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Strategic Studies Institute
 

and
 

U.S. Army War College Press
 

THE LIMITS OF OFFSHORE BALANCING 

Hal Brands 

September 2015 

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and 

do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the 

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public release; distribution is unlimited. 

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v 
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vi 
FOREWORD
 

The United States is likely to face crucial grand 

strategic decisions in the coming years. This being the 

case, it is essential to have a rigorous, well-informed 

debate not simply about the nation’s current grand 

strategy and policies, but about the most salient grand 

strategic options and alternatives open to the United 

States as well. In this monograph, Professor Hal Brands 

contributes to that debate through a probing analysis 

of one particular grand strategic alternative that has 

become increasingly prominent in recent years—the 

concept of “offshore balancing.” 

Offshore balancing entails a large-scale strategic 

retrenchment of America’s current presence overseas, 

and it has often been touted by its supporters as a sort of 

grand strategic panacea—an option that will allow the 

United States to improve its overall geopolitical position while simultaneously slashing the costs of its global posture. As Professor Brands argues, however, these 

claims are misleading. The sort of large-scale strategic 

retrenchment envisioned according to offshore balancing would bring geopolitical and financial benefits 

that would likely be modest at best; it would also court 

risks and dangers that would probably be quite significant. Offshore balancing may seem attractive at first 

glance, but upon closer inspection, Professor Brands 

writes, there is much reason to question its desirability as a grand strategy for the United States. 

The debate about America’s current and future 

role in the world will undoubtedly continue in years 

to come, as analysts assess—and argue about—the 

merits and demerits of ideas like offshore balancvii 
 

 

 

 

 

ing. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this monograph as an important perspective in 

that debate. 

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR. 

Director 

Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press 

viii 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 

HAL BRANDS is on the faculty at the Sanford School 

of Public Policy at Duke University. During 2015-16, 

he is also serving as a Council on Foreign Relations 

International Affairs Fellow in Washington, DC. Professor Brands is the author of three books, including 

What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in 

American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. 

Bush (2014), and Latin America’s Cold War (2010). He 

has also written numerous articles on grand strategy, 

U.S. foreign policy, and other international security issues. Professor Brands holds a Ph.D. in history from 

Yale University. 

ix 

SUMMARY
 

Should the United States undertake a fundamental 

strategic retrenchment? Should it roll back, and perhaps do away with, the system of overseas security 

commitments and military deployments that have anchored its international posture since World War II? 

Many academic and strategic studies observers have 

answered “yes” to these questions in recent years. 

They assert that America’s long-standing, postwar 

grand strategy has become both dispensable and selfdefeating—dispensable because that grand strategy is 

no longer needed to sustain an advantageous global 

environment, and self-defeating because it wastes finite means while eliciting adverse behavior from allies 

and adversaries alike. The proper response to this situation, they believe, is to adopt a minimalist approach 

referred to as “offshore balancing.” Briefly stated, 

offshore balancing envisions a dramatic reduction in 

America’s overseas military deployments and alliance 

commitments, and a shift toward greater restraint and 

modesty in U.S. policy writ large. It is premised on 

the idea that this type of retrenchment will actually 

produce better security outcomes at a better price— 

that when it comes to grand strategy, less will actually 

be more. 

Offshore balancing is thus a concept with growing 

currency and salience in the debate over the future of 

America’s approach to international affairs. As this 

monograph argues, however, the case for offshore balancing is actually much weaker than it initially seems. 

Offshore balancing derives its appeal from the notion 

that it can produce the best of all worlds—improved 

xi 
geopolitical outcomes at reduced financial costs. Yet, 

as a more critical assessment makes clear, offshore balancing promises far more than it can plausibly deliver. 

The probable benefits of that strategy—both financial 

and geopolitical—are frequently exaggerated, while 

the likely disadvantages and dangers are far more 

severe than its proponents acknowledge. In essence, 

offshore balancing hinges on a series of shaky and often unpersuasive claims about what the world would 

look like subsequent to a major retraction of American 

power. Once those claims come under close scrutiny, 

the appeal of offshore balancing crumbles. In all likelihood, adopting this strategy would not allow the 

United States to achieve more security and influence 

at a lower price. The more plausible results would be 

to dissipate American influence, to court heightened 

insecurity and instability, and to expose the United 

States to greater long-range risks and costs. 

xii 
THE LIMITS OF OFFSHORE BALANCING1 

INTRODUCTION 

Should the United States embrace a fundamentally 

more modest and circumscribed approach to world 

affairs? Is it time for Washington to roll back, and 

perhaps do away with, the vast system of overseas 

security commitments and forward military deployments that have anchored its international posture 

since World War II? An expanding group of academic and strategic studies observers have answered 

“yes” to these questions in recent years. They assert 

that America’s long-standing, grand strategy has become both dispensable and self-defeating—dispensable because that grand strategy is no longer needed 

to secure U.S. interests and sustain an advantageous 

global environment, and self-defeating because it 

wastes finite means while eliciting adverse behavior 

from allies and adversaries alike. The proper response 

to this situation, they believe, is to adopt a minimalist 

approach usually referred to as “offshore balancing.”2 

At its core, offshore balancing envisions a dramatic reduction in America’s overseas military deployments 

and alliance commitments and a shift toward greater 

restraint in U.S. foreign policy writ large. It is based 

on the seemingly counterintuitive idea that this type 

of retrenchment actually will produce better security outcomes at a better price—that when it comes to 

grand strategy, less will actually be more. 

“Less is more” is always a tempting proposition, 

and the attraction seems particularly strong of late. 

For at least a decade, offshore balancing has represented the preferred grand strategy for many international relations scholars of the realist persuasion, 

1
 
including eminent analysts like Stephen Walt, John 

Mearsheimer, Barry Posen, and Christopher Layne. In 

the aftermath of the Iraq War and the global financial 

crisis of 2007-08, the overall visibility and popularity 

of the concept have increased further still. The appeal 

of offshore balancing has “jumped from the cloistered 

walls of academe to the real world of Washington 

policymaking,” wrote one proponent of the concept in 

2012; the case for a “dramatic strategic retrenchment” 

is gaining strength.3

 Offshore balancing, another leading scholar adds, represents “an idea whose time has 

come.”4 

Offshore balancing is indeed a concept with significant currency in the ongoing debate on the future of 

American grand strategy. Unfortunately, assessments 

of that concept have often been one-sided and incomplete. Because offshore balancing commands such 

strong backing within the academic strategic studies 

community, and because it is generally advanced as 

part of a critique of America’s existing grand strategy, 

analysts have too rarely treated that proposal with the 

sort of sustained, in-depth scrutiny that is required to 

adequately judge both its advantages and its limitations.5

 The aim of this monograph is to redress that 

asymmetry through a critical assessment that explicates the core premises and rationale of offshore 

balancing in some detail, and then more vigorously 

probes its principal claims. The time is ripe for this 

sort of examination. The coming years will undoubtedly confront American officials with choices of great 

importance regarding U.S. global posture and policy. 

A more rigorous evaluation of prominent grand strategic ideas and alternatives is thus vital.6 

The outcomes of such an evaluation cast serious 

doubt on the desirability, and even the basic viabil2
 
ity, of offshore balancing. That strategy derives its attraction from the idea, as Walt has argued, that it will 

allow America to increase its national security and 

influence, while also decreasing “the resistance that 

its power sometimes provokes.”7

 In reality, however, 

offshore balancing promises far more than it can deliver. The probable benefits of that approach—both financial and geopolitical—are frequently exaggerated, 

while the likely disadvantages and dangers are far 

more severe than its proponents acknowledge. Offshore balancing ultimately hinges on a series of shaky 

and often unpersuasive claims about what the world 

would look like subsequent to a major retraction of 

American power. Once those claims come under close 

scrutiny, the appeal of offshore balancing crumbles. 

In all likelihood, adopting this strategy would not allow the United States to achieve more security and 

influence at a lower price. The more plausible results 

would be to dissipate American influence, to court 

heightened insecurity and instability, and to expose 

the United States to greater long-range risks and costs. 

The remainder of this monograph proceeds as follows. First, I briefly outline the basic parameters and 

rationale of the postwar (and now, post-Cold War) 

grand strategy that offshore balancers criticize. Second, I unpack the logic, claims, and purported benefits of offshore balancing itself. Third, and at greatest length, I critically scrutinize what effects a shift to 

offshore balancing would likely have for U.S. interests 

across a range of important issues. Fourth, and finally, I summarize the findings of this monograph and 

briefly discuss the implications for current debates on 

American grand strategy. 

3
 
UNDERSTANDING U.S. GRAND STRATEGY 

Since World War II, the United States has followed 

a highly engaged and proactive grand strategy for 

shaping the international order. The particular manifestations of that grand strategy have changed from 

year to year and presidential administration to presidential administration, of course, but the underlying 

aspirations have remained largely the same. American officials consistently have promoted an open and 

integrated world economy in which the United States 

and other countries can prosper. They have sought 

to foster a stable and peaceful international order in 

which democracy can survive and flourish. Not least 

of all, they have sought to maintain an advantageous 

geopolitical balance by preventing hostile actors from 

asserting hegemony over any of the three overseas regions (Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf) that 

are of crucial economic or strategic value to America, 

and by locking in favorable configurations of power 

and influence within each of these regions.8 These basic goals have oriented U.S. grand strategy for roughly 

70 years, representing broad and enduring elements 

of continuity in American policy. 

The effort to attain these objectives, in turn, has 

been anchored by what scholars have accurately 

called America’s “most consequential strategic 

choice”: its decision to make formal and informal security commitments in key overseas regions, and to 

give substance and credibility to those commitments 

through the forward deployment of American troops. 

In Europe and East Asia, these arrangements developed formally and fairly quickly after World War II, 

through the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization (NATO) in the former region and a hub4
 
and-spokes network of bilateral alliances in the latter. 

Owing mainly to local political sensitivities and the 

residual British role “East of Suez,” U.S. presence and 

commitments in the Persian Gulf generally developed 

later, more gradually, and more discreetly. Regional 

nuances notwithstanding, however, this willingness 

to assume a forward-leaning security posture in the 

core geopolitical zones of Eurasia has long served as 

the keystone of America’s grand strategy.9 

From the time of their creation, U.S. security commitments and force deployments were designed primarily to prevent any hostile power from dominating 

an area that was of fundamental importance to America’s physical or economic security. Yet, these arrangements were equally meant to serve several other essential, interlocking purposes. American presence would 

submerge historical rivalries between members of the 

Western world, suppressing counterproductive security competitions, and enabling historically unprecedented cooperation on economic, political, and even 

military issues. That presence would also foster—in 

Europe and East Asia especially—the atmosphere of 

reassurance in which democracy and market-oriented 

economies could prosper. It would simultaneously 

slow the spread of nuclear weapons by easing the insecurity and instability that might otherwise encourage 

allies like Germany or Japan to develop independent 

nuclear arsenals. Finally, American forward presence 

would carry U.S. power deep into the most critical 

parts of the world, giving Washington an outsized 

capacity to impact regional affairs. In sum, forward 

deployments and security commitments would act 

as the linchpin of America’s grand strategy, producing the influence, stability, and security necessary to 

accomplish a wide array of goals.10 

5
 
It was a reflection of how enduring those goals 

were—and how much U.S. forward presence was 

seen to support them—that these arrangements 

largely remained in place even after the Cold War 

ended. As scholars like Melvyn Leffler have observed, 

the United States did not craft a wholly new grand 

strategy from scratch after the superpower struggle 

concluded.11 It adapted its existing postwar grand 

strategy to the more advantageous circumstances of 

unipolarity. Washington reaffirmed its commitment 

to prevent any adversary from dominating a key region, to ensure that no country could command the 

resources and strategic position needed to challenge 

American primacy or American security. The United 

States also intensified its efforts to spread free markets 

and democracy overseas, and to contain those dangers—such as aggressive “rogue states” and nuclear 

proliferation—that might disrupt a very favorable 

post-Cold War order. Finally, and in support of all of 

these objectives, America kept large numbers of troops 

stationed abroad, while also maintaining—in some 

cases even expanding—its alliance commitments. In 

the unipolar era, as in the bipolar period preceding it, 

American officials averred, these commitments would 

foster the stability and influence needed to shape the 

international environment to Washington’s benefit.12 

Indeed, when viewed from a broad, 70-year perspective, America’s postwar grand strategy can be 

said to have worked quite well. To be sure, the post1945 record of U.S. policy contains no shortage of missteps and costly failures, from Vietnam to Iraq and 

beyond. But on the whole, America’s highly engaged 

global posture generally has produced the desired results. It has facilitated, as various scholars have noted, 

the unprecedented international spread of democra6
 
cy, and the establishment of a robust global market 

economy.13 It has contributed to an extended period 

of great power peace, and to the containment of dangerous threats—whether regional or global—to international security and stability.14 As recent research 

has shown, American strategy has also constituted 

a significant barrier to nuclear proliferation, by constraining the supply of critical components, and by 

simultaneously reassuring and dissuading countries 

that might otherwise have decided to go nuclear15 and 

across all of these and other issues, U.S. alliance commitments and force deployments have played a vital 

enabling role. It is hardly surprising, then, that even 

as geopolitical circumstances have changed, the core 

components of American grand strategy—and especially the security commitments that have long served 

as its centerpiece—have remained enduring. 

But for how long would those arrangements ultimately persist? Following the Cold War, some critics 

did start to question whether such a forward-leaning 

security posture was still essential or even desirable in 

a world that now lacked a hostile superpower adversary. “Come home, America,” one prominent article 

declared; the time had come to seek “the disengagement of America’s military forces from the rest of the 

world.”16 These concerns, and desires for geopolitical 

retrenchment more broadly, have grown far stronger 

of late. In recent years, the United States has been 

dealing with the fatigue and disillusion generated by 

its two inconclusive post-September 11, 2001 (9/11) 

wars, and the downward budgetary pressures generated by a brutal financial crisis and its aftermath. It 

has simultaneously been facing an international environment that seems to have become messier and more 

difficult than at any other time in a quarter-century. 

