U.S. territories are retained mainly to host military bases

Evidence

Even more relevant for the purposes of calculating the base nation’s bill, as Dancs points out, is the fact that “the United States retains territories … primarily for the purposes of the military and projecting military power.” As we have seen, since World War II the government has largely hung on to this collection of islands because they’re home to critical bases like Andersen Air Force Base on Guam and the Saipan and Tinian bases in the Northern Marianas. Given this fact, one could reasonably regard all the federal spending in each territory as the cost of maintaining bases and troops there. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 614

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader accounting-methodology literature on hidden costs of empire and military basing that the reader is assembling.