By Amy Austin Holmes
Cambridge University Press, June 2014
Over the past century, the United States has created a global network of
military bases. While the force structure offers protection to U.S.
allies, it maintains the threat of violence toward others, both creating
and undermining security. Amy Austin Holmes argues that the
relationship between the U.S. military presence and the non-U.S.
citizens under its security umbrella is inherently contradictory. She
suggests that the while the host population may be fully enfranchised
citizens of their own government, they are at the same time
disenfranchised vis-à-vis the U.S. presence. This study introduces the
concept of the “protectariat” as they are defined not by their
relationship to the means of production, but rather by their
relationship to the means of violence. Focusing on Germany and Turkey,
Holmes finds remarkable parallels in the types of social protest that
occurred in both countries, particularly non-violent civil disobedience,
labor strikes of base workers, violent attacks and kidnappings, and
opposition parties in the parliaments.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: the global American military presence in comparative perspective
2. Social unrest and the American military presence in Turkey during the Cold War
3. Social unrest and the American military presence in Germany during the Cold War
4. From shield to sword: the end of the Cold War to the invasion of Iraq
5. Conclusion: losing ground.
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