Overseas basing costs more than domestic basing despite host-nation support

Evidence

In 2013, Hoehn’s RAND Corporation finally did a calculation. A nearly five-hundred-page study of overseas bases showed that “despite substantial host-nation financial and in-kind support, stationing forces and maintaining bases overseas produces higher direct financial costs than basing forces in the United States.” In Europe, for example, the Air Force’s estimated average annual cost just for running a base (before adding the costs of having any personnel there) is more than $200 million. That’s more than double the costs of an Air Force base in the United States. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 598

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing work on how infrastructure and military presence impose hidden long-term costs, similar to the tree-as-infrastructure piece about overlooked cumulative effects.