7
 
These factors have all encouraged growing skepticism 

about the sustainability and wisdom of an assertive 

American globalism. In few quarters has that skepticism been more pronounced than among proponents 

of offshore balancing. 

UNDERSTANDING OFFSHORE BALANCING 

The multi-decade continuity in American grand 

strategy rests on recognition of that grand strategy’s 

historical strengths. The case for offshore balancing, 

by contrast, proceeds from a sharp critique of the legacy grand strategy’s apparent weaknesses.17 Notwithstanding the overall postwar success of U.S. policy, 

offshore balancers tend to be highly dubious of the 

current value of America’s long-standing approach to 

world affairs in general, and its existing system of alliances and force deployments in particular. In essence, 

they believe that, while these arrangements and the 

grand strategy they support were perhaps appropriate 

during the Cold War, they have become unnecessary, 

excessively expensive, and deeply counterproductive 

in the post-Cold War era.18 

First and foremost, offshore balancers contend 

that the long-standing U.S. approach is unnecessary, 

because the geopolitical conditions that gave rise to 

America’s postwar grand strategy have disappeared. 

U.S. security pledges and forward deployments were 

vital during the Cold War, they acknowledge, when 

Washington’s allies were exposed and vulnerable, the 

Soviet Union was expansionist and menacing, and 

there was simply no other way of ensuring that vital 

strategic regions did not fall into enemy hands. In the 

post-Cold War period, however, the situation is very 

different. Many U.S. allies are wealthy, highly devel8
 
oped countries that have, or could easily field, powerful militaries. Because the international threat environment has become more benign with the absence 

of an aggressive global superpower, these countries 

can now be expected largely to provide for their own 

security and defense. There is very little short-term 

danger of a U.S. adversary dominating Europe or the 

Persian Gulf, offshore balancers point out, and even 

in the Asia-Pacific, China faces a number of proud 

and capable countries that would strongly contest any 

move toward regional hegemony. Thus, such vast U.S. 

commitments are no longer needed to ensure systemic 

stability; America’s forward posture has become superfluous, a sort of “welfare for the rich.”19 

Not only superfluous, but profligate as well. Offshore balancers frequently point to the undeniably 

high costs of the legacy strategy, particularly annual 

defense budgets totaling over $500 billion (or even 

higher) in recent years. They argue that these costs 

strain American resources in ways that are unnecessary—given the post-Cold War dynamics noted 

earlier—and that will become progressively harder 

to manage amid leaner economic circumstances. “In 

coming years, the weakening of the U.S. economy 

and the nation’s ballooning budget deficits are going 

to make it increasingly difficult to sustain the level of 

military commitments that U.S. hegemony requires,” 

writes one scholar. Likewise, Barry Posen contends 

that “the Pentagon has come to depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain its current force 

structure—levels of spending that the United States’ 

ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable.”20 This 

spendthrift approach, pro-retrenchment advocates allege, diverts resources from more pressing domestic 

priorities. Over the longer-term, it will further com9
 
promise American creditworthiness and deplete the 

fiscal and economic strength upon which national 

power ultimately depends. 

Even in the nearer term, offshore balancers argue, 

current U.S. policies are deeply counterproductive because they elicit adverse reactions from both allies and 

adversaries. With respect to allies, America’s posture 

can incentivize “reckless driving,” in the sense that 

U.S. security commitments encourage friendly countries to take unwise geopolitical risks on the assumption that Washington will rescue them when things go 

bad. Perhaps more commonly, American guarantees 

and presence cause endemic free-riding or “cheap riding” because U.S. allies rationally calculate that they 

can underspend on defense as long as Washington is 

willing to overspend in order to protect them.21 The 

majority of NATO allies spend below the Alliance’s 

defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), while America generally devotes 

3-4 percent of GDP to its military. The United States 

finds itself expending “increasingly precious funds 

on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to 

devote the necessary resources . . . to be serious and 

capable partners in their own defense,” Secretary of 

Defense Robert Gates acknowledged in 2011.22 An efficient strategy would get others to shoulder a larger 

burden so that America could bear a smaller one; the 

existing approach, offshore balancers allege, achieves 

the opposite result. 

It also makes the United States less secure and influential by generating various forms of international 

pushback. Scholars like Robert Pape argue that excessive American power and activism have led to “soft 

balancing,” as a wide range of countries, from allies to 

uncommitted nations to rivals, collaborate to constrain 

10
 
U.S. action through diplomacy, international institutions, and other mechanisms.23 Moreover, America’s 

posture purportedly invites more dangerous reactions 

from both state and nonstate actors. According to 

Mearsheimer, for example, the post-Cold War expansion of NATO has served mainly to alienate Russia, 

eventually inviting the violent backlash seen in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014.24 In the same vein, 

Layne and other analysts argue that the U.S. presence 

in the Western Pacific unavoidably antagonizes China, which naturally sees that presence as a threat to 

its own ambitions and security. The result has been to 

encourage Beijing to build up its own capabilities, and 

to increase the prospect of sharp bilateral tensions, instability, and perhaps even war. “If the United States 

tries to maintain its current dominance in East Asia,” 

Layne writes, “Sino-American conflict is virtually certain.”25 From this perspective, post-Cold War strategy 

has even had the effect of pushing potential U.S. rivals 

together, incentivizing Russia and China to pursue 

greater geopolitical cooperation in hopes of offsetting 

perceived encroachment by Washington. 

For offshore balancers, the same counterproductive 

dynamic can be found in numerous other areas, as well. 

They argue, for instance, that it is precisely U.S. military 

presence in Muslim countries that provokes jihadist 

attacks: that the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia from 1990 onward was a key cause of al-Qaeda’s 

deadly campaign of terrorism against American targets, and that the occupation of Iraq after 2003 served 

as a principal incitement to extremist violence. Similarly, offshore balancers frequently argue that post-Cold 

War U.S. policy has encouraged rather than inhibited 

nuclear proliferation. By this logic, the combination 

of U.S. efforts to contain or even overthrow “rogue 

11
 
regimes” and the presence of American troops in close 

proximity to states like Iran and North Korea have 

exacerbated the feelings of insecurity that motivate 

nuclear proliferation in the first place. What current 

U.S. strategy misunderstands, three scholars write, “is 

that U.S. military hegemony is as likely to encourage 

nuclear proliferation, as states balance against us, as 

to prevent it.”26 In the eyes of offshore balancers, it is 

thus American strength, presence, and assertiveness 

that stimulate so many of the major threats that the 

country now faces. 

Finally, offshore balancers believe that the longstanding strategy backfires because it leads to unwise 

and self-defeating uses of military force. During the 

Cold War, the thinking goes, the Soviet threat provided some discipline against capriciousness in the 

employment of American military power. Since then, 

however, any discipline has vanished, and simply 

possessing a globe-girdling military creates constant 

temptations to use that military even when vital interests are not at issue. “What’s the point of having 

this superb military that you’re always talking about 

if we can’t use it?” Madeleine Albright once asked; 

for offshore balancers, the comment is indicative of 

a broader problem.27 American leaders have become 

prone to seeking decisive military solutions to threats 

that could tolerably be contained or ignored; they use 

the Armed Forces in quixotic efforts to transform foreign societies and implant liberal institutions on decidedly inhospitable ground. The result is not to make 

America safer, but to draw the country into unending 

interventions that drain its resources and sow resentment and resistance abroad. Offshore balancers point 

to America’s post-Cold War conflicts—most notably 

the invasion and occupation of Iraq—as proof of this 

lamentable tendency.28 

12
 
To sum up, offshore balancers argue that the existing U.S. grand strategy has outlived its geopolitical 

utility, that it imposes unnecessary and unsustainable 

costs on the nation, and that it fosters blowback and 

overextension rather than security. The best way to 

correct these problems, they contend, is to embrace a 

very different approach to world affairs. 

Offshore balancing is, at its core, a fairly straightforward concept. It derives directly from the realist 

tradition in international-relations scholarship, and so 

focuses heavily—almost entirely—on “system maintenance” and the preservation of an acceptable balance 

of power. In particular, offshore balancers believe that 

outside of the Western Hemisphere, there are three 

primary overseas regions—Europe, East Asia, and the 

Persian Gulf—that are of fundamental importance to 

U.S. interests because of the resources, wealth, and 

geopolitical geography that they command. Were one 

or more of these regions to come under control of an 

American adversary, that adversary might be able to 

generate the strength necessary to endanger the United States itself or to interfere massively and unacceptably with U.S. economic wellbeing. Offshore balancers 

therefore strongly affirm a core tenet of postwar U.S. 

statecraft—that the essential and overriding goal of 

American grand strategy must be to ensure that none 

of these regions are dominated by a hostile power. 

Where offshore balancers depart from the legacy 

grand strategy is in their belief that permanent U.S. 

presence and alliance guarantees are neither necessary 

nor suitable to achieving this goal. Rather, offshore 

balancers argue that under normal circumstances the 

United States should depend on local actors to counter any threats that may emerge in the key regions, 

fortifying those local actors via political, economic, or 

13
 
indirect military support (such as arms sales) where 

necessary to maintain the balance. Only when an important regional equilibrium collapses or is in danger 

of collapsing—in other words, only when a hostile actor is set to conquer or otherwise dominate the area— 

should American military forces go “onshore” to intervene. Once the aggressor has been turned back and 

the balance repaired, U.S. forces should once again 

retreat offshore.29 

It is therefore wrong to describe offshore balancing as an isolationist strategy, because its supporters 

firmly believe that Washington does have an essential 

interest in maintaining acceptable balances of power 

in important overseas regions. Instead, offshore balancing is properly seen as a minimalist, or free-hand 

strategy, because it asserts that America can attain that 

goal while also shedding obligations and resources.30 

Indeed, even though proponents of offshore balancing occasionally disagree when it comes to specific 

policy issues, they universally concur that their strategy involves a significant rolling back of permanent 

U.S. commitments and presence abroad. Washington 

should quit NATO’s military command and perhaps 

withdraw from the Alliance itself, for example, or, at 

a bare minimum, it should terminate the peacetime 

American troop presence in Europe. The United States 

should likewise refuse any onshore peacetime presence in the Persian Gulf (and the Middle East more 

broadly), and rely solely on forces stationed “over the 

horizon” in the event of a severe crisis in the region. 

The situation is somewhat more complicated in East 

Asia, where most offshore balancers support maintenance of significant naval and air forces as a hedge 

against an ascendant China. Yet these scholars also 

propose, variously, removing U.S. troops from South 

14
 
Korea, terminating the ambiguous U.S. commitment 

to defend Taiwan, revising or potentially ending the 

long-standing alliance with Japan, and withdrawing 

most or perhaps even all American forces from that 

country. This global military retrenchment, in turn, 

would be accompanied by a shift to a leaner force 

structure, involving drastic cuts in overall U.S. ground 

forces, and lesser but still deep cuts to the Navy and 

Air Force. In sum, offshore balancing calls for a far 

more austere U.S. security posture.31 

It likewise envisions a more modest, realpolitik 

style in foreign relations more broadly. Precisely because offshore balancers are so heavily influenced 

by a realist tradition that purports to place cold, 

balance-of-power considerations above all else, they 

believe that the United States should unapologetically deprioritize issues and relationships that are not 

deemed essential to this bedrock concern. Washington 

should not seek “ideological” ends like the advancement of human rights or democracy—even by purely 

diplomatic means—if doing so requires jeopardizing relations with authoritarian countries that could 

otherwise be useful partners in preserving acceptable 

regional balances. “International politics is a contact 

sport,” writes Walt, “and even powerful states cannot afford to be overly choosy when selecting allies 

and partners.”32 Likewise, U.S. policymakers should 

not maintain such close relationships with countries— 

such as Israel—that have long-standing ties of affection with America, but that offshore balancers now 

view as more of a strategic liability than an asset.33 

Nor, for that matter, should the United States seek to 

prevent nations like Russia or China from obtaining 

reasonably delimited spheres of influence within their 

regions—by asserting dominance over Ukraine or 

15
 
Taiwan, for instance—so long as this expansion does 

not critically imperil the overall balance of power 

within those regions.34 

Finally, and not least of all, offshore balancers believe that the United States must scrupulously refrain 

from any large-scale use of military force that is not 

intimately related to the central mission of preserving 

systematic balance and stability. This means generally 

foreswearing humanitarian intervention, or the use 

of force to promote or restore democracy overseas. It 

also means refraining from preemptive or preventive 

wars to combat weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 

proliferation, or to topple regimes that are internally 

noxious but could nonetheless be contained without 

resorting to large-scale conflict. With respect to terrorism, offshore balancers do normally approve of the use 

of force in dealing with the most dangerous and direct 

threats. But they strongly favor “light footprint” approaches featuring tools like drones and special forces, 

and they strongly oppose turning such interventions 

into the sort of prolonged counterinsurgency, nationbuilding endeavors undertaken in Iraq and Afghanistan. These and other “wars of choice” represent costly 

diversions from the core grand strategic preoccupation of managing the global configuration of power, 

offshore balancers argue; Washington must therefore pair retrenchment from its existing alliances and 

forward troop presence with a broader shift toward 

geopolitical modesty.35 

There is little doubt, then, that offshore balancing 

would represent a significant rupture with the postwar and now post-Cold War template for U.S. strategy, and a retreat from the overall level of assertiveness and activism that have long marked American 

policy. Yet it is important to understand that offshore 

16
 
balancing would not be something entirely new for 

the United States. As Mearsheimer has written, the nation essentially practiced offshore balancing between 

1898 and 1945, when it abstained from significant 

peacetime commitments in Europe and East Asia but 

eventually sent its forces into combat to prevent (or reverse) the domination of those regions by aggressive 

authoritarian powers in World Wars I and II.36 More 

recently, American policy in the Persian Gulf prior to 

1990 followed a roughly similar approach, with the 

United States depending first on local powers to maintain a regional equilibrium, and then bringing its own 

military capabilities to bear when Saddam Hussein’s 

invasion of Kuwait broke that balance.37 Proponents 

of offshore balancing thus contend that their preferred 

strategy is not really anything new. Rather, it represents a tried-and-true concept that America should 

once more embrace. 

