Economic Crisis Shakes US Forces Overseas: The Price of Base Expansion in Okinawa and Guam

Extract

On August 31, President Obama delivered a speech from the White House. Because he was expected to declare the end of the Iraqi war, the entire nation focused its attention on the content to the speech. ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom is over. … We have spent over a trillion dollars on this war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.… Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work’. It marked the beginning of a new era, and under other circumstances this speech would have impressed people. The president, however looked troubled, and the atmosphere was gloomy – hardly the context for a forward-looking policy announcement; this was largely due to the severity of the economic crisis the US currently faces.