From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.inka.de)
Date: Fri Jan 24 2003 - 16:46:31 MST
Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com> wrote:
> Being from a penny-pinching political tradition myself,
> I had always suspected that the U.S. bases were profitable
> things to have around economically. Surely it was true
> right after the war. Is it still true?
On a local scale, yes. This is comparable to a big corporation
maintaining a manufacturing plant. It provides some jobs directly
and more so indirectly because of contractors, suppliers, etc. Add
to this the fact that military bases are usually located in undeveloped
areas with little industry. Soldiers occasionally leave their base
and spend some money, and there may be off-base housing. It can
provide quite an economic stimulus to a poor rural area.
When the French and British forces left Germany and the American
ones were scaled back substantially, there were some long faces on
the county level. This doesn't make a blip in the overall economy,
but it can be quite noticeable locally. The same applies to native
military facilities too, of course. Just watch the reaction in the
USA when a military installation is closed there.
In fact the papers around here--Ramstein Air Base is some 70km
off--complain that with the looming or at least perceived threat
of terrorism, the American forces are conspicuously laying off
German civilian employees and replacing them with Americans.
(This speaks volumes about the relationship of the US military to
the local population. The terms "trust" and "friendship", so
frequently employed on the political level, don't feature too highly,
I guess. Back when I was listening to AFN, it displayed a sort of
siege mentality, too.)
> why do the Europeans permit American bases there?
Treaties, NATO, long-term leases, ongoing expression of goodwill,
no pressing reason to get rid of them. Given the current political
climate, they aren't exactly a threat.
-- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
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