What specific benefits would such a shift bring? 

Advocates of offshore balancing advertise four major 

advantages. First, and most broadly, a move toward 

offshore balancing would purportedly enhance America’s long-run global position by putting its strategic 

posture on a more sustainable foundation. Washington’s existing grand strategy is itself unstable and selfdefeating, offshore balancers claim, because it forces 

the United States to bear disproportionate burdens 

and runs counter to the ongoing diffusion of global 

power. The value of offshore balancing, by contrast, is 

that it would use that diffusion of power to American 

advantage. No more would the United States permit 

rich and capable allies to free-ride on its own taxing 

exertions. Quite the contrary—rolling back U.S. presence in key areas like Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf would compel important regional players, 

17
 
from Japan to Saudi Arabia to Germany, to assume a 

greater role in providing for their own security and 

that of the regions they inhabit. In effect, the strategy 

would employ the built-in balancing mechanisms 

within international relations—the natural tendency 

of states to do what is necessary to protect their own 

independence and well-being—to sustain a stable and 

advantageous global environment, while also distributing the responsibility for preserving that environment more proportionately. “Offshore balancing is a 

grand strategy based on burden shifting, not burden 

sharing,” Christopher Layne writes. “It would transfer to others the task of maintaining regional power 

balances; checking the rise of potential global and regional hegemons; and stabilizing Europe, East Asia, 

and the Persian Gulf/Middle East.”38 

Burden shifting, in turn, would facilitate a second 

key benefit: markedly reduced costs for the United 

States. Almost by definition, offshore balancing would 

liberate America from the costs of military conflicts 

like the invasion and occupation of Iraq, prolonged 

stabilization operations in Afghanistan, and other 

such “discretionary” interventions that offshore balancers rule out a priori. More significantly, offshore 

balancers claim that the strategy would pay broader 

and longer-lasting financial dividends by permitting a 

shift to a trimmed-down force structure. Barry Posen 

predicts that a more restrained approach would allow 

the United States to slash its ground forces by half, 

and cut both the Navy and Air Force by between onequarter and one-third, respectively. Likewise, Cato Institute scholar Christopher Preble estimates that this 

type of strategy would enable major reductions in the 

number of carrier strike groups, naval vessels, tactical fighter wings, and other high-dollar items, to say 

18
 
nothing of the savings that would come from sharp 

cuts in U.S. ground forces. The overall upshot would 

be to make U.S. strategy more economically viable, 

and to enhance the country’s prospects for sustained 

prosperity and balanced budgets.39 

Third, offshore balancers believe that this retrenchment would, in fact, improve America’s ability to 

address the most pressing security challenges it currently faces. In great power relations, many offshore 

balancers believe that paring back America’s security 

presence would make U.S. power appear far less menacing to regional powers like Russia and China, and 

decrease the impetus toward conflict with those countries.40 In the event that a sharper confrontation with 

a challenger like China ensued anyway, a shift to offshore balancing would still benefit the United States 

by allowing it to avoid costly diversions elsewhere 

and to elicit greater contributions from other friendly 

countries in the area.41 From this perspective, behaving with greater moderation and restraint would allow Washington to position itself far more advantageously in global strategic affairs. 

The results would be similarly beneficial in other 

areas. Offshore balancers are virtually unanimous 

in positing that an end to U.S. forward presence and 

long-term troop deployments in the Middle East 

would undercut a primary source of Muslim anger 

toward America, and significantly defuse the threat 

of jihadist terrorism. Some extremist violence might 

still occur, Robert Pape allows, but offshore balancing remains “the best way to secure our interest in the 

world’s key oil-producing region without provoking 

more terrorism.”42 Pressures for nuclear proliferation 

would also be greatly reduced in an offshore balancing scenario. Because offshore balancers assert that 

19
 
it is U.S. power, activism, and presence that largely 

push countries like North Korea and Iran to pursue 

nuclear weapons, they also assert that retrenchment 

would attack the underlying causes of rogue state 

proliferation. Pyongyang and Tehran would have less 

fear for the survival of their regimes; they would, accordingly, have less need for the ultimate weapon.43 

Across a whole array of vital issues—great power relations, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism—pulling 

back would thus make the United States more secure 

and effective by easing the pushback that its own 

policies have generated. 

All of these advantages, in turn, relate closely to a 

fourth and final advertised benefit of offshore balancing, which is that it would actually make the United 

States more influential in world affairs. By decreasing 

unnecessary commitments and compelling others to 

shoulder greater burdens, offshore balancers believe, 

Washington would increase its flexibility and maximize its capacity to have decisive impact on those core 

geopolitical issues that really matter. By defusing the 

myriad forms of resentment and resistance that the 

current grand strategy allegedly causes, the United 

States would simultaneously undercut the pushback 

that corrodes its authority and efficacy. Finally, by 

playing “hard to get” with friends and allies—by allowing them to take less for granted, and forcing them 

to work harder to obtain American support—the United States could perhaps elicit higher levels of cooperation with its international agenda. Retrenchment, in 

all of these respects, would have the counterintuitive 

outcome of giving the United States additional leverage in the global arena.44 

Indeed, if the arguments of its proponents are accepted as truth, then offshore balancing appears to be 

20
 
a nearly ideal strategic concept for America. It seems 

to offer the best of everything, promising enhanced 

security and influence, and an improved long-term 

strategic position, at a significantly reduced price. 

What remains, then, is to question whether the underlying logic and claims of offshore balancing can really 

bear close scrutiny. The disappointing but inescapable 

answer is that they mostly cannot. 

ASSESSING OFFSHORE BALANCING: 

OVERSOLD BENEFITS, 

UNDERSTATED COSTS AND RISKS 

The previous section presented the case for offshore 

balancing, by outlining its basic content, rationale, 

and expected benefits. This section subjects offshore 

balancing to a more critical assessment, by examining the probable advantages and disadvantages were 

that strategy actually adopted. As this analysis makes 

clear, the case for offshore balancing is far weaker 

than its proponents claim. The likely benefits—both 

financial and geopolitical—of that strategy are much 

less impressive than they first seem, while the risks 

and liabilities are potentially quite daunting. 

What Savings? 

Consider, first, the question of financial cost. One 

purported advantage of offshore balancing is that it 

will permit significant reductions in defense spending, 

and put U.S. strategy—and the country as a whole— 

on far better fiscal footing. “We spend too much,” 

Christopher Preble argues, especially “relative to alternative strategies that will keep us safe, but at far 

less cost.”45 There would indeed be some economies 

21
 
if the United States were to adopt an offshore balancing type approach. The country would undoubtedly 

save some money if it simply refused to use military 

force in any circumstance in which a regional balance 

was not in imminent danger of collapsing (although 

whether this would be a sensible policy to follow is 

another matter.)46 Moreover, an offshore balancing 

type military could probably be somewhat smaller 

and less costly than the current force, and it would 

presumably require far fewer overseas bases. There 

remain serious questions about how much smaller 

and cheaper that force would actually be, however, 

and there are important reasons to doubt that offshore 

balancing would really yield such significant financial 

dividends. 

One such reason is that the legacy grand strategy—the baseline against which offshore balancing 

is either implicitly or explicitly compared—is in reality much less expensive than is often thought. To be 

sure, defense budgets that routinely exceed $500 billion annually consume massive amounts of money in 

absolute terms.47 But when viewed in relative terms— 

as a percentage of GDP—U.S. military spending has 

actually been comparatively low since the Cold War. 

At the peak of that conflict during the 1950s, for instance, the United States regularly spent upward of 10 

percent of GDP on defense, reaching 14.2 percent in 

1953. Even in the 1980s, the figure was often upward 

of 6 percent.48 Since the mid-1990s, however, total U.S. 

defense spending—including funds for overseas contingency operations like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has generally been between 3 and 4 percent of 

GDP. It rose as high as 4.7 percent at the peak of U.S. 

deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010, but then 

dropped back under 4 percent in 2013 and has contin22
 
ued downward since then.49 By relevant post-World 

War II standards, the United States has devoted a comparatively small percentage of its wealth to defense in 

the past 20 years, indicating that the costs of American 

presence and policy are not nearly as staggering as is 

sometimes claimed. 

It is worth emphasizing that this holds true even 

when the cost of recent U.S. wars is considered. The 

wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were by far the costliest 

U.S. conflicts of the post-Cold War era, with operations and other war-related activities in those countries costing roughly $1.5 trillion between 2001 and 

2014.50 Nonetheless, the vast majority (well over 90 

percent) of those costs are included in the figures cited 

in the preceding paragraph, meaning that, even during a period of manpower-intensive ground operations, U.S. defense costs were actually quite modest 

in historical context. This does not necessarily mean 

that the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan was a 

productive investment, of course, but it does put the 

price tag of those conflicts in perspective. Moreover, 

given that these conflicts were actually massive outliers among America’s post-Cold War interventions 

in terms of financial costs—and that the response to 

those costs has already been explicitly to downgrade 

the role of manpower-intensive stability operations in 

U.S. defense strategy—one begins to question whether a United States that remains globally engaged and 

present must necessarily incur the expenses associated with major Middle Eastern land wars on a regular 

basis.51 

If the current grand strategy is not as expensive as 

it sometimes seems, then neither is offshore balancing 

as cheap as one might expect. The basic reason for this 

is that a military that can actually carry out an offshore 

23
 
balancing approach must still be capable of intervening quickly and decisively in regional contingencies, 

and forcing its way back onshore if a regional balance 

collapses. Despite its emphasis on retrenchment, Evan 

Braden Montgomery has recently observed, offshore 

balancing still hinges on the idea that “U.S. military 

power will remain sufficient to prevent any nation 

from dominating its neighbors through aggression or 

coercion.”52 An offshore balancing type military would 

have to possess the aerial and naval dominance necessary to command the global commons and provide 

access into contested theaters in time of conflict. This, 

presumably, would mean major continuing investments in the big-ticket, high-technology capabilities 

needed to maintain such an edge. That military would 

also have to possess—or very rapidly be able to generate—the ground forces needed to intervene successfully if a regional equilibrium began to slip away. In 

short, an offshore balancing type military would still 

need to be very ready and very powerful, capable of 

prompt, effective global power projection with all its 

massive expense. “While day-to-day demands on the 

U.S. military would be less in offshore balancing than 

in [a strategy of forward presence],” one informed 

analyst writes, “it is not clear whether total military 

requirements would be less burdensome.”53 

Could such a military still save considerable sums 

by closing overseas bases and stationing its forces 

within the United States? Not as readily as one might 

think. Because foreign countries often offset some costs 

of U.S. presence, and for other financial and logistical 

reasons, relocating American forces in this manner 

achieves only very meager reductions in expenditures. 

As one analysis by the RAND Corporation has noted, 

stationing two squadrons of F-16s in the United States 

24
 
instead of in Italy would result in savings of only 6 

percent annually. Similarly, the Congressional Budget 

Office has estimated that returning nearly all overseas 

Army forces to the United States would yield annual 

savings of less than $1.5 billion. “At the level of grand 

strategy,” the RAND study concludes, “the cost differences between CONUS [continental United States] 

and OCONUS [overseas] presence are insignificant.”54 

The same goes for America’s nuclear arsenal. Partisans of offshore balancing have often argued that their 

strategy would permit major cuts in U.S. nuclear forces. Here too, however, the practical requirements of 

a sufficiently resourced offshore balancing approach 

are likely to be far more onerous than advertised. 

Even in an offshore balancing scenario, the United 

States would require a very robust nuclear arsenal if 

it hoped to sustain extended deterrence as its overseas 

conventional force posture was dramatically reduced. 

For if, as the Barack Obama administration noted in its 

2010 Nuclear Posture Review, “strengthening the nonnuclear elements of regional security architectures 

is vital” to achieving further reductions in the U.S. 

nuclear arsenal, then weakening those non-nuclear 

elements via American retrenchment would logically 

place a higher premium on nuclear weapons.55 Under an offshore balancing approach, superior nuclear 

forces would also be needed to ensure the escalation 

dominance that would allow the United States to intervene in regional crises without danger of being 

blackmailed or coerced by a powerful, nuclear-armed 

rival.56 Consequently, offshore balancing would probably not permit significant reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Rather, it would entail the major—and 

very expensive—investments needed to modernize 

that arsenal in the coming years and decades.57 

25
 
When these issues are factored into the equation, 

the financial benefits of offshore balancing seem considerably less striking. One scholar has projected that 

a strategy approximating offshore balancing could be 

sustained through military spending amounting to 

roughly 2.5 percent of U.S. GDP.58 There are serious 

questions regarding whether the resulting military— 

which would possess substantially diminished naval, 

air, ground, and nuclear forces—would indeed be sufficient to accomplish the aforementioned tasks without 

courting intolerable risks of mission failure.59 But even 

setting those questions aside for the sake of argument, 

this level of spending is only 0.5 percent of GDP lower 

than what the United States paid for defense in the 

late-1990s, and perhaps 1 percent of GDP lower than 

what military spending is projected to be in the near 

future.60 Stated differently, even if one assumes that a 

force costing 2.5 percent of GDP could accomplish its 

stated objectives in an offshore balancing scenario, a 

shift to that strategy would result in defense-related 

savings of perhaps 16 to 29 percent relative to the relevant post-Cold War figures. 

Such savings are certainly not trivial. If fully realized, they might reduce federal deficits that have 

ranged from nearly $500 billion to just over $1.4 trillion per year in the years since 2009 by perhaps $100­

200 billion annually. But even in the most favorable 

scenario, these savings would still be much less than 

what is needed to balance the federal budget. In fact, 

because defense spending accounts for roughly 18 

percent (and falling) of federal spending, and because 

present and out-year deficits are caused primarily 

by spiraling entitlement costs (48 percent and rising 

quickly as of 2014), the defense cuts that would accompany offshore balancing would have only a fairly 

26
 
marginal effect on the country’s long-run fiscal prospects.61 To put it another way, if the United States 

effectively addresses the ballooning cost of entitlements, it will easily be able to afford its current grand 

strategy well into the future. If it does not do so, then 

even far more draconian defense cuts will not close 

the fiscal gap. 

