The Role of Forward Presence in U.S. Military Strategy by Dave Shunk, Charles Hornick and Dan Burkhar - Military Review
As the United States considers changes to its military forces and global force posture, decision makers should fully appreciate the historic role and continued relevance of the joint forces’ forward presence. Since the end of World War II, the United States has maintained a global forward presence, particularly in East Asia, in the Middle East, and in Europe with our NATO allies. However, some in the United States are now questioning the strategic value of a globally engaged military, wondering if the Nation would be better off with fewer global commitments.
As discussions over our strategic posture unfold, decision makers need to keep in mind the origins of the current world order and what is required to preserve it. Overlooking or under-appreciating the positive influence of forward-positioned forces, both stationed and rotational, may lead to decisions that will undermine future U.S. efforts to prevent war and ensure the stability of the international system. U.S. retrenchment risks destabilizing regional security architectures that have taken decades to build and are essential to secure U.S. national interests. A present joint force deters wars, assures allies, favorably shapes the security environment, and enables contextual and cultural understanding. Moreover, the U.S. Army component of the joint force forward presence has been, and should remain, a prominent element of U.S. national security strategy since, as will be discussed, the Army is central to each of these critical missions…
Comments
Might we come to understand the role of "forward presence" more from a "nation-building" perspective:
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This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise. If now there is not a communist government in Paris, the cause of this is Russia has no army that can reach Paris in 1945.”
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(In a speech of April, 1945 -- as quoted in "Conversations with Stalin," 1963, by Milovan Djilas.)
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The post–World War II occupations of Germany and Japan were America’s first experiences with the use of military force in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin rapid and fundamental societal transformation. Both were comprehensive efforts that aimed to engineer major social, political, and economic reconstruction. The success of these endeavors demonstrated that democracy was transferable; that societies could, under certain circumstances, be encouraged to transform themselves; and that major transformations could endure. The cases of Germany and Japan set a standard for post-conflict nation-building that has not since been matched.
For the next 40 years, there were few attempts to replicate these early successes. During the Cold War, U.S. policy emphasized containment, deterrence, and maintenance of the status quo. Efforts were made to promote democratic and free-market values, but generally without the element of compulsion. American military power was employed to preserve the status quo, not to alter it; to manage crises, not to resolve the underlying problems. Germany, Korea, Vietnam, China, Cyprus, and Palestine were divided. U.S. and international forces were used to maintain these and other divisions, not to compel resolution of the underlying disputes. U.S. interventions in such places as the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, and Panama were undertaken to overthrow unfriendly regimes and reinstall friendly ones, rather than bring about fundamental societal transformations. ...
After 1989, a balance of terror no longer impelled the United States to preserve the status quo. Washington was free to ignore regional instability when it did not threaten U.S. interests. The United States also had the option of using its unrivaled power to resolve, rather than simply to manage or contain, international problems of strategic importance. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has felt free to intervene not simply to police cease-fires or restore the status quo but to try to bring about the more-fundamental transformation of war-torn societies, much as it had assisted in transforming those of Germany and Japan four decades earlier. ...
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(From the Rand Publication: America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq -- https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1753.html -- see the Executive Summary.)
Thus, from the perspective of Stalin -- and, indeed, from the perspective of the U.S./the West also -- "forward presence" often having more to with "nation-building?"