Imperial Relations? Hierarchy and Contemporary Base Politics

The prevailing assumption in discussions of foreign military basing is that such presences are hierarchical in nature. Though this was unavoidably the case prior to the Second World War, changes in the normative framework of international politics mean that such presences’ relationship to hierarchy has become an empirical question. Specifically, changes in sovereignty norms and the emergence of territorial and jurisdictional integrity render the linkage between foreign military basing and hierarchy contingent. As a result, some basing arrangements’ dynamics now closely resemble those of other interstate agreements. This analysis regrounds hierarchy in the specific normative context of action and in doing so highlights the implicit reification of the state in contemporary security studies. In practical terms, it shows how assuming hierarchy both overestimates the fragility of the US basing network and, by exaggerating authority relations, obscures the potential for greater fluidity in the basing space.