Finally, it is reasonable to inquire whether offshore 

balancing might simply exchange these relatively 

modest short-term economies for higher long-term 

costs and burdens. Offshore balancing is premised on 

the notion that regional balances are inherently robust, 

and so the most expensive and dangerous types of 

military intervention will be quite rare. Yet an inconvenient truth for offshore balancers is that in each of 

the major cases in which America relied on that strategy during the past 100 years—in Europe and East Asia 

in the period of the world wars, and in the Persian 

Gulf in the period before 1990—it ended up having 

to wage a major, high-intensity conflict to repair a regional equilibrium that had either broken entirely or 

was in imminent danger of breaking. In each of these 

instances, the United States eventually did beat back 

the offending aggressor and restore a favorable configuration of power, and so these episodes are generally treated as “successes” by offshore balancers. Yet, 

from a long-term perspective, perhaps the wiser and 

more economical choice would have been to accept the 

peacetime commitments that might have sustained 

the balance and prevented the situation from reaching such a critical and costly juncture. In Europe and 

East Asia especially, it was precisely this hard-earned 

awareness that foreswearing onshore commitments 

was a penny-wise but pound-foolish approach that 

caused the United States to embrace a much different 

27
 
strategy from 1945 onward. Many years have passed 

since then, but the basic truth remains the same: the 

financial argument for offshore balancing is weaker 

than it might initially appear. 

Exaggerated Security Benefits: Terrorism. 

The prospect of financial savings, of course, is but 

one aspect of offshore balancing’s appeal. Its proponents also claim that the strategy will yield important 

security benefits by reducing the severity of critical 

threats like international terrorism and nuclear proliferation, and better positioning the United States to 

deal with those issues. If these claims were true, they 

would provide powerful vindication for offshore 

balancing and its “less can be more” ethos. In reality, however, the advantages of retrenchment are frequently inflated when it comes to these matters, while 

substantial dangers and drawbacks are often obscured 

or ignored. 

This is certainly true with respect to terrorism. In 

fairness, offshore balancers certainly have a point in 

arguing that America’s onshore presence in the Gulf 

and the larger Middle East has long served as a key 

source of incitement to jihadist attacks. It was U.S. 

intervention in Lebanon in 1982-84 that first brought 

America into the crosshairs of suicide terrorism by 

provoking Hezbollah’s deadly bombings of the U.S. 

Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut. In the Gulf 

specifically, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the Persian Gulf Crisis of 1990-91 

was indeed a primary motivator of al-Qaeda’s escalating campaign of terrorism against American targets, 

and the later invasion and occupation of Iraq breathed 

new life into a jihadist movement that had been badly 

28
 
damaged in the wake of 9/11. The Iraq War, National 

Intelligence Council Chairman Robert Hutchings commented in 2005, acted as “a magnet for international 

terrorist activity” and a key recruiting device for alQaeda.62 Finally, and at a broader level of analysis, 

scholarly research indicates that resentment of foreign 

troop deployments and military occupations have traditionally been leading causes of suicide terrorism.63 

There is thus little doubt that certain U.S. policies have 

fanned the flames of terror, as offshore balancers allege. More problematic, however, is the assertion that 

their preferred strategy would significantly reduce the 

threat. 

One key reason for skepticism is that the military withdrawal that most offshore balancers envision is not the withdrawal that jihadist groups have 

demanded as the price of peace. When al-Qaeda and 

other groups call for a U.S. military withdrawal from 

the Muslim world, they are calling for the removal not 

simply of large-scale ground forces and other sizable 

units (the assets that most offshore balancers focus 

on in advocating retrenchment). Rather, they are calling for the removal of all forms of American military 

power and influence, including trainers and advisers, 

drones, security assistance and weapons sales, and 

other tools that would presumably continue to be crucial to counterterrorism, even in an offshore balancing context. “Even U.S. intelligence liaison, which involves sharing information, training, and other forms 

of exchange, is . . . a sensitive issue” for al-Qaeda and 

other jihadists, one expert writes.64 This leaves advocates of retrenchment stuck with an awkward dilemma. Undertaking the truly comprehensive military 

withdrawal that al-Qaeda and other extremist groups 

demand would utterly cripple America’s approach 

29
 
to counterterrorism as well as its broader ability to 

support friendly regimes in the region. Undertaking 

a lesser withdrawal, by contrast, might still assuage 

some anti-U.S. resentment, but it would presumably 

not mollify jihadist grievances to the extent that offshore balancers believe. 

This first reason for skepticism is reinforced by a 

second, which is that even though the deployment 

of American troops on Muslim lands has historically been a cause of anti-U.S. extremism, it has never 

been the sole cause. That extremism also originated 

from grievances fueled by U.S. policy toward Iraq in 

the 1990s, long-standing American support for dictatorial Arab regimes, the extensive and intimate U.S. 

relationship with Israel, and the perceived invasion of 

Muslim societies by Western cultural and economic 

influences. Many of these grievances were featured in 

early al-Qaeda pronouncements, including bin Laden’s famous 1998 fatwa declaring that “the ruling to 

kill the Americans and their allies . . . is an individual 

duty for every Muslim who can do it.”65 Many of the 

same issues continue to figure prominently today. As 

al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn declared in 2010, 

removal of U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf and beyond was only one of a series of requirements that 

Washington must meet in order to earn a respite from 

jihadist attacks: 

First, you must pull every last one of your soldiers, 

spies, security advisors, trainers, attaches, contractors, robots, drones, and all other American personnel, ships, and aircraft out of every Muslim land from 

Afghanistan to Zanzibar. 

Second, you must end all support—both moral and 

material—to Israel and bar your citizens from travel30
 
ing to Occupied Palestine or settling there, and you 

must impose a blanket ban on American trade with 

the Zionist regime and investment in it. 

Third, you must stop all support and aid—be it military, political, or economic, or otherwise—to the hated 

regimes of the Muslim world. This includes the socalled “development aid” . . . 

Fourth, you must cease all interference in the religion, 

society, politics, economy, and government of the Islamic world. 

Fifth, you must also put an end to all forms of American and American-sponsored interference in the educational curricula and information media of the Muslim world. 

And sixth, you must free all Muslim captives from 

your prisons, detention facilities, and concentration 

camps, regardless of whether they have been recipients of what you call a ‘fair’ trial or not. 

“Your refusal to release our prisoners or your failure to meet any of our other legitimate demands,” the 

pronouncement concluded, “will mean the continuation of our just struggle against your tyranny.” As 

this statement indicates, anti-American terrorism has 

complex and multi-faceted causes, and foreswearing 

forward military presence in the Middle East would 

satisfy just one of a wide range of grievances.66 

By truly adopting offshore balancing, in fact, 

Washington would merely inflame some of those 

grievances all the more. A strategy that ruled out 

stationing American forces in the region would unavoidably make the United States more dependent 

on its authoritarian Arab allies—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi 

Arabia, the smaller Gulf sheikdoms—as providers of 

31
 
security and stability. During the 1970s, for instance, 

America poured arms into the Persian Gulf autocracies, particularly Saudi Arabia and the Shah’s Iran, at 

a time when it had only a skeletal military presence 

of its own in the area.67 Retrenchment today would 

similarly imply increased American military sales, intelligence cooperation, and other forms of support for 

local allies, and a general accentuation of the “friendly 

dictators” approach that has so incensed Muslim radicals. By the same token, even though many advocates 

of offshore balancing argue that Washington should 

sharply curtail its security ties to Israel, commentators 

like Marc Lynch and Colin Kahl have correctly observed that retrenchment would undoubtedly heighten American reliance on that country as the strongest, 

most pro-U.S. partner in an endemically unstable region. “While some advocates of offshore balancing are 

highly critical of America’s special relationship with 

Israel,” they write, “it is worth noting that, in practice, 

the approach would have to rely on and work indirectly through allies such as Israel to help uphold a regional balance of power favorable to U.S. interests.”68 

In these respects, offshore balancing would actually 

mean redoubling certain U.S. policies that have long 

provoked terrorist attacks. 

Offshore balancing has troubling implications 

for counterterrorism in other respects, too. Terrorist 

groups like al-Qaeda prosper amid instability and 

security vacuums; such instability and vacuums, in 

turn, unwittingly can be encouraged by the premature 

withdrawal of U.S. military power from troubled areas. One illustration of this phenomenon would be the 

U.S. drawdown in Iraq in 2011, which demonstrated 

that the removal of American forces from a still unstable context could undercut previous counterterrorism 

32
 
gains and facilitate the insecurity in which jihadist organizations thrive. Although that move was generally 

consistent with offshore balancers’ desire for reduced 

American military exposure in the Gulf, it ended up 

facilitating the renewed destabilization of large swaths 

of Iraq and the emergence of the Islamic State (IS) as 

a potent force in that area. “Had a residual U.S. force 

stayed in Iraq after 2011,” one senior adviser to the 

U.S. military in Iraq has written: 

the United States would have had far greater insight 

into the growing threat posed by ISIS [the Islamic 

States in Iraq and Syria] and could have helped the 

Iraqis stop the group from taking so much territory. 

Instead, ISIS’ march across northern Iraq took Washington almost completely by surprise.69 

Withdrawal, in other words, does not always lead to a 

reduced terrorist threat—its effects can sometimes cut 

in the opposite direction. 

Finally, offshore balancing would simultaneously 

make it more difficult to respond effectively to largescale terrorism by corroding the infrastructure and 

partnerships that America has long employed to do 

so. As Robert Art observes, the conduct of Operation 

ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan after 9/11 depended extensively on just those overseas bases and 

units that would likely be reduced or eliminated as 

Washington slashed its forward presence. (Since 2014, 

U.S. military operations against the IS have utilized 

many of these same assets.) In an offshore balancing 

scenario, by contrast, America “would have to start 

from scratch to build alliances and gain access to 

bases, a difficult and problematic process” that would 

likely lengthen the timeline and reduce the impact of 

U.S. response. In the same vein, U.S. forward deploy33
 
ments and security commitments have long fostered 

the relationships and leverage that American officials 

can use to obtain greater cooperation in the “quieter 

phase of fighting terrorism”—the diplomatic collaboration, intelligence liaison, and other largely out-ofsight measures that are crucial to defeating jihadist organizations.70 Were America significantly to retract its 

security posture, one could reasonably surmise that 

the relationships and leverage would erode as well. 

Writing in 2010, Daniel Byman observed that largescale military retrenchment “would likely have mixed 

results on the threat of terrorism, some of which are 

difficult to predict with certainty and a few of which 

could prove exceptionally dangerous.”71 This appraisal still seems appropriate today. Offshore balancing 

offers no panaceas when it comes to counterterrorism. 

Its advantages are not nearly as clear-cut as one might 

think, and significant perils and liabilities lurk just beneath the surface. As will be seen, that pattern is even 

more pronounced when it comes to another security issue that offshore balancers emphasize: nuclear 

proliferation. 

Exaggerated Security Benefits: Nuclear 

Proliferation. 

The idea that U.S. presence and assertiveness actually motivate nuclear proliferation is a consensus view 

among offshore balancers, and as with the origins of 

terrorism, there is a certain ring of truth to the argument. As political scientists like Kenneth Waltz and 

Nuno Monteiro have long understood, the very fact 

of American military dominance creates incentives for 

weaker rivals to seek nuclear weapons as a means of 

ensuring their own security. “There is only one way 

34
 
that a country can reliably deter a dominant power,” 

Waltz once noted, “and that is by developing its own 

nuclear force.”72 

This assertion is borne out by historical evidence, 

as is the idea that the way that the United States uses 

its power has sometimes added to proliferation incentives. During the 1950s, China began its pursuit of the 

bomb largely in order to address the security threat 

posed by U.S. presence in East Asia and to resist coercion over Taiwan and other matters. “In today’s world, 

if we don’t want to be bullied, then we cannot do without this thing,” Mao Zedong declared amid repeated 

confrontations with Washington.73 More recently, and 

as the National Intelligence Council correctly predicted beforehand, the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 

seems to have had the adverse results with respect to 

proliferation—in particular, by driving the North Korean and Iranian governments to intensify their own 

nuclear efforts so as to afford themselves some protection against suffering Saddam Hussein’s fate.74 

Yet if U.S. strategy has periodically pushed its 

rivals toward the bomb, there is again much reason 

to doubt that adopting offshore balancing would significantly redress the proliferation problem. To begin 

with, even though American policy may be one reason why “rogue states” pursue nuclear arsenals, there 

are many other reasons as well. Academic scholarship 

demonstrates that there are numerous motives that 

influence nuclear proliferation, ranging from desires 

for international or domestic prestige, to bureaucratic 

pressures, to ambitions to wield nuclear weapons as 

tools of offensive or coercive leverage.75 Saddam Hussein’s quest for nuclear weapons in the late-1970s and 

1980s, for example, was envisioned not just as an effort to achieve defensive deterrence against rivals like 

35
 
Israel, but also as a means of underwriting aggressive, 

revisionist initiatives vis-à-vis that country. Nuclear 

weapons, Saddam once commented, would allow Iraq 

to “guarantee the long war that is destructive to our 

enemy, and take at our leisure each meter of land and 

drown the enemy with rivers of blood.”76 Similarly 

complex motives have figured in other cases of nuclear proliferation. The drivers of that phenomenon, 

like the drivers of terrorism, are more multi-faceted 

than offshore balancers believe, and so altering American strategy would address but one aspect of the 

challenge. 

