The Architecture of Environmental Externalization

Multi-Level Institutional Analysis of Environmental Governance in U.S. Overseas Military Bases

Faye Shen Li Thijssen

In this blogpost with OxCAN, Oxford alumna and the new Director of OxCAN's Climate Justice Working Group, Faye Shen Li Thijssen, interrogates how governance structures of overseas U.S. military bases systematically perpetuates environmental injustices across space, time, and political boundaries.

Military Bases, Environmental Governance, & Institutionalized Harm

United States overseas military bases operate as anomalous actors in environmental governance; powerful, centralized, insulated, and often structurally exempt, they function as globally replicated institutional forms that systematically externalize environmental costs across space, time, and political boundaries. The following analysis employs this example to explain how institutions can be designed such that environmental harm is predictable yet politically non-actionable.

To answer this, I draw on the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, which maps how institutional rules structure behavior across three interconnected levels: 1) constitutional, 2) collective-choice, and 3) operational. In this context, constitutional rules determine who has standing to make claims; collective-choice rules determine whether recognized problems trigger policy responses; and operational rules determine whether policies translate into everyday practice.

I. Constitutional-Level: Jurisdiction, Sovereignty, & Institutionalized Impunity

The ‘constitutional level’ describes the legal/political foundations of operation and participation. Overseas military bases represent a complex governance scenario of which the rules are more frequently outlined through Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs). These bilateral treaties formalize governing authority between the U.S. and host states, typically allocating primary jurisdiction to the United States. As a result, host-state authority to enforce domestic laws and regulations on U.S. bases is often limited or conditioned (often requiring U.S. military consent) [4, 5].

SOFAs rarely contain explicit, enforceable standards concerning the environment; when present, such obligations are often framed in general or voluntary terms rather than binding requirements. Cleanup standards, liability provisions, and enforcement mechanisms are frequently absent or legally ambiguous. Furthermore, host-state access for inspection or enforcement typically requires prior approval from U.S. authorities, and environmental data collection is controlled by U.S. military institutions [4, 5].

The result is a governance structure of jurisdictional fragmentation where no single authority has both the power to regulate and the incentive to do so; those with power are insulated from consequences while those experiencing consequences lack power. This fragmentation is not accidental. SOFAs are often institutional descendants of occupation-era legal frameworks. As Cooley [3] documents: “Many of the key nodes in the global network of US military bases are, in fact, enduring legacies of US empire or wartime occupation. In a range of base hosts, governments were only granted their sovereignty by acquiescing to codify an enduring American military presence.” The shift from occupation to alliance often did not fundamentally alter jurisdictional allocations but rather re-legitimized them through treaty form. Once established, these rules became embedded in broader security architectures, making them resistant to reform even as their environmental consequences became visible.

Reinforcing this, national security doctrine often authorizes exemptions from environmental regulatory regimes, justifies secrecy and classification, and produces deference to military judgment [2]. Constitutional rules thus structure governance which systematically deprioritizes and disempowers environmental protection.

II. Collective-Choice Level: Rule-Making, Expertise, & the Non-Decision

U.S. legislators operate on short electoral cycles and respond to discrete events. However, environmental harm from overseas bases is often a slow violence, occurring “gradually and out of sight” where causal chains are elusive and lack spectacle [7]. Effects accumulate slowly in soil, groundwater, and bodies, manifesting over generations among geographically distant populations. The result: “Most legislators simply want to get out at the lowest possible cost and leave the host country with the responsibility for future cleanup…This affects not only overseas base closures, but also ongoing operations abroad” [13]. Because policymakers in the U.S. are geographically, politically, and temporally removed from the presence of these environmental effects, overseas military pollution has low legislative salience, and collective-choice institutions default to deferral and ignorance rather than regulation.

Military institutions thus face inverse incentives. Compliance raises costs, while non-compliance is rarely penalized. The Institute for Policy Studies “asserted that the ‘DOD has exploited this lack of explicit obligation by conducting the absolute minimum of environmental restoration at overseas bases’” [1]. A 1991 GAO report examining ten overseas facilities found that the DOD “violated both host nation and U.S. environmental laws” at all ten, taking “only very limited corrective actions” despite some involving “extremely dangerous” toxic and explosive wastes [13]. Security framing further justifies inaction as claims that environmental regulation could interfere with military readiness function as a discursive veto, shifting disputes from legal forums to diplomatic negotiation [4].

Jurisdictional fragmentation embeds distance and disconnects between those experiencing harm and the incentives which guide decisionmakers, impeding routes of legal recourse for the host-state governments and communities. Without constitutional standing to monitor or collect data, host countries cannot generate the evidence needed to compel action: “without monitoring, there can be no credible commitment; without credible commitment, there is no reason to propose new rules” [8]. In Japan and the Philippines, the U.S. denied responsibility for cleanup and prevented investigation of toxic pollution, citing SOFA stipulations which absolved the military of responsibility for prevention, monitoring, notification, or cleanup [5]. Thus, even once harms become obvious/ salient in host-state communities (e.g. health implications) they are systematically excluded from the legal/political systems which could afford them power to translate these grievances into effective accountability and policy change.

