Closing overseas bases yields immediate and long-term fiscal savings
Evidence
Closing Cold War bases built for a much larger military would lead to both immediate and long-term savings. The possibility of canceling billions in base construction, operations, and maintenance contracts is a good reminder that there are immediate savings available by reducing troop deployments and bases abroad. As we have seen, bringing troops and base spending back to the United States will mean stemming the leakage of money out of the U.S. economy and ensuring that economic spillover effects remain at home. In many cases, too, host nations will actually pay us for infrastructure we vacate. When we leave, we should assist in the work of cleaning up the environmental damage we caused; beyond that, we should properly consider residual value payments a peace dividend, rather than money to be funneled back into the base nation or the larger military budget. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1070
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
Related
- Host nations pay the US for vacated base infrastructure (similarity 0.87)
- Base closures abroad tend to be offset by new base construction elsewhere (similarity 0.85)
- Overseas bases generate dependent communities that resist closure (similarity 0.81)
- Base closures rarely cause the catastrophic economic damage communities fear (similarity 0.81)
- Career incentives lead officials to keep overseas bases open (similarity 0.81)
- Troop salaries spent abroad leak economic benefit out of the US economy (similarity 0.81)
- Post-Cold War U.S. base closures did not damage Germany’s overall economy (similarity 0.80)
- Overseas bases make war more likely by lowering its cost (similarity 0.80)
- Bush-era plans closed more bases than any period since the Cold War ended (similarity 0.80)
- US overseas bases make war more likely by easing military action (similarity 0.79)
- Base closures show no measurable harm to surrounding community economies (similarity 0.79)
- Base closures have no significant or lasting regional economic impact (similarity 0.79)
- New U.S. bases trigger large aid increases; closures trigger large aid cuts. (similarity 0.79)
- US overseas base footprint is shrinking after budget cuts (similarity 0.79)
- Overseas bases spawn self-perpetuating communities dependent on their continued operation (similarity 0.79)