A key GOP senator warned Monday that President Trump should not try to make U.S. allies pay a premium for hosting American forces on bases overseas.
“The fact that we can operate in these countries is a good thing,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told the Washington Examiner. “It’s not something that I’d be pushing.”
Trump has demanded that allies spend more money on collective defense since the 2016 campaign, an effort that Johnson supports. The Wisconsin Republican, who chairs the Foreign Relations subcommittee for Europe, drew the line at requiring countries that host U.S. bases to pay a large fee in addition to reimbursing the full costs of the deployments.
“We need to value countries that allow us to station troops there,” he said.
That warning came in response to reports that Trump, who is trying to negotiate a deal to have South Korea shoulder more of the costs for the U.S. forces stationed on the peninsula, wants South Korea to reimburse the Pentagon entirely and add a 50 percent fee. The “Cost Plus 50” formula “has sent shock waves through the departments of Defense and State,” according to Bloomberg, which first reported the plan.
“South Korea has been spending an awful lot and they are contributing an awful lot toward the defense, so I wouldn’t think there’s much we could criticize there,” said Johnson, who added that he hadn’t been briefed on the proposal.
Trump’s national security team declined to comment on the formula. “Getting allies to increase their investment in our collective defense and ensure fairer burden-sharing has been a long-standing U.S. goal,” Garrett Marquis, the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said as he touted increased defense spending by members of NATO. “The Administration is committed to getting the best deal for the American people elsewhere too, but will not comment on any ongoing deliberations regarding specific ideas.”
Johnson agreed that “the Trump administration gets too much criticism from pushing our allies domestically and internationally,” but he warned the president not to take a purely transactional approach to the alliances.
“I want reciprocal treatment, but I also want to make sure that we fully value our friendships, our alliances, fully value the loss of life that their sons and daughters have provided supporting [the United States in Afghanistan],” Johnson said. “You have to look at the whole picture. It’s not just about money.”
