[CPEO-MEF] GLOBAL, CLOSURE: Downsizing overseas

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Breaking Down Bases

By John Feffer
World Beat
November 1, 2011

It has been like a cross between a suspense and a horror movie. If  
the committee doesn’t come up with a compromise by the Thanksgiving  
deadline, the axes will come out. Perhaps only Washington insiders  
appreciate the suspense. As for the horror part, the blood will flow  
only later and largely out of sight of the cameras.

...

If you dig deep enough, though, you can find some stirrings of  
bipartisanship, at least in the Senate. Our elected representatives  
are desperate to find cuts in military spending that won’t lead to  
job loss among their constituents. Weapons systems, however old- 
fashioned or redundant, at least keep assembly lines humming. But one  
cut would not compromise employment at home: U.S. overseas bases.

...

To be fair, we must also note the other side of the ledger sheet. Our  
allies provide host-nation support that offsets the cost of our  
military presence overseas, though this figure amounts to only about  
$8 billion in direct and indirect support (and most of that from  
Japan). Even if we demobilize 50,000 soldiers of the 150,000  
stationed overseas, we need to consider the costs of job retraining  
at home. And if we close bases overseas, we can’t simply stick our  
host nations with the full bill for cleaning up those sites (although  
that’s precisely what we did in the case of the Philippines, where we  
closed the Clark and Subic bases in the 1990s and didn’t cover the  
estimated $50 million in environmental clean-up costs).

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.fpif.org/articles/bases_on_the_dock

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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