More likely, offshore balancing would make matters worse, because it would forfeit the leverage and 

influence that Washington traditionally has employed 

to restrain widespread proliferation. Whatever their 

pitfalls, U.S. forward presence and security commitments have, on the whole, exerted a powerful restraining effect on the spread of nuclear weapons. As both 

academics and government officials have recognized, 

U.S. security guarantees and troop deployments provide reassurance that drastically reduces the need for 

American allies to seek safety in independent nuclear 

arsenals. Those arrangements, the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review noted, limit 

proliferation “by reassuring non-nuclear U.S. allies 

and partners that their security interests can be protected without their own nuclear deterrent capabilities.”77 Conversely, the implicit—and sometimes explicit—threat that U.S. guarantees and presence might 

be rescinded if an ally chooses to go nuclear offers a 

“stick” that can be, and has been, used to dissuade aspiring proliferators.78 Finally, and no less important, 

the United States can use its position of centrality in 

the international system—a position that rests largely 

36
 
on its role as provider of security in key regions—to 

spearhead other nonproliferation initiatives, such 

as efforts to constrict the supply of critical nuclear 

components and materials, and to sanction aspiring 

proliferators.79 

To be clear, these are not merely abstract or theoretical advantages of America’s long-standing approach to grand strategy. Rather, a host of academic 

research demonstrates that in case after case during 

the postwar decades, this combination of elements has 

been vital to keeping proliferation as relatively limited as it has been. During the Cold War, this mixture 

of carrots and sticks played a vital role in preventing 

countries from West Germany and Sweden, to Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, from taking 

the decisive steps needed to obtain nuclear weapons.80 After the Cold War, realist scholars like John 

Mearsheimer predicted that the collapse of bipolarity 

would lead to widespread proliferation in key regions 

like Europe.81 The continued provision of reassurance 

by the United States helped contain this threat, however, and as Mark Kramer has written, the promise 

of robust security guarantees from NATO helped 

dampen the proliferation pressures that might otherwise have arisen in Poland and other former Warsaw 

Pact states.82 American security commitments and alliances, one recent survey aptly concludes, “have been 

arguably the most important and consequential of the 

strategies of [nonproliferation].”83 

What effect would a shift to offshore balancing 

have on proliferation dynamics? As offshore balancers argue, retracting U.S. presence and posture might 

ease some pressures for nuclear proliferation among 

American rivals. The number of those countries is 

quite small, however, and it is hard to see how, in prac37
 
tice, retrenchment would reverse the well-advanced 

nuclear programs of countries like North Korea. What 

significant U.S. retrenchment could quite plausibly do 

is to dramatically exacerbate the pressures for proliferation in a broader and more meaningful sense. In 

East Asia, a U.S. pullback would accentuate insecurity on the part of countries that are contending with a 

more assertive China, and whose nuclear forbearance 

has long been inextricably linked to the American 

presence.84 In the Middle East, Iran’s nuclear progress 

has already stirred proliferation impulses in countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; 

those impulses would likely become far more difficult 

to repress were U.S. reassurance weakened.85 Even in 

a region like Eastern Europe, one can easily imagine 

how the destabilizing mix of U.S. retrenchment and 

Russian aggressiveness could lead a technologically 

adept, and deeply security-conscious, country like 

Poland to consider pursuing its own nuclear option. 

Throughout the key geopolitical regions, offshore 

balancing would run considerable risk of heightening proliferation incentives and encouraging a more 

nuclearized world.86 

That world, in turn, would probably be more dangerous and unstable than the one we currently inhabit. 

Some offshore balancers, hailing from the tradition of 

defensive realism, argue that the emergence of more 

nuclear-armed states will lead to the establishment of 

effective deterrence between adversaries and result in 

greater geopolitical stability.87 Yet a growing body of 

academic research, as well as basic common sense, cast 

doubt on this sanguine outlook. More nuclear capabilities might mean more chances for nuclear terrorism 

or nuclear accidents.88 Proliferating states might not 

develop the secure second-strike and command-and38
 
control capabilities that are essential to decreasing 

first-strike incentives and ensuring stable deterrence.89 

Recent scholarly work also suggests that proliferation 

can increase the propensity for conflict in affected 

regions, and that it causes the rulers of proliferating 

states to behave more aggressively in the period following acquisition of nuclear weapons.90 Especially if 

a U.S. withdrawal leads to intensified security competitions in key regions—and as discussed later, there is 

good reason to think that it might—the results could 

be perilous indeed. 

In sum, when offshore balancing is subjected to 

greater scrutiny, it no longer looks like such a bargain 

where proliferation is concerned. For rather than alleviating a major challenge to U.S. interests and international stability, it might very well increase that 

challenge instead. 

Impact on U.S. Influence and Global Stability. 

Offshore balancing, then, would probably not pay 

great dividends on essential security issues like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, and, in key respects, 

it would likely cause more harm than good. But how 

does offshore balancing fare when one considers the 

broader and even more crucial issue at hand—the 

question of how successful that strategy will be in 

preserving U.S. global influence and maintaining a 

comparatively stable and advantageous international 

environment? A core assumption of offshore balancing is that retrenchment will not imperil that environment. Offshore balancers believe that a more circumspect grand strategy will lessen great power frictions, 

compel free-riding American allies to bear more of 

the load, and thus sustain basic global stability at a 

39
 
reduced price. As noted earlier, some proponents of 

the strategy also believe that offshore balancing will, 

counterintuitively, enhance American influence overseas. Here as elsewhere, the central claim of offshore 

balancing is that less activism and engagement will 

produce equal or even better results. Here as elsewhere, however, that argument is deeply suspect. 

Grasping this point requires understanding that 

offshore balancers’ critique of the inherited U.S. strategy is considerably overdrawn. From reading arguments in favor of offshore balancing, one often gets the 

impression that American strategy actively undercuts 

the nation’s influence and interests, by eliciting widespread systemic resistance and making Washington 

more enemies than friends. Yet the reality is not nearly so bleak. Yes, American power and interventions 

undoubtedly appear threatening to U.S. rivals, and 

certain post-Cold War endeavors—particularly the 

invasion of Iraq—were highly unpopular overseas.91 

But even so, it is misleading to suggest that American 

policy causes such widespread, systematic alienation 

and pushback as offshore balancers believe. 

As several leading scholars have noted, for example, the importance of anti-U.S. “soft balancing” is 

frequently exaggerated, because empirical support for 

that phenomenon is actually quite weak, and because 

it is really Washington that most frequently utilizes 

the tools of “soft balancing”—international institutions, diplomatic coalition-building, and others—to 

achieve its foreign-policy preferences.92 Moreover, 

and contrary to what one might expect from reading 

the offshore balancing literature, the dominant tendency of the post-Cold War era has been for countries 

to align with, rather than against, America. This has 

been true in Europe, where the United States has not 

40
 
simply maintained NATO but taken on 12 additional 

allies since the outset of the unipolar period. It has 

also been true in Asia, where American defense, security, and political relationships have frequently been 

upgraded, intensified, and expanded since the mid1990s. Even during the George W. Bush administration—the years when anti-American sentiment was 

probably at its peak—Washington actually increased 

and improved its security ties with a wide range of 

second- and third-tier states that saw American influence not as a threat but as a source of reassurance and 

protection vis-à-vis rising regional powers like Russia 

and China. Certain American policies may elicit widespread global disapproval, but the recent trend has 

been one of “balancing with” the United States rather 

than “balancing against it.”93 

Far from being a geopolitical liability, in fact, 

America’s forward presence and engagement have 

long been deeply interlinked with both U.S. influence 

and international stability. On the subject of influence, 

the security that America has provided its friends 

and allies has, in turn, provided America with substantial leverage in shaping those partners’ policies. 

“The more U.S. troops are stationed in a country,” one 

statistical analysis of this question finds, “the more 

closely that country’s foreign policy orientation aligns 

with that of the United States.”94 Historical evidence 

supports this assertion. From the early Cold War to 

the present, U.S. officials have often invoked the sway 

afforded by America’s forward presence to prevent 

allies from pursuing nuclear weapons, to gain more 

beneficial terms in trade and financial pacts, and even 

to impact the makeup of its allies’ governments.95 In 

the trade and financial realm, for instance, U.S. troop 

presence provided a bargaining chip that Washington 

41
 
employed to get NATO allies to bolster the dollar during the 1960s. Over 40 years later, the U.S.-South Korea 

security relationship provided leverage that American negotiators used to obtain better terms in the U.S.­

South Korea Free Trade Agreement.96 More broadly, 

American alliances have served as mechanisms for 

influencing economic, political, and security agendas 

in key regions, and for projecting Washington’s voice 

on a wide array of matters. Admittedly, that voice 

might not be as strong as U.S. officials desire or some 

international observers believe, but it has nonetheless 

been quite powerful and pervasive by any meaningful 

comparison. 

The relative international stability of the postwar period has an equally intimate relationship with 

America’s global posture. As even some advocates of 

retrenchment concede, the fact that historically warprone regions like Europe have remained comparatively peaceful in recent decades is not primarily a 

function of any dramatic advance in human enlightenment. Rather, that phenomenon has owed largely to 

the way that the “American pacifier” has soothed just 

those destabilizing impulses that previously caused 

upheaval and war. In key strategic regions, the U.S. 

presence has suppressed arms races and geopolitical 

competitions by affording the security that permits 

other countries effectively to underbuild their armed 

forces. Likewise, it has eased long-standing historical antagonisms by providing the atmosphere of reassurance in which powerful nations like Japan and 

Germany could be reinvigorated economically and 

reintegrated into functioning regional orders. Finally, 

the U.S. presence has been a force for moderation in 

the conduct of both allies and adversaries, deterring 

outright aggression and discouraging other forms 

42
 
of disruptive behavior. America “effectively acts as 

a night watchman,” Mearsheimer acknowledges, a 

geopolitical “Leviathan” that brings order and stability to an otherwise anarchical realm.97 “The contribution that the United States makes” to preventing the 

febrile international instability of earlier eras, another prominent political scientist observes, “is similar to the services that governments provide within 

sovereign states.”98 

What consequences would follow if the United 

States retracted the presence and commitments that 

have permitted it to play this role? While the future 

cannot be predicted with certainty, the most logical and obvious result would be to imperil influence 

and stability alike. On the former issue, it is simply 

not clear why American influence in other countries’ 

and regions’ affairs would persist—much less expand—if the policies and presence that have so long 

enabled that influence were abandoned. It seems far 

more probable that actors who no longer benefitted 

from such strong and visible U.S. support would have 

considerably less reason to defer to American wishes, 

just as it seems probable that the weakening or termination of U.S. alliances would leave Washington 

with diminished ability to exert leadership in crucial 

regions. Likewise, a major geopolitical pullback could 

make it more difficult to maintain the regular international military training and exercises that expand 

American reach by promoting interoperability with 

friends and partners.99 In effect, forward presence and 

security commitments have been the currency that 

Washington uses to buy a good portion of its international influence. A broad-based retrenchment would 

presumably devalue that currency and weaken other 

mechanisms that Washington has traditionally used 

to shape relationships and project its global voice. 

43
 
Retrenchment would seem a little less dangerous when it comes to international stability. Offshore 

balancers may be right to predict that their strategy 

would compel local or regional powers to devote additional resources to defense, and perhaps mitigate 

certain issues of contention with those nations that 

are currently antagonized by U.S. presence.100 Cutting 

Taiwan loose would certainly remove one potential 

flashpoint vis-à-vis China; reducing or eliminating 

the American military presence in Europe might indeed meet with Russian approbation. The problem, 

alas, is that it is also logical to expect that removing 

the American pacifier would unleash the more pernicious impulses that U.S. presence traditionally has 

suppressed. Security competitions that have long lain 

dormant might reawaken and intensify as countries 

more actively built up their own military capabilities. 

Long-repressed national rivalries might reignite following the elimination of strong American presence 

and the reassurance it offers. Additionally, while revisionist powers that dislike existing orders in Europe, 

the Persian Gulf, or East Asia would probably take a 

positive view of American retrenchment, they might 

just as likely exploit the retraction of U.S. power to assert their own claims more forcefully. In sum, if one 

accepts Mearsheimer’s own view that Washington 

has long played Leviathan in crucial regions, then it 

is hard to dispute the corresponding concern: “Take 

away that Leviathan, and there is likely to be big 

trouble.”101 

As with the question of nuclear proliferation, this is 

more than a theoretical concern. It does not take much 

imagination to see where and how such trouble might 

reemerge today. In Europe, normally the most peaceful and stable of the three major regions, a progres44
 
sively more aggressive Russia is already destabilizing 

neighboring states, using force to redraw national 

boundaries, and generally contesting the post-Cold 

War notion of a continent whole, free, and at peace.102 

In the Middle East and particularly the Persian Gulf, 

growing Iranian assertiveness has provoked profound 

regional anxieties that have played out in proxy wars 

in Syria and Yemen, as well as hints of a potential 

arms race—all as the Gulf countries simultaneously 

face the instability and violence associated with the 

rise of the IS. Not least of all, China’s ascendancy is 

jostling the regional order in East Asia. Beijing’s territorial claims and military buildup have sparked rising 

tensions with its neighbors, many of which—such as 

South Korea and Japan—still harbor lingering historical animosities vis-à-vis one another. In the early postCold War period, one analyst famously argued that 

East Asia was “ripe for rivalry”; even with a continuing U.S. presence, that description seems increasingly 

apt today. Across these regional contexts, there is thus 

much reason to worry that the result of retrenchment 

would not be low-cost, post-American stability, but 

rather intensified turmoil and upheaval.103 

Some offshore balancers acknowledge as much, and 

argue that Washington could accept—perhaps benefit 

from—such instability so long as it did not permit a 

hostile power to dominate a core region of Eurasia.104 

The trouble with this assertion is that it ignores the 

damage that increased global instability could inflict 

on important U.S. interests even if a regional hegemon 

did not emerge. For one thing, it seems unlikely that 

greater global conflict and turmoil would facilitate the 

intensive multilateral collaboration needed to address 

transnational problems ranging from climate change 

to pandemics to piracy. It seems just as improbable 

45
 
that such an atmosphere would conduce to the continued flourishing and spread of liberal democracy. 

Scholars widely recognize that, in places from Germany and Japan during the Cold War to Eastern Europe 

in the 1990s, American presence and/or guarantees 

helped incentivize democratic reforms and foster the 

security in which liberal institutions could succeed.105 

There is equally recognition that “a stable and prosperous world is more conducive to democratic spread 

and human rights protection than an unstable, less 

prosperous world.”106 Offshore balancing, therefore, 

would not simply downgrade the democracy-promotion initiatives that have facilitated liberalism’s 

remarkable advance in recent decades.107 The greater 

instability that would likely follow an American retrenchment could also prove quite damaging to hopes 

for the continued strength and spread of the political 

institutions that the United States prefers. 

The consequences for the increasingly integrated 

global economy that Washington has long promoted 

could be just as problematic. As Michael Mandelbaum 

and other scholars have correctly noted, the tremendous gains toward international openness and prosperity during the postwar decades have been critically 

enabled by American forward presence and the relative stability and security it affords.108 That forward 

presence has protected critical sea lanes and secured 

the global commons, while also containing the geopolitical conflicts that might, by erupting, badly disrupt 

an interlinked world economy. In Europe, for instance, 

American protection has long provided the shield 

behind which continental integration could occur; in 

East Asia, the persistence of U.S. presence after the 

Cold War has had the intention—and effect—of underwriting similar advances.109 To be clear, the ques46
 
tion of how global trade and finance would react in an 

atmosphere of greater instability can only be conclusively answered when such a scenario comes to pass. 

Yet it would seem Pollyannaish to predict that global 

interchange would not be affected negatively by intensifying geopolitical competition in areas of tremendous significance to an interwoven world economy. 

What all of this suggests is that offshore balancing 

could reasonably be expected to undermine, rather 

than preserve, U.S. influence and international stability, and that even if America’s physical safety were not 

directly jeopardized by post-retrenchment turmoil, 

some of its key national interests might be. Then there 

is the greatest danger that a strategy of offshore balancing would court—the danger that a crucial region 

might not actually be able to keep its balance absent 

U.S. forward presence. 

Could the Balance Break? 

Whether it was ultimately reversible or not, the collapse or severe deterioration of a key regional balance 

would have grave implications for the United States. 

In the worst case, such a development could produce 

a seismic shift in the global balance of power and negate a core goal of postwar American grand strategy. 

Even in the best case, it would require what would 

likely be a major military intervention to restore the 

broken balance and defeat the offending aggressor. 

Either way, the costs and dangers involved could easily be immense. If adopting offshore balancing could 

reasonably lead to heightened risks of such a scenario, 

there would be another strong reason to doubt that 

strategy’s basic viability. 

47
 
Offshore balancers generally believe that there 

is little danger of such a scenario materializing, because bids for regional hegemony will provoke a 

timely counterbalancing response from states within 

the region, and because America can move quickly 

to head off growing threats before they become truly 

critical. Viewed through the lens of history, however, 

these assumptions appear somewhat questionable. As 

mentioned previously, the fact is that “underbalancing” happens: in the world wars and the Persian Gulf 

War, local actors ultimately proved unable to contain 

aspiring regional hegemons.110 In two of those cases— 

World War II and the Gulf War—the balance broke, 

or severely eroded, in surprisingly rapid fashion. In 

April 1940, it was certainly not obvious to most observers that Great Britain and France were entirely 

incapable of checking German power on continental 

Europe, and that this regional balance would have 

collapsed entirely within 6 weeks.111 In mid-1990, U.S. 

officials only belatedly recognized that Saddam Hussein intended to conquer Kuwait and fundamentally 

alter the balance in the Gulf, and by the time they 

came to that realization, there was essentially nothing they could do to impede the Iraqi assault. (Nor, 

in the days following the invasion, was there much 

that U.S. forces could have done to impede a followon attack into Saudi Arabia.)112 The belief that regional 

balances are inherently robust and that Washington 

can see adverse shifts coming in time to prevent them 

without having to fight a major war is thus shakier 

than it seems. 

Since the early-1990s, of course, the global security environment has been comparatively benign by 

historical standards, and so the prospect that a hostile 

regional hegemon might again emerge has seemed far 

48
 
more remote. Even today, there is very little near-term 

likelihood that any U.S. adversary could marshal the 

power to dominate Europe, East Asia, or the Persian 

Gulf, even if America left those regions entirely to 

their own devices. Looking toward the medium- and 

long-range future, however, there is at least one rising power that might seriously threaten the existing 

balance within its region. 

That country, obviously, is China. Today, China 

still falls well short of the level of power needed to 

assert regional dominance even in the absence of U.S. 

presence.113 Moreover, it is not clear that China will aspire to such regional dominance as its power increases. Yet a peaceful rise cannot be guaranteed, either, 

and China’s ability to pursue regional primacy could 

increase markedly in the decades to come. Explosive 

economic growth and a long-term military buildup 

have already had a pronounced impact on the military 

balance vis-à-vis neighbors like Taiwan, Vietnam, the 

Philippines, and Japan. If Chinese economic growth 

continues apace, and if China’s defense budget continues to register annual increases of 10 percent or 

more, then other East Asian countries will eventually 

confront enormous difficulty in balancing Beijing’s 

power—even if they overcome collective action problems and their own historical antagonisms to cooperate in that undertaking. This prospect is one that is 

clearly recognized even by some leading proponents 

of American retrenchment. As one offshore balancer 

puts it, “The United States will have to play a key role 

in countering China, because its Asian neighbors are 

not strong enough to do it by themselves.”114 

Yet if this assessment is accurate—and there is every reason to think that it is—then offshore balancing 

becomes a highly risky and potentially counterpro49
 
ductive course of action. As noted, some analysts have 

argued that adopting that strategy would actually improve Washington’s ability to counter Chinese power, 

by strengthening U.S. flexibility, better leveraging the 

capabilities of local actors, and divesting America of 

distracting onshore commitments in other regions. 

But here again, this analysis glosses over a range of 

more worrisome possibilities. As mentioned earlier, 

U.S. retrenchment could motivate exposed local actors 

like South Korea or Japan to pursue their own nuclear 

arsenals, thereby impelling regional arms races and 

heightening tensions further. Or, perhaps more dangerously still, a U.S. pullback might facilitate the very 

outcome that offshore balancers aim to avert. As Robert Gilpin wrote in his classic work, War and Change in 

World Politics: 

Retrenchment by its very nature is an indication of 

relative weakness and declining power, and thus retrenchment can have a deteriorating effect on relations 

with allies and rivals. Sensing the decline of their protector, allies try to obtain the best deal they can from 

the rising master of the system. Rivals are stimulated 

to ‘close in,’ and frequently they precipitate a conflict 

in the process. 

Retrenchment can be carried out successfully, Gilpin 

acknowledges, but in a charged geopolitical environment it is usually a fraught and perilous path.115 

This warning has particular salience in the East 

Asian context. In that region, U.S. allies as well as formally nonaligned countries count on American support and presence to help them manage their relationships with an increasingly powerful, and increasingly 

abrasive, Beijing. As analysts like Zachary Selden have 

observed, these countries seek visible U.S. backing 

50
 
and reassurance precisely because they fear that they 

could not otherwise balance a rising China. “America 

is now an alternative to China,” said one Vietnamese 

observer as early as 2000. “To counter the Chinese 

threat we must lean toward the West.”116 Similar comments have become ubiquitous in the years since then. 

In these circumstances, and contrary to what offshore balancers expect, a significant American retrenchment might not have the desired effect of compelling these countries to resist more determinedly 

and successfully potential Chinese expansion. Instead, it might incentivize them to acquiesce to, or 

perhaps bandwagon with, an assertive Beijing if they 

calculated that the odds of effective resistance were 

declining as Washington pulled back. If U.S. presence 

in Asia were weakened, one Thai commentator has 

predicted, Asian countries would have to conclude 

that “the region will no longer be a place where only 

one major power plays a dominant role,” and hedge 

their bets accordingly. Likewise, one analysis of U.S. 

security relationships concludes that while reducing 

the American military presence in the Pacific might 

bring some budgetary savings, “in Vietnam, Australia, or the Philippines . . . such a shift could prompt a 

wholesale reevaluation of national defense policy and 

have costly implications.”117 In sum, if one expects that 

Asian countries will have great difficulty checking 

Chinese power without U.S. assistance, then reducing 

Washington’s role in the area could actually discourage local balancing and pave the way for Beijing’s 

ascent.118 

Offshore balancing could plausibly encourage this 

undesirable outcome in other ways, as well. As Gilpin 

notes, when retrenchment is viewed as weakness or 

lack of commitment, it can cause revisionist powers 

51
 
to push harder against the contours of the existing order. This danger cannot be ignored in the Asia-Pacific. 

There is evidence to suggest, as offshore balancers 

argue, that a desire to counteract U.S. presence and 

security commitments in the region has been an important motivator of China’s post-Cold War military 

buildup.119 Yet there is also evidence to suggest that 

U.S. presence and commitments nonetheless have had 

an overall tempering effect on Chinese behavior, by 

limiting opportunities for intimidation and expansion, and by raising the likely costs of aggressive or 

destabilizing behavior.120 If the United States were to 

now begin reducing that presence, it might logically 

undercut the tempering effect in the process, for a U.S. 

retrenchment would have the practical consequence 

of accentuating the growing power disparity between 

Beijing and its neighbors, and creating greater uncertainty in Chinese minds as to whether Washington 

would actually come to those countries’ defense in a 

crisis. The upshot could be to incentivize precisely the 

sort of expansionist behavior that would challenge the 

regional order.121 

Finally, if an offshore balancing type approach 

might therefore encourage adverse shifts in the regional equilibrium, it would equally complicate U.S. 

efforts to respond to those shifts. Offshore balancing 

assumes that the United States would be able to intervene adeptly to prevent such changes (or to reverse 

them if they did occur), and that retrenching from other regions would provide greater flexibility and leverage in addressing adverse events in the Asia-Pacific. 

But the crucial flaw in the logic of retrenchment is that 

going offshore generally makes it harder rather than 

easier to affect the regional equilibrium.122 Right now, 

U.S. forward presence affords America a number of 

52
 
critical advantages that it can draw on in shaping the 

regional climate in East Asia and responding to crises 

should they emerge: strong and deeply institutionalized alliances; established patterns of basing, logistics, 

and access; high degrees of interoperability that come 

through near-continual training with friendly militaries; and others. These assets not only help check 

Chinese power and hedge against unwelcome developments in peacetime. They would also serve as the 

indispensable foundation of Washington’s response 

should the region nonetheless descend into conflict, 

providing a preexisting framework and infrastructure 

for large-scale U.S. intervention. 

Were these assets to be devalued or liquidated via 

retrenchment, however, then the United States would 

face a far greater challenge. In peacetime, it would 

possess fewer of the instruments and arrangements 

that have long allowed it to influence the behavior 

of allies and adversaries, and head off unfavorable 

events before they occur. In wartime, the disadvantages would be greater still. The United States would face 

the daunting prospect of assembling the necessary 

coalitions, access, and basing agreements on the fly. 

It would confront the problems inherent in working 

with foreign governments and militaries with which 

it had less familiarity and fewer ongoing ties. It would 

have to overcome the considerable logistical challenges of moving a greater proportion of the required forces into theater, and perhaps fighting its way back into 

a region after an adversary had exploited U.S. absence 

to stake out a more formidable position there. And, of 

course, it would have to do all of this amid the intense 

pressure of a brewing or ongoing conflict. “Getting 

out of the marginal seas might be easy,” two experts 

on naval strategy conclude. “Getting back in would 

53
 
be a different proposition entirely.”123 Or, as another 

leading scholar appropriately puts it, “Beefing up a 

preexisting presence in an emergency is easier than 

re-establishing one from scratch in a crisis.”124 

Offshore balancers would do well to keep these 

warnings in mind. The strategy they recommend 

promises to preserve regional balances at reduced 

costs. But instead, it might well heighten the risk of 

dangerous developments in a key region like East 

Asia, while simultaneously exacerbating the hazards 

and difficulties of an American response.125 

CONCLUSION 

Is offshore balancing truly an idea whose time has 

come? Does that grand strategy represent the right 

path forward for America? A growing number of observers in the strategic studies and policy communities 

believe that this is the case. They argue that America’s 

long-standing postwar grand strategy has outlived its 

utility, and that the danger to U.S. interests now lies 

not in doing too little, but rather in doing too much. 

Accordingly, they believe that adopting the more restrained global posture entailed by offshore balancing can actually produce superior overall outcomes 

at a bargain price. This “less can be more” ethos has 

proven quite attractive in the post-Iraq, post-financial 

crisis context, and it has given offshore balancing an 

increasing currency and prominence in debates on the 

future of Washington’s stance toward the world. As 

two informed analysts have written, “Who could object to a strategy designed to reduce costs and risks to 

the United States, bolster America’s good name in foreign capitals, and encourage Eurasian states to manage their own affairs?”126 

54
 
All that glitters is not gold, however, and, upon 

closer inspection, the luster of offshore balancing 

fades considerably. Proponents of that strategy have 

certainly performed a valuable service in illuminating 

certain downsides of America’s current global posture, 

and in forcing defenders of that posture to clarify and 

more persuasively articulate their arguments.127 Yet as 

this monograph has demonstrated, the case for shifting to offshore balancing is ultimately much weaker 

than it might first appear. Across a broad range of crucial issues—from budgetary impact, to key security 

threats like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, to the 

retention of American global influence and a stable 

and congenial international environment—the probable advantages of large-scale retrenchment are less 

significant than frequently advertised. The probable 

disadvantages, by contrast, are quite significant and 

compelling. Offshore balancing may purport to be a 

near-optimal grand strategy that can deliver low-cost 

security, stability, and influence for the United States. 

Yet, were Washington actually to adopt that approach, 

the more plausible the outcome might well be to endanger precisely the security, stability, and influence 

that American statecraft traditionally has provided, 

and to swap relatively modest near-term economies 

for a host of sobering long-term risks and costs. 

The analysis presented here thus argues strongly 

against a turn to offshore balancing as America’s 

grand strategy. More broadly, it argues for a healthy 

dose of skepticism in evaluating proposals for a major 

departure from the core patterns of postwar U.S. statecraft. As the current popularity of offshore balancing 

illustrates, at times of geopolitical difficulty and constraint, it can be tempting to seek refuge in a sort of 

grand strategic panacea: in this case, an approach that 

55
 
promises to maintain the essential blessings of the 

post-1945 order without imposing the long-standing 

costs and requirements of sustaining that order. Yet 

the unfortunate reality is that panaceas rarely pan out, 

and in the case of offshore balancing, it quickly becomes apparent that one cannot easily shed the burdens of U.S. postwar strategy without endangering 

the benefits as well. As the debate over America’s current and future global role continues, it will therefore 

be advisable to maintain a high standard of proof in 

evaluating proposals for a significant shift in American strategy. For while less can indeed sometimes 

be more, in grand strategy as in many things, less is 

usually just less.128 

What does all of this mean with respect to the U.S. 

Army in particular, and with respect to American 

Landpower in general? At a minimum, it means that 

the United States will continue to possess a compelling strategic rationale for maintaining robust, readily 

deployable ground forces capable of projecting power 

and presence in crucial regions around the world. To be 

clear, the maintenance of American forward presence, 

and the projection of American power, has been and 

will remain a task for all of the services, and one that 

involves air, sea, and ground forces alike. Moreover, 

just as the role of American Landpower expanded at 

the margins during the manpower intensive conflicts 

in Iraq and Afghanistan following 2001, it has been 

natural and appropriate to undertake some rebalancing of the joint force more recently, as such conflicts 

have come to play a less dominant role in U.S. military and defense strategy. Yet just as the United States 

would be unwise to embrace a dramatic retrenchment 

in its overall geopolitical posture, it would be no less 

unwise to heed calls for drastic cuts—up to 50 percent, 

as proposed by some analysts—in its ground forces.129 

56
 
The reasons for this are manifold, but the basic 

underlying theme is that U.S. Landpower remains essential to delivering the benefits that the legacy grand 

strategy has long provided, and that offshore balancing would likely jeopardize. Through their forward 

presence, U.S. ground forces often represent the embodiment of both reassurance and deterrence, by providing a very tangible manifestation of Washington’s 

commitment to a given country or region. They enable 

regular training and exercises with partner nations, 

thereby improving U.S. relationships and influence in 

peacetime, and promoting crucial interoperability in 

times of crisis. Not least of all, they constitute a strategic hedge against unfavorable geopolitical developments, and a means of meeting those developments 

early, should they nonetheless materialize. One recent 

white paper on strategic Landpower puts it aptly: 

Forward deployed, actively engaged forces have proven essential to contributing to peace by reassuring our 

friends and deterring our enemies. Such forces provide 

a broad range of benefits that includes: demonstration 

of U.S. commitment, establishment of enduring relationships with regional military and political leaders, 

improved capabilities of hosts to handle their own 

internal security challenges, increased willingness of 

hosts to participate in friendly coalitions, ability of the 

U.S. to achieve a higher level of understanding than is 

possible just with technical means, reduced chance of 

experiencing strategic surprise, reduced change that 

an aggressor will miscalculate U.S. resolve or capability, and increased responsiveness to crises. 

If the United States seeks to avoid the geopolitical 

dangers associated with large-scale retrenchment, it 

will need to retain strong, effective Landpower as a 

key part of a balanced joint force.130 

57
 
To conclude by returning to the broader grand 

strategic picture, it merits stating explicitly that this 

analysis is not meant to foreclose the possibility of any 

adaptation, flexibility, or retrenchment in Washington’s approach to international affairs. As the events 

of the post-9/11 years made quite apparent, when it 

comes to grand strategy, too much assertiveness can 

be just as dangerous as too much restraint. And as 

recent scholarship has underscored, any successful 

grand strategy—whether within a given presidential 

administration, or over a longer period of time—virtually always entails some degree of change within continuity.131 Indeed, the postwar grand strategy has itself 

featured a process of near-continual refinement at the 

margins, as American policymakers have adapted to 

shifting challenges and circumstances, and corrected 

for prior underreach or overreach, while still affirming the basic underlying approach of energetic global 

engagement.132 This was the tack taken by the Dwight 

Eisenhower administration upon inheriting President 

Harry Truman’s costly conflict in Korea, for example, 

and by the Richard Nixon administration as it sought 

to grapple with American overextension in Vietnam.133 

One needs to look no further than the Obama administration’s recent policies to see this dynamic at work 

today. Since taking power in 2009, that administration 

consistently has affirmed the imperative of U.S. global 

engagement and leadership, even as it has also sought 

to rebalance that engagement geographically, and to 

avoid the large-scale, protracted military interventions that characterized its predecessor’s approach.134 

This process of strategic adjustment—as opposed 

to a wholesale change of strategy—will continue 

to be necessary in the coming years, so as to preserve the myriad advantages of America’s postwar 

58
 
posture, while still allowing U.S. statecraft to adapt to 

the changes that invariably occur in the international 

environment. Precisely what such adjustment might 

look like in practice is beyond the scope of this monograph, as this subject would require an extended treatment of its own. Yet it is worth noting that informed 

analysts such as Peter Feaver, Bruce Jentleson, and 

Robert Art have already mooted various proposals for 

how the United States might effectively refine and recalibrate its traditional approach, so as to better reflect 

current constraints, problems, and opportunities.135 

Looking to the future, American officials would do 

well to focus their energies on accomplishing this familiar task of accommodating inevitable change within a framework of broader continuity. As this monograph has argued, they would do equally well to reject 

the more extreme option of broad-based retrenchment, 

and to resist the tempting but false allure of offshore 

balancing. 

ENDNOTES 

1. A shorter version of the argument presented here appears 

as Hal Brands, “Fools Rush Out? The Flawed Logic of Offshore 

Balancing,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 2, Summer 

2015. The ideas presented in this monograph have been considerably developed and expanded from that shorter publication. 

2. The literature in support of offshore balancing is immense, 

reflecting the support that concept commands within the academy. A nonexhaustive list of key texts would include Stephen 

Walt, “The End of the American Era,” National Interest, No. 116, 

November/December 2011, pp. 6-16; Walt, “In the National Interest: A New Grand Strategy for American Foreign Policy,” Boston 

Review, February/March 2005, available from bostonreview.net/ 

BR30.1/walt.php, accessed February 12, 2015; Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, New York: Norton, 2006; Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide 

59
 
Terrorism, New York, NY: Random House, 2005, esp. pp. 237-250; 

Pape, “Empire Falls,” National Interest, No. 99, January/February 

2009, pp. 21-34; Barry Posen, “The Case for Restraint,” American 

Interest, Vol. 3, No. 2, November/December 2007, pp. 7-17; Posen, 

“Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy,” Foreign 

Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 1, January/February 2013, pp. 116-129; Posen, 

Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy, Ithaca, NY: 

Cornell University Press, 2014; Eugene Gholz and Daryl Press, 

“Footprints in the Sand,” American Interest, Vol. 5., No. 4, March/ 

April 2010, pp. 59-67; Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: 

American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006, pp. 159-192; Layne, “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America’s Future Grand Strategy,” 

International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1, Summer 1997, pp. 86-124; 

Layne, “Offshore Balancing Revisited, Washington Quarterly, Vol. 

25, No. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 233-248; Benjamin Schwartz and Christopher Layne, “A New Grand Strategy,” Atlantic Monthly, January 

2002, pp. 36-42; Eugene Gholz, Daryl Press, and Harvey Sapolsky, 

“Come Home, America: The Strategy of Restraint in the Face of 

Temptation,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 4, Spring 1997, pp. 

5-48; John Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” National Interest, 

No. 111, January/February 2011, pp. 16-34. See also the works 

cited hereafter. It is worth noting that some of these scholars do 

not explicitly use the term “offshore balancing” to describe their 

preferred strategy, and they occasionally disagree on specific policy prescriptions. Generally speaking, however, the underlying 

strategy they recommend is the same. 

3. Christopher Layne, “The (Almost) Triumph of Offshore Balancing,” National Interest, January 27, 2012, available from nationalinterest.org/commentary/almost-triumph-offshore-balancing-6405, 

accessed February 24, 2015. 

4. Stephen Walt, “Offshore Balancing: An Idea Whose Time 

Has Come,” Foreign Policy, November 2, 2011, available from 

foreignpolicy.com/2011/11/02/offshore-balancing-an-idea-whose-timehas-come/, accessed February 24, 2015. See also Peter Beinart, 

“Obama’s Foreign Policy Doctrine Finally Emerges with ‘Offshore Balancing’,” The Daily Beast, November 28, 2011, available 

from www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/28/obama-s-foreign-policy-doctrine-finally-emerges-with-off-shore-balancing.html, accessed 

February 25, 2015; Walt, “A Bandwagon for Offshore Balanc60
 
ing?” Foreign Policy, December 1, 2011, available from foreignpolicy.com/2011/12/01/a-bandwagon-for-offshore-balancing/, accessed 

February 25, 2015. 

5. For one insightful exception from more than a decade ago, 

see Robert Art, A Grand Strategy for America, Ithaca, NY: Cornell 

University Press, 2002, esp. pp. 176-177, 181-222. For a more recent but theater-specific critique, see James Holmes and Toshi 

Yoshihara, “An Ocean Too Far: Offshore Balancing in the Indian 

Ocean,” Asian Security, Vol. 8, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 1-26. For 

a historical perspective on the strategy, see Williamson Murray 

and Peter Mansoor, “U.S. Grand Strategy in the 21st Century: 

The Case for a Continental Commitment,” Orbis, Vol. 59, No. 1, 

Winter 2015, pp. 19-34. 

6. For a good discussion of grand strategic choices and options facing the United States, see Richard Fontaine and Kristin 

Lord, eds., America’s Path: Grand Strategy for the Next Administration, Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2012. 

7. Walt, “In the National Interest.” 

8. Latin America, of course, has also long been considered a 

crucial region for U.S. security interests, and the United States has 

rarely hesitated to act assertively in that region when those interests are perceived to be at risk. But since Washington’s dominance 

in that region traditionally has been so pronounced, the United 

States has generally not felt the need to retain such large-scale, 

permanent military presence in the region, at least not during the 

post-World War II era. 

9. The best discussion and defense of postwar strategy is 

Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William Wohlforth, 

“Don’t Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment,” 

International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3, Winter 2012/13, pp. 7-51, 

quoted on p. 11. See also Robert Kagan, The World America Made, 

New York: Vintage, 2012, pp. 16-68; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War, New York: Oxford University 

Press, 2005. 

61
 
10. The origins of and reasons for America’s postwar strategy are discussed in Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: 

National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War, 

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992; G. John Ikenberry, 

After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of 

Order after Major Wars, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

2001, pp. 163-214. On the nuclear issue in particular, see Francis 

Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition: American Grand Strategy and the 

Nuclear Revolution,” International Security, forthcoming, 2015. 

11. See Melvyn Leffler, “Dreams of Freedom, Temptations of 

Power,” in Jeffrey Engel, ed., The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, 

esp. pp. 146-147. 

12. A good description of post-Cold War strategy is Peter Feaver and Stephen Biddle, “Assessing Strategic Choices in 

the War on Terror,” in James Burk, ed., How 9/11 Changed Our 

Ways of War, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014, 

pp. 29-31. On the shaping of that strategy, see also Hal Brands, 

Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of 

the Post-Cold War Order, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 

forthcoming 2016; Brands, From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s 

Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World, Lexington, KY: 

University Press of Kentucky, 2008, esp. chapters 2-3. 

13. See G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order, Princeton, NJ: 

Princeton University Press, 2012, esp. pp. 159-220; Tony Smith, 

America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle 

for Democracy in the Twentieth Century, Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 1994. 

14. See Gaddis, Strategies of Containment; also Michael Mandelbaum, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World’s Government in the 21st Century, New York: Public Affairs, 2006, esp. 

pp. 31-87. 

15. Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition”; also Nicholas Miller, 

“Hegemony and Nuclear Proliferation,” Ph.D. Dissertation, 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2014. 

62
 
16. Gholz, Press, and Sapolsky, “Come Home, America,” 

quote from pp. 5-6; see also Layne, “From Preponderance to 

Offshore Balancing.” 

17. The concept of a “legacy” grand strategy is drawn from 

Peter Feaver, “American Grand Strategy at the Crossroads: Leading from the Front, Leading from Behind or Not Leading at All,” 

in Fontaine and Lord, eds., America’s Path, esp. pp. 60-62. 

18. My description of offshore balancing draws on the long 

bibliographic entry in Endnote 2. Where useful, it also refers to 

specific arguments or claims made by particular authors. 

19. Quoted in Posen, “Pull Back,” p. 121; see also Walt, “In the 

National Interest”; Walt, “End of the American Era.” 

20. Quotes from Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Exit: 

Beyond the Pax Americana,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 2, June 2011, p. 153; Posen, “Pull Back,” 

pp. 118, 121-123. 

21. “Free-riding” (or “cheap riding) and “reckless driving” 

are discussed most extensively in Posen, Restraint, pp. 33-50. 

22. Michael Birnbaum, “Gates Rebukes European Allies in 

Farewell Speech,” The Washington Post, June 10, 2011. 

23. Robert Pape, “Soft Balancing against the United States,” 

International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1, Summer 2005, pp. 7-45. 

24. See John Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the 

West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 5, September/October 2014, pp. 77-89. 

25. Christopher Layne, “China’s Challenge to U.S. Hegemony,” Current History, Vol. 107, No. 705, January 2008, esp. pp. 

16-18; Layne, “China’s Role in American Grand Strategy: Partner, 

Regional Power, or Great Power Rival?” in Jim Rolfe, ed., The 

Asia-Pacific: A Region of Transitions, Honolulu, HI: The Asia-Pacific 

Center for Security Studies, 2004, pp. 54-80. 

63
 
26. Harvey Sapolsky, Benjamin Friedman, Eugene Gholz, and 

Daryl Press, “Restraining Order: For Strategic Modesty,” World 

Affairs, Fall 2009, esp. pp. 88-91, quoted on p. 91. For arguments 

regarding terrorism and proliferation, see also Pape, Dying to 

Win; Gholz and Press, “Footprints in the Sand,” esp. pp. 63-65; 

Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” pp. 29-30. 

