ABSTRACT
This article demonstrates that nothing so reveals the human security deficits resulting from dependence on armed forces for national security as long-term military presence. The stationing of military personnel and equipment in the thousands of military bases maintained by the great military powers has been costly to the powers and more so to the peoples of the foreign lands. The majority of these are American bases, several of which occupy a large percentage of the formerly agricultural lands of Okinawa. A worldwide anti-base movement has opened discussion on whose security is actually served by this global network of military bases, a question essential to any assessment of militarized state security.
