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Associated Press

Five years ago, Hillary Clinton made a little-noticed deal obligating Japan to continue paying nearly US$2 billion a year to help defray the cost of US troops stationed on its territory.
The money is used to build housing and training areas for US forces, pay wages to thousands of Japanese workers on US bases and supply water and power.
They do not pay us. But they should be paying us
Donald Trump
The payments, which began in 1978 and are considered a pillar of the post-war US-Japanese alliance, cover about a third or more of the cost of keeping 49,000 US troops in Japan.
The five-year extension was disclosed in a communique after closed-door talks in June 2011 between Clinton and Japanese officials at the State Department. Clinton didn’t announce the deal, but the payments were never a secret.
Despite that history, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has insisted repeatedly that Japan and other US allies contribute little or nothing to the United States for their defence.

“They do not pay us. But they should be paying us, because we are providing tremendous service and we’re losing a fortune,” Trump said in his recent debate with Clinton.
The Pentagon spends an estimated US$10 billion a year on overseas bases. More than 70 per cent of the total is spent in Japan, Germany and South Korea, where most US troops abroad are permanently stationed.
In return, the Pentagon receives various forms of compensation from the host countries, like rent-free real estate for the bases and cash payments to offset US costs.
Trump’s attacks on allies as freeloaders is core to his political message that the US is being outmanoeuvred by both friends and adversaries overseas.

“Can we drive a better bargain in some cases? Yeah, and [US officials] are always negotiating,” said Barry Pavel, a former Pentagon official who now is vice-president of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank that supports NATO and other US alliances.
“But we gain the most out of these alliances because it helps keep threats much farther from our shores than they otherwise would be,” he said.
In Asia, said Zach Cooper, a security expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a non-partisan Washington think tank, Trump’s suggestion on the campaign trail that he might withdraw US troops or not help allies in a crisis is generating unease among allies.
“Japan and South Korea already pay large amounts to host US forces on their soil,” he said. “Trump’s comments make it more likely that competitors will escalate crises into conflicts, and that US allies will develop their own independent defensive capabilities, which could increase the danger of nuclear proliferation in Asia and elsewhere.”
It’s difficult to make exact comparisons of “host nation support,” as the Pentagon calls contributions from allies, because assistance comes in different forms and the Pentagon doesn’t provide an accounting. An annual Defence Department report tallying foreign contributions was halted in 2004.
Especially opaque are contributions from allies in the Middle East. The Pentagon maintains large permanent bases in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, but those countries keep details of their military relations with the US shielded from public view.

In Germany, where the US has 38,000 troops and dozens of bases, compensation from Berlin is largely indirect. It includes tax waivers and rent-free use of facilities as well as construction of roads and other infrastructure in communities where installations are located.
Japan has been one of the most generous hosts of US forces, although its willingness to pay has waned lately.
Tokyo’s payments grew steadily for the first 20 years of the funding agreements, peaking at more than US$2.5 billion a year in 2000.
But the support has dropped in the last decade due to budget pressures in Tokyo and domestic opposition in Japan to the US military presence, especially on the island of Okinawa, home to more than half the US troops in Japan.
Japan has agreed to pay as much as US$12 billion to build a new US base on Okinawa for thousands of Marines now at the US installation in the town of Futenma. But that project has been repeatedly delayed by local opposition.

Those pressures would make it difficult for Trump to fulfil his vow to force Japan to pay more money, experts say.
Under the 2011 agreement, Tokyo agreed to continue paying just under US$2 billion a year. But the deal also called for a “phased reduction” in Japan’s contribution to utilities and workers’ salaries on US bases.
The 1953 US-South Korea defence treaty allowed the Pentagon to station troops there. But with the country devastated by war, the US paid the bills.
In 1966, Seoul agreed to provide “all facilities” to the US military at no cost, with the Pentagon picking up “all expenditures” for keeping troops there.
But in 1991, after the South Korean economy had grown into one of the world’s largest, Seoul agreed to start picking up more of the expenses of the US military presence.

The most recent agreement, signed in 2014, increased South Korea’s contribution to more than US$800 million a year. That’s equal to about half the annual cost of the 28,500 US troops stationed there, according to Pentagon officials, not including personnel costs that the Defence Department would have to pay no matter where the troops were posted.
The money doesn’t go to Washington, however.
It’s used to pay salaries of Koreans working on US bases or is in the form of non-cash contributions of services and construction at the installations, according to Army Gen. Vincent Brooks, the commander of US troops in Korea.
South Korea also is funding most of a US$10.8 billion construction project that will allow U.S. troops to move from bases near Seoul and the Demilitarised Zone along the border with North Korea to new installations farther south.


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The US Futenma Marines air base in Ginowan on Okinawa, Japan. Photo: Reuters

FILE - In this Monday, Sept. 26, 2016, file photo, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump answers a question during the presidential debate with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. The United States isn’t exactly the economic doormat that Trump decries in his campaign rhetoric. America has outperformed other advanced economies and ranks among the world’s most competitive countries. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

(101203) -- TOKYO, Dec. 3, 2010 (Xinhua) -- Members of U.S. and Japan army attend the opening ceremony of the U.S.-Japan joint military exercise in Sasebo Base in Sasebo, southwestern Japan, Dec. 3, 2010. Following straight on the heels of similar drills held in the Yellow Sea between the U.S. and South Korea, the drills in Japan, which will run for eight days at bases across Japan and in the air and on waters around them and are being called the "Keen Sword" drills will involve more than 34,000 Japanese and 10,000 American troops. (Xinhua/Kyodo) (cl)

Qatar

US marines move to a position after a landing during a joint US-South Korea military exercise at Mallipo beach in Taean, 170km southwest of Seoul, 30 March 2006. Thousands of US and South Korea troops launched 25 March, week-long war games amid strong protests from North Korea at what Pyongyang calls a warm-up for nuclear attack on the communist state. AFP PHOTO/KIM JAE-HWAN

A South Korean protester holds an anti-war sign as a police officer, right, stands guard during a rally denouncing the annual joint military exercises, dubbed Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, between South Korea and the United States, near the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, March 5, 2013. South Korean and U.S. troops has kicked off their annual drills, exercise Foal Eagle from March 1 to April 30 and exercise Key Resolve from March 11 to 21. The Korean letters read "Stop the joint military exercises, dubbed Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, between South Korea and the United States." (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

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