Why America's Military Base Structure Cannot Be Reduced

Abstract

The U.S. military base structure comprises 5,600 bases and installations around the world and occupies 24 million acres in the United States alone. ' It was established during World War II, and its retention was justified after the war by the possibility of a similar conflict. Today, however, it is both too large and inappropriate to military realities. Nevertheless, despite the improbability of another world war fought by conventional forces, the training camps, technical centers, headquarters facilities, and supply depots established during the war remain largely intact.2 The current military base structure imposes two kinds of costs on the American public: opportunity costsi.e., the sacrifice of any better or higher uses to which these millions of acres of real estate could be put-and, excess operating costs. These costs are somewhat conjectural, but unquestionably large. If, for example, we could allocate the two million of these acres with the highest market values to their best alternative economic uses without harming the national defense, we could reduce the opportunity cost of maintaining the existing base structure by at least $35 billion and perhaps by as much as $90 billion.3 Excess bases must also be operated and cared for. The President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (commonly known as the Grace Commission after its chairman, J. Peter Grace) concluded in 1983 that a ten-percent reduction in the existing military base structure could reduce outlays for operations by $2 billion per year4-which implies a discounted present value of approximately $20 billion. This conclusion has been confirmed by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and endorsed by knowledgeable officials in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).5