Grassroots challenges to military power

The traditional way of looking at players in international security relations often ignores or leaves out many players. This leads to an underestimation of power in the study of international relations which then leads to traditional policy analysts being "suprised" when the player they ignored shifts the policy outcome. An example of this is how the villagers in Daechuri have protested to save their farms/village from the expansion of US Camp Humphreys. Even though the villagers did end up leaving their homes, they got more compensation money and land and caused enough noise and attention to get the government (both South Korea and the US) to take another look at their expansion plans. International relations analysts who only look at major players within governments and ignore small, often politically invisible groups were suprised to see how a small village of farmers were able to find enough of a voice to eventualy be heard.

Power "on the margins" should not be ignored. Of course, there are groups of people who do not really care about how their country is interacting with other countries because those interactions do not effect them. But once a government or group tries to exploit or disturb the marginalized group, the marginalized group will react to try to save their way of life. When that happens, the marginalized group gets the attention of the group in power and usually (hopefully) saves their way of life from destruction. It is dangerous for the groups in power to continuously marginalize other groups becasue once one group is marginalized, its easier to rationalize marginalizing another group and another, and eventually the group in power has created enough marginalized groups to band together and take back power. Disenfranchizing groups and ingoring others makes it difficult to get the full understanding of the issues and factors that build international security relations, and underestimating even one factor can lead to very unfortunate and dangerous circumstances. But very country ignores some groups, so it is diffucult to ever fully understand the motives behind foreign relations.