Outpost bases is an ancient and efficient strategy of helping keep fires in another area from blowing up and spreading to your homeland. It is a lot cheaper to have a presence in South Korea, for example than letting a massive regional war erupt and eventually reach us.
From what I have read with the whole NKorea/SKorea thing that battle would pretty much be started and ended in a few hours with Seoul in ashes and NKorea a glass parkinglot. This is before we can even get a plane in the air. In past wars/conflicts an outposts main job was to communicate the current situation to a central intellegence, is that as critical now that information can travel from one end of the world to another in moments?
Kinda' like when my wife tells me how much money she saved by buying things we don't need because they were on sale! We have nukes and drones that can spread a lot of pain to the enemy in a short time-frame WITHOUT boots on the ground....and we have new delivery systems that can get them there within hours not days. SEND ALL OUR TROOPS HOME AND PUT THEM ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER!