Nancy Gaarder

MAGA calls Europe freeloaders. Here’s what they’re not telling you. ​1. Ramstein Air Base, the most important US military hub outside America, is built on German land provided rent-free, with Germany contributing hundreds of millions to its upkeep. The US couldn’t replace it anywhere in the world. 2. Every US military operation in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia flows through Ramstein. Lose it and US power projection in the Eastern Hemisphere is crippled. 3. The UK provides and maintains RAF Lakenheath used almost entirely by the US Air Force. Italy provides Aviano. Greece provides Souda Bay. Turkey provides Incirlik. European land. European infrastructure. American operations. 4. The US Sixth Fleet depends entirely on European ports for fuel and supplies. Souda Bay, Naples, 11 Greek ports. Without them the Sixth Fleet cannot operate in the Mediterranean or project power into the Middle East. 5. The majority of NATO’s intelligence and surveillance capacity is hosted on European soil and fed directly to the CIA, NSA and Pentagon. 6. Early warning radar at Fylingdales, UK. Missile tracking in Greenland. Norwegian monitoring stations near Russia. All dependent on European goodwill. 7. It would cost America MORE to bring the troops home than keep them here. European hosts subsidise roughly a third of all basing costs. 8. Europe is America’s largest arms customer. Stop buying American and part of their defence industry goes bankrupt. 9. The bases aren’t charity. They’re America using European soil, European money and European goodwill to project power across the world. 10. We’re not the freeloaders.