[runnerup]

It’s the least objectionable place for the money to go but that’s actually rather shrewd. I assume that if the military did not pay for those creature comforts that morale would suffer and operational readiness / effectiveness would be reduced.

If foreign bases don’t have fun things to do then maybe younger siblings won’t enlist without more expensive bonuses. Or maybe the unmotivated soldiers won’t go the extra mile while maintaining vehicles. Or the infantry will leave the boring-ass base and fraternize at popular military “companion” bars and come back with STDs and get into fights with locals, losing some of the military’s license to operate bases as freely in that nation.

The military would have to spend some of this money anyways if it wasn’t coming out of the soldiers own pockets.