Since the end of the Cold War, scholarly interest in the global U.S. military presence has mushroomed. Claudia Kim's Base Towns, focused on Japan and South Korea, makes an important and original contribution to this undertaking. By emphasizing 'the primacy of the local,' Kim argues persuasively that pragmatic considerations take precedence over ideology or international politics in shaping relations between U.S. military garrisons abroad and nearby
communities.
Claudia Junghyun Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at City University of Hong Kong. She has written about U.S. military bases overseas, social and transnational movements, global norms, and Korean and Japanese politics. From 2019-2020, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations.