Painting Bullseyes: What Iran’s Attacks on US Bases Mean for the Indo-Pacific

The United States maintains the world’s largest overseas military basing presence, with as many as 750 installations in 80 countries. Most recently, U.S. bases and bases to which the U.S. military has access in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have become the targets of Iranian attacks, in retaliation for U.S. strikes on the country. These attacks have not only resulted in the deaths of several U.S. soldiers, but have impacted local residents in proximity to the bases and pushed others to question the necessity of the U.S. bases entirely. 

Analysts have speculated about what these attacks and the subsequent damages to the bases might mean for U.S. basing in the region, including potential base closures. 

But what does Iran’s targeting of U.S. bases and the resulting destruction mean for the rest of the 80 countries that host the U.S. military? This is an especially salient question for the host countries in the Indo-Pacific, where the specter of a U.S.-China confrontation looms large and U.S. security partners in the region maintain some of the largest troop deployments in the world, with Japan and South Korea hosting the largest and third largest deployments, respectively. 

The attacks in the Middle East have raised anxieties elsewhere, as residents of communities near U.S. bases the world over worry about becoming the target of external aggression. In the wake of Iran’s attacks, for instance, some Philippine policymakers have expressed concerns that by providing the U.S. with basing access, the Philippine government is “effectively painting bullseyes on Filipino soil” vis-à-vis China. 

Such concerns are not new in the Indo-Pacific, although the events in the Middle East may make the prospects of U.S. bases serving as targets more tangible to citizens in the host countries in the region. Peace and anti-base activists have long claimed that one potential negative externality for the communities hosting U.S. bases is that the bases and the community surrounding them may be targeted by U.S. enemies or those of the host nation. 

In Okinawa, Japan, for example, peace activists have argued that the disproportionately large U.S. base presence in the prefecture would make Okinawa “the first place for an enemy to attack.” This narrative has only grown louder as tensions between the U.S. and China, particularly over the nearby Taiwan Strait, have increased. In South Korea, one of the concerns regarding the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in 2017 was that it would make the host village of Soseong “one of the first targets of attack” if there was conflict between the U.S. and North Korea and/or China. 

Narratives that describe the U.S. bases as dangerous to the communities which host them are part of the wider non-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon that several scholars have noted. While citizens in the countries that host U.S. bases may generally support their country’s security alliance with the U.S., they are typically more reticent to bear the burdens of the potential negative consequences of the bases by hosting them in their community. Other potential NIMBY-related consequences range from accidents and crimes related to the U.S. troop presence to environmental degradation such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances contamination and more quotidian issues such as base-related traffic jams and noise pollution. As with the narratives claiming that hosting a U.S. military presence will make the community a potential target of an external attack, peace and anti-base activists draw attention to these potential negative externalities as well. When activists characterize the U.S. military presence in ways that are more tangible to citizens, such as these NIMBY-related issues, they tend to be more effective at rallying anti-base protests than, for example, making pacifist and nationalistic claims.

Of course, activists’ messages and even anti-U.S.-base protests do not directly translate into general public opinion about hosting U.S. military bases. A 14-country survey administered in the 2010s found that citizens in most of these U.S. base-hosting countries had mostly positive or neutral opinions about the U.S. military presence in their country. The four host countries in the Indo-Pacific included in the study (Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea) were no different, with 76 percent of Filipino respondents having very or somewhat favorable attitudes (the highest of the 14 countries), 52 percent in South Korea, and 50 percent in Australia. The rate was just 34 percent in Japan, but this was still higher than the neutral and very or somewhat unfavorable attitudes among Japanese respondents. 

A larger survey conducted this year after the onset of the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict paints perhaps a more sobering picture, with respondents in most U.S. host countries in the survey having a net negative opinion of hosting U.S. troops. However, in these same Indo-Pacific host countries, arguably the key U.S. security partners in the region, public opinion about the U.S. bases remains among the highest, with South Korea and Japan recording net 14 and net 2 positive opinions of hosting U.S. bases, respectively. Respondents in the Philippines (-2) and Australia (-18) held more positive or undecided views combined than negative ones.

Taken together these patterns reveal a few points about what is happening in the Indo-Pacific host countries regarding protests against and public opinion about U.S. military bases following the onset of the conflict in Iran and Iran’s retaliatory attacks on U.S. installations in the region. 

First, peace activists in the Indo-Pacific, and likely in other regions outside the Middle East such as Europe, will increasingly problematize the U.S. bases as “drawing a target” on the base-hosting communities. As a scholar who recently conducted fieldwork on anti-U.S.-base activism in South Korea, I heard this narrative from several activists. 

Second, this framing may be convincing to host nation citizens, as the recent attacks on the bases in the Middle East show that this threat is both credible and tangible. 

Even if this framing has become more convincing, it may not necessarily translate into more support for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in these Indo-Pacific host countries or closure of U.S. bases. This is especially true for host countries such as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia, which have, in recent years, been more aligned with the U.S. than China, particularly on security issues and perspectives on the regional order. However, this may be a bigger concern for Indo-Pacific countries which are trying to be politically and militarily equidistant from both the U.S. and China, in the event of a militarized conflict between the two superpowers. Additionally, as relayed to me by one interviewee, it may increase public support for developing indigenous military capability, including nuclear weapons, even for long-time U.S. allies.