Inquiry Into U.S. Cost and Allied Contributions to Support the U.S. Military Presence Overseas

The United States spends more than $10 billion a year to support our permanent militarypresence overseas. And that does not include military personnel costs or spending to support thewar in Afghanistan.Nearly 70 percent of that $10 billion is spent in Germany, the Republic of Korea, and Japan. The fact that such a high percentage of our overseas spending involves those three countries is not surprising. Germany is among our most important partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance President Obama has rightly called "indispensable to global security and prosperity." The U.S. - Japan alliance is, and will continue to be, a cornerstone of our engagement in the Asia Pacific region. And our alliance with the Republic of Korea is central to both our strategic interests in the Asia Pacific and our ability to deal with the unpredictable and frequently aggressive behavior of the North Korean regime.Major U.S. force posture initiatives are either underway or under consideration that willdefine our relationship with NATO and our allies and partners in the Asia Pacific for decades tocome. As we renew our commitments to these critical relationships, we must also look for waysto support our strategic goals while avoiding excessive and unsustainable costs. With that inmind, the Senate Armed Services Committee conducted a review of certain costs associated withU.S. military presence in Germany and the Asia Pacific, including how the burden of costs isshared between the U.S. and our allies, the impact of planned posture changes on those costs, and the spending and oversight of foreign government payments - particularly in-kind payments used for military construction projects. (U.S. burden-sharing agreements with Korea and Japan both include in-kind payments. In addition payments from the German government to compensate the United States for improvements made to facilities on U.S. bases in Germany are almost exclusively in-kind.) The Committee's review identified a number of concerns which aresummarized below.