Thus, delay thus becomes a governing strategy and harm accumulates without triggering decisive intervention. Fundamentally, the collective-choice arena of military environmental governance responds to pressure, not harm.

III. Operational Level: Routine Practice, Embodied Exposure, & Normalized Harm

In the context of military environmental governance, operational-level rules encompass matters such as daily waste handling, emissions practices, monitoring & enforcement.

When constitutional rules eliminate external oversight and collective-choice rules provide no sanctions, operational actors face no consequences for environmentally harmful practices. A report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction stated that even when provided with incinerators for proper waste disposal “ … many sat idle next to the active burn pits” [10]. At bases like the Clark Air Force Base and Subic Naval Base in the Philippines, routine oil spills, pesticide dispersion, and waste disposal cause cancers, respiratory problems, and skin disease in surrounding communities [5].

Crucially, U.S. military personnel are not ignorant of these harms—often suffering from the effects of environmental contamination themselves. Army veteran Dan Jentik described burn pits at U.S. bases in Iraq: “you just constantly saw the smoke or you smelled it, pretty much everyday, all day” [10]. But slow violence operates across a range of temporal scales where causes and effects become difficult to coordinate [7]. By the time cancers and pulmonary illnesses manifest years later, personnel are dispersed and attribution is legally murky.

Furthermore, many operational actors (i.e. veterans) may belong to marginalized communities once they return to the U.S. (e.g. disabled, unemployed, unhoused, etc.), further distancing them from access to avenues of feedback and systemic recourse. Indeed, although the VA attempted established a voluntary burn pit registry, of 12,000 claims filed, only about 2,500 have been accepted, and a victims’ lawsuit against contractors was rejected by the Supreme Court [10].

Ultimately, when feedback and accountability is systematically blocked across multiple levels of power, harmful practices become routinized in operational behavior.

Conclusion: Military Bases as a Relational Institutional System of Environmental Harm

Constitutional rules allocate authority away from those who experience harm and toward those insulated from consequences. Inaction is institutionalized through the interaction between slow forms of violence and collective-choice procedures, preventing binding responses even when harm becomes visible. Operational rules normalize exposure, producing contamination as a routine byproduct while feedback mechanisms are systematically absent. These levels reinforce each other: when host states lack standing, legislators face no pressure. When monitoring is restricted, collective-choice actors lack information to justify intervention, enabling operational negligence. As a result, environmental costs are continuously externalized onto populations with minimal political capacity to resist while benefits accrue to powerful state actors who remain insulated from consequences [11].

The environmental governance of overseas U.S. military bases does not fail according to the priorities of those privileged with decision-making power; basing arrangements are exemplary cases of how institutions function when designed to serve concentrated interests at the expense of dispersed populations who lack the power to demand otherwise. 

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Faye is a PhD student in Environmental Social & Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, specializing in environmental governance and policy, institutional and organizational behavior. She holds an MPhil in Politics (Comparative Government) from Oxford and a BA in international relations and environmental studies from Tufts University. Faye is Director of the Climate Justice Working Group at OxCAN.

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Endnotes

1. Atherton, Kelsey D. 2021. “U.S. Forces Are Leaving a Toxic Environmental Legacy in Afghanistan.” Scientific American, August 30, 2021. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-forces-are-leaving-a-toxic-environmental-legacy-in-afghanistan/

2. Bayoneto, M. V. (1994). The Former U.S. Bases in the Philippines: An Argument for the Application of U.S. Environmental Standards to Overseas Military Bases. Fordham Environmental Law Journal, 6(1), 111–155. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44174215

3. Cooley, A. (2015). “Foreign bases, sovereignty and nation building after empire: the United States in comparative perspective.” In S. Halperin & R. Palan (eds.), Legacies of Empire: Imperial Roots of the Contemporary Global Order, 173–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4. Draper, Randon H. 2004. “Attacking Military Environmental Cleanup on Foreign Soil: Should CERCLA Principles Apply?” Buffalo Environmental Law Journal 12: 53 (Fall).

5. Masafumi, Y., et al. 2009. “Environmental Problems and Governance of U.S. Military Bases in East Asia.” Asia Pacific Journal.

6. McGinnis, Michael D. 2011. “An Introduction to IAD and the Language of the Ostrom Workshop: A Simple Guide.” Policy Studies Journal 39 (1): 169–183.

7. Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Chapters 1–2). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

8. Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9. Ostrom, Elinor. 2011. “Background on the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework.” Policy Studies Journal 39 (1): 7–27.

10. Peterson, Barry. 2019. “Thousands of Veterans Fear ‘Burn Pits’ Exposed Them to Lethal Disease.” CBS News, August 22, 2019. www.cbsnews.com/news/burn-pit-military-lung-disease-thousands-of-veterans-fear-burn-pits-exposed-them-to-lethal-disease-2019-08-17/

11. Robbins, Paul. 2012. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

12. Schlager, Edella. 2002. “Rationality, Cooperation, and Common-Pool Resources.” American Behavioral Scientist 45 (5): 801–819.

13. Wegman, Richard A., and Harold G. Bailey, Jr. 1994. “The Challenge of Cleaning Up Military Wastes When U.S. Bases Are Closed.” Ecology Law Quarterly 21 (4): 865–913.

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