currently director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, and his career includes experience as an adviser to Walter Mondale when the latter was US ambassador to Japan. So he is well known to Japanese readers.
The subject of this book, however, is not Japan. As the subtitle of the English-language original indicates, it is about "comparative base politics" (a term that is probably Calder's own coinage) and "American globalism." What does he mean by these terms?
As he indicates in the introduction, the network of US bases around the world plays a crucial role in assuring "smooth resource flows" To put it another way, it is the US military, with its global presence, including the bases it has established around the world, that serves as the support underlying globalization through the US-led free trade system.
US bases support the global flow of resources
The precursor to today's US network of bases is the network of naval facilities that the British Empire set up to consolidate its dominance over the seven seas in the nineteenth century. As Calder notes, one of the most strategic American bases in the world is on Diego Garcia, a 60-kilometer-long reef in the middle of the Indian Ocean, some 1,600 kilometers south of the tip of the Indian subcontinent. This has served as a British base ever since its capture from Napoleon's France in 1814, and though the main presence there is now American, the base is used jointly by Britain and the United States.Just what was the British Empire? If I may offer a simple definition, disregarding the possibility of misunderstanding, it was essentially a free trade system sustained by the maritime links among the British colonies across the globe. Following the collapse of the British Empire in the twentieth century, it was the United States that took on the role of developing and deepening this free trade system. As Calder writes, the United States and Britain had congruent strategic goals: "Both nations wanted a stable, open global order, with transcendent, transparent, and predictable international rules. . . . A global basing network supports this essentially political-economic vision" (p. 11).
Of course some will argue that neither the British Empire nor the United States in the twentieth century can be dismissed with such positive words alone. The world will never forget either the brutality of the British forces in putting down the Sepoy Mutiny or the immoral behavior of the US forces in Vietnam, including the spraying of toxic defoliants. At the same time, however, we cannot deny that the global economic system of free trade on which our current prosperity is based was built under the leadership of the British and Americans. And the foundation on which this system was built was the British Empire's nineteenth-century network of naval facilities and other forward deployment bases, which the United States inherited and further developed during the twentieth century.
The share of Japan's role as a host to the US system of bases is surprisingly large: In terms of asset value, facilities in Japan account for over 99% of US Marine Corps, 44% of US Navy, 33% of US Air Force, and even 7% of permanent US Army facilities worldwide outside the United States (p. 58). This is probably a greater contribution than that of any single US state. Furthermore, the amount of host nation support that Japan supplies to the US forces is an extraordinary figure of more than 60% of the world total (as of 2002, p. 192).
Is it only natural for Japan to provide this sort of assistance for the global deployment of US forces in return for the benefits our country enjoys from the globalizing economy that this deployment supports? How long can this situation be sustained? Our country needs to come up with a clear vision of its own on these matters from the perspectives of both globalism and nationalism.
Another book of note that recently appeared in Japanese translation is Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert Reich (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). In this work, which came out in Japanese as Boso suru shihonshugi in late June this year, Reich, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, also cites the close connection between the US military and globalization, writing that the revolutionary advances in transportation and communication promoted by the US military as part of its Cold War strategy were an important factor in setting off the process of globalization. It is well known that the Internet emerged from military strategy, but in addition to this role in revolutionizing the movement of information, the military also played a key part in revolutionizing the movement of physical goods by promoting the use of containers, which came to the fore during the Vietnam War. According to Reich, the containers used to carry materiel for use by the forces in Vietnam, instead of being taken back to the United States empty, were sent to Japan, where they were loaded with electronics and watches; in this way trade across the Pacific grew tremendously.
Reich's book offers a look at the deep ties between the military and globalization, which go beyond simple support of the latter by the former. Looking at the stories about globalization that appear in the media from day to day with this additional reference point allows one to take a broader view and to realize that globalization is not simply an economic affair.
