Racial Hierarchy and Jurisdiction in U.S. Status of Forces Agreements

• In Event: Race and International Relations

Abstract

American extraterritorial law is decried as a relic of empire by host countries contending for greater influence over U.S. personnel on their soil. Despite caution against Washington’s unequal policy toward non-European host “peripheries,” the literature has yet to invoke an empirical theory of jurisdiction in status agreements. Even fewer works consider the ways U.S. SOFAs encode and reflect the structural inequalities endemic in domestic life. Heeding its historically imperial application, U.S. extraterritoriality and the politics of status may well be drawn along the color line. My supposition is developed by examining SOFA jurisdiction as a pattern of bias in favor of majority-white host countries. Attempts to delegate legal status and rights to host governments, I argue, are conditioned by notions of state capacity that implicate and project U.S. racial order. Using data on jurisdiction provisions, I test and find support for this argument. The United States imposes concurrent jurisdiction to govern its interactions with predominantly European host states, allowing these peer countries to try US personnel, while withholding this same right from most non-European host partners, ceteris paribus. The findings hold implications for understanding status as a ubiquitous feature of U.S. defense partnerships and the structural biases that permeate its study and practice.

Author

• Bianca Freeman, University of California, San Diego