Humanitarian and counternarcotics spending function as bases-related costs omitted from official tallies
Evidence
Although the OCS must report the costs of all military operations overseas, I confirmed with the Pentagon that it omits around $550 million for counternarcotics operations. It also excludes the money spent on humanitarian and civic aid. Some of the humanitarian aid can be considered truly nonmilitary, but as a budget document explains, humanitarian operations crucially help “maintain a robust overseas presence” and obtain “access to regions important to U.S. interests.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 635
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: Clarifies how humanitarian aid counts as a hidden basing expenditure.
Related
- Official overseas military cost reports omit hundreds of millions in allied spending (similarity 0.91)
- Humanitarian military aid functions partly to maintain overseas base access. (similarity 0.90)
- The Overseas Cost Summary omits entire categories of overseas spending (similarity 0.82)
- Congress excludes all war-funded base costs from official overseas tallies. (similarity 0.82)
- Official war appropriations exclude huge unacknowledged costs like veterans care and interest (similarity 0.81)
- Official overseas base cost figures exclude all war-zone maintenance spending (similarity 0.80)
- Pentagon spending in Honduras spiked to record levels after the coup. (similarity 0.79)
- Official base cost tallies exclude billions in classified overseas programs (similarity 0.78)
- Official Pentagon spending figures on overseas bases are underestimates. (similarity 0.78)
- Independent estimates put overseas base costs tenfold above the Pentagon’s figure (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Official war spending figures omit billions in unacknowledged costs
#expands(0.85) — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 645