Back in 1982, the United States had helped General Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay’s dictator from 1954 until 1989, to build a massive military airfield near the town of Mariscal Estigarribia, which now has a population of about two thousand, of whom three hundred are Paraguayan soldiers. The airfield has runways long and strong enough to take B-52 bombers and C-5 Galaxy transports, plus a fully equipped radar system, large hangars, and an air traffic control tower. It is actually bigger than the international airport in the capital, Asuncion. The only thing of note that ever happened at Estigarribia before the American troops arrived was Pope John Paul II’s landing there, in May 1988. In the summer of 2005, the Americans immediately set about refurbishing and further enlarging the base.
American troops are free to do almost anything they want in Paraguay. In the May 26, 2005, agreement, the Bush administration extracted a provision exempting its officials and military from the jurisdiction of both the local judicial system and the International Criminal Court. The Special Forces are not subject to customs duties and are free to transport weapons and medical supplies anywhere in Paraguayan territory.92 This is important for various reasons. Under the terms of Mercosur, the agreement among Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay creating a southern-cone trading bloc, all parties pledge to inform each other about international developments and to coordinate their foreign policies. Like virtually all other nations in Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay have rejected Bush administration demands for Article 98 Agreements protecting Americans from being turned over to the International Criminal Court. The United States has cut off all forms of aid to the three as a result. In 2004, despite the presence of the Manta base, Ecuador, too, forfeited $15.7 million in U.S. aid, much of it for military equipment, rather than go along with America’s pressure tactics.93 By giving the United States carte blanche in its country, Paraguay is breaking ranks with its neighbors, which has led to speculation that the United States wants to destroy Mercosur.
The asymmetries in size and power between small nations like Paraguay and Ecuador and the United States inevitably make our relations with them imperialist in nature when we act in a high-handed way. Paraguay has no need for an American military base, nor for U.S training of its armed forces. Paraguay is not likely to go to war with its powerful neighbors, particularly given the nineteenth-century War of the Triple Alliance (1865-70) in which it was badly defeated and lost a large part of its territory. But the United States is always ready to use its overwhelming might to force small nations to bend to its will.
It is impossible to foresee in detail the future use to which the American empire of bases may be put, but there is at least a growing understanding of and sophistication about U.S. basing policies among peoples on the receiving end. The Argentine pacifist and antiwar activist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize, commented on the developments in Paraguay, “Once the United States arrives, it takes a long time to leave.”
5
How American Imperialism Actually Works:
The SOFA in Japan
Okinawans have learned the built-in weaknesses of Japan ... through endless failed or ignored petitions to the Japanese government for the reduction and eventual closure of the U.S. military bases in Okinawa. The stock answer of the Japanese leaders is: “We will let America know of Okinawa’s wishes.” ... Okinawa’s wishes are only gossip topics, never a part of Japan’s national policy issues deserving of serious negotiation with the U.S.... The Marines believe that they are above the law and can do anything with impunity.
—KOJI TAIRA, editor,
In seeking permission to build or use one or more military bases in a foreign country, the United States first negotiates a fundamental contract— one that commonly creates an “alliance” with the other state. These basic agreements are usually short, straightforward treaties that express “common objectives” related to “national security” and “international threats to the peace.” Examples include the 1949 charter setting up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Convention on the Presence of Foreign Forces in the Federal Republic of Germany (October 1954), and the renegotiated Japan-U.S. Security Treaty (January 1960).
Once the United States has concluded this basic document, it then negotiates a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), intended above all to put any U.S. forces stationed in the host country as far beyond its domestic laws as possible. The legal systems of some of these “hosts” are every bit as sophisticated as our own, ones in which Americans would be unlikely to find themselves seriously disadvantaged by local law enforcement. What SOFAs do, however, is give American soldiers, contractors, Department of Defense civilians, and their dependents a whole range of special privileges that are not available to ordinary citizens of the country or to non-American visitors. In the great tradition of “extraterritoriality” that began in the world of nineteenth-century Western colonialism, they are almost never reciprocal—that is, the SOFAs bestow on Americans privileges that are not available to citizens of the host nation if they should visit or be assigned to the United States. The major exception is the SOFA governing NATO, which is reciprocal. Military forces of a NATO nation working in the United States are supposed to receive the same rights and benefits given to American troops in Europe.
Most empires, ancient or modern, have not felt the need to establish a legal basis for their activities in subordinate countries. Might makes right, and imperialists normally do as they please. In wartime, this is called the “law of the flag.” From 1945 on, the presence of the occupying Soviet armed forces in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany), for example, was never subject to any treaty. But in this area, American administrations have proved legalistic sticklers, crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s of the largely one-sided agreements they make to garrison the planet.
SOFAs are not in themselves basing or access agreements. For example, article 6 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty simply says, “For the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East, the United States of America is granted the use by its land, air, and naval forces of facilities and areas of Japan. The use of these facilities and areas as well as the status of the United States armed forces in Japan shall be governed by a separate agreement.”1 SOFAs implement these more basic agreements and spell out what the host nation has actually obligated itself to allow the United States to do.
SOFAs create many local problems for host nations. For instance, American military bases and the activities they engender regularly do damage to the environment. Article 6 of both the Japan and the South Korea SOFAs stipulates: “The United States is not obliged, when it returns facilities and areas ... on the expiration of this Agreement or at an earlier date, to restore the facilities and areas to the condition in which they were at the time they became available to the United States armed forces, or to compensate Japan [or the Republic of Korea] in lieu of such restoration.”2
This is a typical and often deeply resented aspect of U.S. SOFAs and an invitation to the U.S. military to pollute in any way it wants without fear of accountability. For example, the Fukuchi Dam provides most of the water supply to the 1.3 million residents of the island of Okinawa, but the U.S. armed forces use the dam’s reservoir for river- crossing exercises. Significant amounts of discarded munitions have been discovered in the surrounding watershed area. The South Korean government so resents this provision of the SOFA, which was imposed on South Korea in the wake of the devastation of the Korean War, that in 2006 it rejected the U.S. military’s attempt to return twenty-five closed military camps until it at least removed underground fuel tanks and undertook remediation of the water tables at each of them. In a classic of militarist hypocrisy, General B. B. Bell, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, responded, “It is fair to say that we loved this land and its people enough to die for it. To state now that we have been irresponsible stewards of Korean land, while standing side by side with you, is a charge that hurts my