The Irish say no to deepening of EU integration
Turning to media coverage of globalization during June, we find that one development with major ramifications was the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum by Irish voters. The treaty aimed at promoting further integration of the European Union, with a population of about 400 million, with institutional changes including the establishment of the post of president, but it was buried by a vote in Ireland, with a population of just 4 million. This outcome caused a tremendous uproar. In order for the treaty to go into force as originally intended next January, it must be ratified by all 27 members of the EU.In 2005 an attempt by the EU to adopt a constitution ended in failure. Then it was a referendum in France, one of the EU's central countries, that resulted in rejection. The Lisbon Treaty represented a looser version of the earlier proposal for a constitution, but it too has been turned down.
Media commentary on the Irish vote was loud and lively. In a column in the Financial Times on June 16, Wolfgang Munchau, an associate editor who was formerly coeditor of the paper's German edition, observed that Ireland faces a difficult choice between two options: conduct a second referendum overturning the original rejection or face loss of EU membership if a second vote reaffirms the earlier one ("Europe's Hardball Plan B for the Lisbon Treaty"). In the latter case, he warns, "Ireland's citizens would send the country back to the economic Dark Ages." Munchau's implicit message is that the rise of the "Celtic tiger," which has achieved dramatic economic growth, particularly in the field of information technology, was only made possible by the country's position as an EU member.
This reaction, bordering on a threat, may be taken as representative of the response to the Irish vote from the continent. The sentiments of France and Germany, which consider themselves the big countries within the EU, can be glimpsed in this sort of commentary.
The Financial Times did not disappoint those expecting to see a different view, however. Just three days later, on June 19, it carried a piece by veteran columnist Samuel Brittan titled "Why the Irish Were Right to Say No." Brittan criticizes the continental reaction, and he complains that the Lisbon Treaty would give the EU bureaucracy in Brussels control over decisions that are left to the state level in the United States. Furthermore, he warns of the "eurocrat" ambition to entrench the so-called European social model. Brittan suggests that if Germany, France and a few other countries want to develop the "centralist and corporatist" model, they should be allowed to do so on their own. As for EU integration, he opines that we will probably see "not a two-speed but a multi-speed Europe."
Brittan may be taken as the voice of Anglo-Saxon liberalism on this matter.
I happened to be traveling in Ireland this July, and so I had the opportunity to ask some ordinary Irish people for their views. One of them put it something like this: "After winning our powers as an independent country just seventy years ago [after centuries of rule by Britain], we can't stand to see them carried off to Brussels this time." Some say that the Irish voted no without understanding the situation, but that is not true. Their sentiments are similar to those of the people in the American states when the federal constitution was being adopted; the citizens of the former colonies were hesitant to yield the independence they had recently won from Britain. Perhaps today's eurocrats could benefit from a reading of the Federalist Papers, which present the arguments used to win over those who were resisting the proposed US constitution.
Last month I referred to the harsh criticism of Europe voiced by Singapore's Kishore Mahbubani, who accused Europeans of being "free riders" taking advantage of US military power while enjoying easy lives. A rebuttal of sorts is offered by Gideon Rachman, a foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, in a May 20 column titled "Irrelevance, Europe's Logical Choice." Rachman observes, "Being a superpower can be a burdensome and bloody business" and he writes, "Irrelevance is not particularly dignified or noble. But it could still be the logical choice for Europe."
In an article that appeared in the International Herald Tribune on June 27 under the title "Sliding toward Irrelevance," Robert Kagan, a neoconservative commentator serving as a foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, offers a different take. He sarcastically observes, "Europe has started to settle into a role akin to the chorus of a Greek tragedy, endlessly commenting and pronouncing judgment on the actions of the protagonists [the United States, Asian countries, and other actors on the global scene] . . . but with little or no effect on the outcome of the drama."
June also brought a significant number of articles about how the inflation in Asia resulting from the surge in energy and food prices is now spreading around the world through the medium of globalized trade. Among the examples are "Inflation's Bite Worsens Around World" (Wall Street Journal, June 11) and "The New Stagflation: an Asian Export" (Financial Times, June 12).
