Assessing America's Overseas Military Presence

Since World War II, the United States has relied on a global network of military bases and forces to protect its interests and those of its allies. But the international environment has changed greatly over the decades, and economic concerns have risen, leading some to debate just what America's role should now be in the world. This monograph addresses one aspect of this debate by introducing a new analytical approach to defining future U.S. military presence overseas. It does so by first considering U.S. global security interests, then focusing on specific threats to them in East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. With that, the researchers designed a menu of global postures based on different strategic perspectives. They evaluated the global postures in terms of their operational performance and then compared them in terms of their associated U.S. Air Force bases, combat forces, active-duty personnel, and base operating costs. These analyses offer insights on the critical strategic choices that policymakers need to address and that the public needs to debate as they consider future overseas U.S. military presence. Among these choices are for the United States to depend more on its allies, rely more on U.S. based military forces, focus its presence more on East Asia or on the Middle East, or retain its current overseas presence in the face of expanding threats. Those involved in debates on the future global U.S. posture will need to make explicit their implicit underlying perspectives on what role overseas military presence can play in achieving U.S. global security interests.