Barney Frank has proposed cutting European allies’ military aid in order to reduce the total military budget by 25%. Frank has mentioned numerous European nations by name.
However, the U.S. actually provides very little military aid to Europe, as it turns out. According to U.S. Government statistics for 2009 which can be found at http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1299.pdf, all European nations combined received a total of $210 million (with a little “m” and not a “b”). The following nations were included in this calculation: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Congressman Frank will be relieved that Denmark and Italy are not among them.
However, if we look at the 2009 recipients of more than $100 million in aid, the top eight were: Afghanistan (5.7 billion), Israel (2.38 billion), Egypt (1.3), Pakistan (429 million), Jordan (238 million), all of Europe combined (201 million), and Somalia (102 million).
The United States maintains a network of over a thousand military bases in 150 countries. This is where the costs rack up. For example, Germany receives nothing besides rent for permitting the U.S. to maintain the Landstuhl military hospital and base. However, the U.S. is unlikely to shut down Landstuhl because this is where KIA and injured service members from the Middle East are sent before returning to the U.S. It serves no purpose to Germans. And as several years of wrangling with Iraq attests, the military does not willingly shut down bases and a “patriotic” Congress does not have the guts to force it to.
Some of the money allocated to Europe also goes toward the U.S. commitment to NATO. Long after the Cold War has ended and the Soviet Union was dismantled, we are still unwilling to give up those bases and dismantle our own Cold War club.
So it seems to hold true that whenever the U.S. goes to war, which is often, military infrastructure grows but is subsequently never permitted to be reduced.
Afghanistan represents 53% of all American military foreign aid. Israel gets 22%. The rest of U.S. allies get the remaining 25%. Congressman Frank has steadfastly refused to look at cuts for Israel, but clearly it’s a notable, politically-motivated exception. And the Obama Administration has asked the Congressional Research Service to prepare estimates of spending in Afghanistan until 2021, and we haven’t heard enough Democrats complaining about these plans.
If we are serious about reducing frivolous foreign military expenditures, we need to close useless bases, cut aid to countries inflated to excess by special interests, and get out of Afghanistan now and not in another decade. The rest of Congressman Frank’s ideas may have some merit, but it seems to me he’s no different from the rest of Congress: he only wants to go on a low-armaments diet if all he has to do is throw the maraschino cherry on the sundae away.
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