27. Quoted in Colin Powell, My American Journey, New York: 

Ballantine, 1995, p. 576. 

28. See, for instance, Christopher Preble, The Power Problem: 

How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009, esp. 

pp. 88-94; Posen, Restraint, pp. 54-60; among others. 

29. These core tenets of offshore balancing can be traced in 

virtually any of the sources cited previously in the major bibliographic endnotes. 

30. The “free-hand” concept comes from Art, A Grand Strategy 

for America, p. 172, who uses this term to categorize both offshore 

balancing and traditional isolationism. 

31. See, as examples of these various proposals, Layne, Peace 

of Illusions; Walt, “End of the American Era”; Posen, “Pull Back”; 

Pape, Dying to Win, pp. 237-250. 

32. Walt, “A Bandwagon for Offshore Balancing?”; Layne, 

Peace of Illusions, pp. 186-188; John Mearsheimer, “America Unhinged,” National Interest, January/February 2014, esp. pp. 22­

23. As Peter Feaver has written, though, one oddity of offshore 

balancing is that its advocates approve of such partnerships and 

other unsavory practices in theory, but sometimes critique them 

when actually undertaken. See Feaver, “Not Even One Cheer for 

Offshore Balancing?” Foreign Policy, April 30, 2013, available from 

foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/30/not-even-one-cheer-for-offshore-balancing/, accessed April 27, 2015. 

33. The strongest statement of this approach is John 

Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign 

Policy, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007. 

64
 
34. See Layne and Schwartz, “A New Grand Strategy”; 

Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault”; Layne, 

“China’s Challenge to U.S. Hegemony,” esp. pp. 17-18. As some 

critics of offshore balancing have noted, however, the logic of offshore balancing is not crystal clear when it comes to this issue. If 

offshore balancing is really all about preventing hostile powers 

from becoming hegemonic in key regions, then one would think 

that its practitioners would not want to concede a country like 

Russia or China additional influence in their regions by abandoning Taiwan or leaving Ukraine to its own devices. Rather, they 

might prefer to support those countries against their larger neighbors, even if only by indirect means such as arms sales or intelligence sharing, so as to raise the cost of aggression and thereby 

discourage future—and potentially more ambitious—efforts to 

upset an existing regional equilibrium. 

35. See particularly Posen, Restraint; Mearsheimer, “Imperial 

by Design”; Walt, “End of the American Era.” 

36. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 

New York: Norton, 2003, pp. 234-266. There is, however, some 

dispute as to whether the United States intervened in Europe in 

1917 based on the logic of offshore balancing, or for other reasons. 

See Galen Jackson, “The Offshore Balancing Thesis Reconsidered: 

Realism, the Balance of Power in Europe, and America’s Decision 

for War in 1917,” Security Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 August 2012, pp. 

455-489. During the early-20th century, the United States did have 

a token military presence in East Asia, stationed in the Philippines 

and China. 

37. After 1990, of course, the United States moved away from 

offshore balancing in the Gulf in favor of onshore presence. The 

United States similarly moved away from offshore balancing in 

Europe and East Asia after its victory in World War II. 

38. Layne, “Offshore Balancing Revisited,” pp. 245-246. 

39. Posen, “Pull Back,” p. 127; Preble, Power Problem, esp. 

pp. 151-156. 

40. See Joshua Shifrinson and Sameer Lalwani, “It’s a Common Misunderstanding: The Limited Threat to American Command of the Commons,” in Christopher Preble and John Mueller, eds., A Dangerous World? Threat Perception and U.S. National 

65
 
 

Security, Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2014, esp. p. 241; also 

Christopher Layne, “Sleepwalking with Beijing,” National Interest, 

No. 137, May/June 2015, pp. 37-45. 

41. See, for instance, Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” 

p. 41. 

42. Pape, Dying to Win, pp. 237-250, esp. pp. 237-238; Gholz 

and Press, “Footprints in the Sand,” pp. 63-65. 

43. For instance, Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” 

pp. 30, 32-33. 

44. On the idea of playing hard to get, see particularly Walt, 

“In the National Interest.” Walt is also a strong proponent of 

the broader idea discussed in this paragraph—that retrenchment is actually the best way to preserve American primacy and 

influence. 

45. Preble, Power Problem, p. 69. 

46. Precisely how much money would be saved is also difficult to say. The basic problem here is determining what one 

should take as the appropriate baseline. If one assumes that, in 

the absence of wholesale retrenchment, the United States would 

end up fighting Iraq- and Afghanistan-sized wars every decade, 

then the savings from offshore balancing would indeed be fairly 

substantial (although not as substantial as one might expect—see 

the analysis presented in the subsequent paragraph). If, however, one assumes that the better baseline would be the situation 

that prevailed in the 1990s (when the United States frequently 

used military force but generally relied on airpower in a multilateral context) or the situation that has prevailed since roughly 

2011 (when the United States drew down in Iraq and began to 

withdraw from Afghanistan), then the savings would be much 

smaller still. 

47. The Obama administration’s FY 2015 budget request for 

the Defense Department, for instance, totaled over $560 billion. 

See Todd Harrison, Analysis of the FY 2015 Defense Budget, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, 2014, 

esp. p. 5. 

66
 
48. For Cold War figures, see Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 393. 

49. For post-Cold War military spending, see the data contained in World Bank, “Military Expenditure (% of GDP),” 

available from data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND. 

GD.ZS?page=3, accessed April 9, 2015. 

50. See Amy Belasco, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and 

Other Global War on Terror Operations since 9/11,” Washington, 

DC: Congressional Research Service Report, December 2014. Data 

taken from “Summary.” 

51. For the most explicit articulation of the idea that the United States will refrain from Iraq-type conflicts in the coming years, 

see Department of Defense, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, Washington, DC: U.S. Government 

Printing Office, 2012, esp. pp. 3, 6. 

52. Evan Braden Montgomery, “Contested Primacy in the 

Western Pacific: China’s Rise and the Future of U.S. Power Projection,” International Security, Vol. 38, No. 4, Spring 2014, esp. p. 121. 

53. Elbridge Colby, Grand Strategy: Contending Contemporary 

Analyst Views and Implications for the U.S. Navy, Alexandria, VA: 

Center for Naval Analyses, November 2011, p. 29. 

54. See Patrick Mills et al., “The Costs of Commitment: Cost 

Analysis of Overseas Air Force Basing,” RAND Corporation 

Working Paper, Santa Monica, CA: April 2012, pp. 13, 21-22. The 

Congressional Budget Office study is cited in the Mills paper. It 

is worth noting that a different RAND study takes a somewhat 

different view of the cost efficiencies in returning overseas forces 

to the United States. See Michael Lostumbo et al., Overseas Basing 

of U.S. Military Forces: An Assessment of Relative Costs and Strategic 

Benefits, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2013, pp. 167-233. 

However, on p. 232, that study does note that “we did not find 

systematically higher fixed costs for overseas bases.” 

55. Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report, 

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010, p. 33. 

67
 
56. On the importance of nuclear superiority in avoiding (and 

enabling) coercion, see Matthew Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve: Explaining Nuclear Crisis Outcomes,” International Organization, Vol. 67, No. 1, January 2013, 

pp. 141-171. 

57. On the costs of nuclear modernization, see William Broad 

and David Sanger, “U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear 

Arms,” The New York Times, September 21, 2014. 

58. Posen, Restraint, pp. 135-163, esp. p. 135. 

59. See, for instance, how Posen’s analysis compares to that in 

Holmes and Yoshihara, “An Ocean too Far,” pp. 15-19. 

60. On the 1999 defense budget and more recent defense 

spending trends, consult World Bank, “Military Expenditure (% 

of GDP),” available from data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL. 

XPND.GD.ZS?page=3, accessed April 9, 2015. 

61. Statistics on share of federal budget available in Center on 

Budget and Policy Priorities, “Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?” March 11, 2015, available from www.cbpp. 

org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258, accessed April 1, 2015. For recent deficits and out-year spending and deficit projections, see the various 

spreadsheets from Office of Management and Budget, “Historical Tables,” available from https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/ 

Historicals, accessed April 1, 2015. 

62. Hutchings is quoted in Dana Priest, “Iraq New Terror 

Breeding Ground,” The Washington Post, January 14, 2005; also 

Mark Mazzetti, “Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism 

Threat,” The New York Times, September 24, 2006. 

63. Robert Pape and James K. Feldman, Cutting the Fuse: The 

Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It, Chicago, IL: 

University of Chicago Press, 2010; Pape, Dying to Win. 

64. Daniel Byman, “A U.S. Military Withdrawal from the 

Greater Middle East: Impact on Terrorism,” in Stephen van Evera 

and Sidharth Shah, The Prudent Use of Power in American National 

Security Strategy, Cambridge, MA: Tobin Project, 2010, p. 164. See 

68
 
also the quote from Adam Gadahn, a now-deceased al-Qaeda 

spokesman, in the next paragraph. 

65. World Islamic Front Statement, “Jihad Against Jews and 

Crusaders,” February 23, 1998, available from fas.org/irp/world/ 

para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm, accessed March 18, 2015; also “Bin 

Laden’s Fatwa,” PBS Newshour, August 23, 1996, available from 

www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military-july-dec96-fatwa_1996/, accessed March 18, 2015; Byman, “A U.S. Military Withdrawal from 

the Greater Middle East,” esp. pp. 160-162. 

66. Gadahn, quoted in Robert Art, “Selective Engagement 

in the Era of Austerity,” in Fontaine and Lord, eds., America’s 

Path, p. 27. 

67. See F. Gregory Gause, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 32. 

68. Colin Kahl and Marc Lynch, “U.S. Strategy after the 

Arab Uprisings: Toward Progressive Engagement,” Washington 

Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 2, Summer 2013, esp. p. 52. 

69. Rick Brennan, “Withdrawal Symptoms: The Bungling of 

the Iraq Exit,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 6, November/December 2014, pp. 34-35. Indeed, it was a fear of renewed destabilization and extremism that led the Obama administration to consider 

leaving a residual force in Iraq after 2011, although that initiative 

was undone by Iraqi resistance to granting U.S. troops the legal 

immunity that American officials deemed necessary. 

70. Art, Grand Strategy for America, pp. 201-202. 

71. Byman, “A U.S. Military Withdrawal from the Greater 

Middle East,” p. 157. 

72. “Theory Talk #40—Kenneth Waltz,” Theory Talks, June 3, 

2011, available from www.theory-talks.org/2011/06/theory-talk-40. 

html, accessed April 14, 2015; Nuno Monteiro, “Unrest Assured: 

Why Unipolarity Is Not Peaceful,” International Security, Vol. 36, 

No. 3, Winter 2011/12, p. 26. 

69
 
73. On Chinese motives, see M. Taylor Fravel and Evan Medeiros, “China’s Search for Assured Retaliation: The Evolution 

of Chinese Nuclear Strategy and Force Structure,” International 

Security, Vol. 35, No. 2, Fall 2010, esp. pp. 58-61. 

74. The National Intelligence Council prediction can be 

found in National Intelligence Council, “Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq,” ICA-2003-03, p. 7, in Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Prewar Intelligence Assessments 

about Postwar Iraq, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing 

Office, 2007. 

75. On the range of motives that can inform proliferation, see 

Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three 

Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3, 

Winter 1996/97, pp. 54-86. 

76. Hal Brands and David Palkki, “Saddam, Israel, and the 

Bomb: Nuclear Alarmism Justified?” International Security, Vol. 

36, No. 1, Summer 2011, pp. 133-166, quoted on p. 133. 

77. Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report, p. 

xii. This page of the report also notes that such arrangements limit 

proliferation by demonstrating to non-allies “that their pursuit of 

nuclear weapons will only undermine their goal of achieving military or political advantages.” 

78. Gene Gerzhoy, “Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: 

How the United States Thwarted West Germany’s Nuclear 

Ambitions,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4, Spring 2015, 

pp. 91-129. 

79. Miller, “Hegemony and Nuclear Proliferation.” 

80. See Gerzhoy, “Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint”; 

the cases discussed in Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition,” pp. 26­

28 (page numbers from unpublished manuscript); also Bruno 

Tertrais, “Security Guarantees and Nuclear Non-Proliferation,” 

Paris, France: Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique (Foundation 

for Strategic Research), Note 14/11, 2011, available from https:// 

www.frstrategie.org/barreFRS/publications/notes/2011/201114.pdf, 

accessed March 26, 2015. 

70
 
81. See John Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in 

Europe after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1, 

Summer 1990, pp. 5-56. 

82. See Mark Kramer, “Neorealism, Nuclear Proliferation, and 

East-Central European Strategies,” in Ethan Kapstein and Michael 

Mastanduno, eds., Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies 

after the Cold War, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, 

pp. 385-463. 

83. Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition,” p. 26 (page number 

taken from unpublished manuscript). See also Robert Einhorn, 

“Ukraine, Security Assurances, and Nonproliferation,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2015, esp. pp. 52-54. 

84. As Toshi Yoshihara and James Holmes argue, for instance, 

a major drop-off in U.S. forward presence in East Asia could 

have: 

major diplomatic ramifications—it would undercut America’s staying power in the western Pacific, give rise to Japanese fears of abandonment, and unsettle the entire Asian 

security architecture. More to the point, Tokyo would likely 

interpret such a decline as foreshadowing an end to the U.S. 

nuclear guarantee. 

See Holmes and Yoshihara, “Thinking about the Unthinkable: Tokyo’s Nuclear Option,” in Holmes and Yoshihara, eds., Strategy in 

the Second Nuclear Age: Power, Ambition, and the Ultimate Weapon, 

Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012, p. 116. 

85. These dynamics can be seen in David Sanger, “Saudi Arabia Promises to Match Iran in Nuclear Capability,” The New York 

Times, May 13, 2015. Similarly, as three expert observers noted in 

an earlier report: 

U.S. conventional forces deployed in the frontline states of 

the Persian Gulf would play an especially important role in 

reinforcing extended deterrence, containing the prospect of 

emboldened Iranian conventional or irregular aggression 

and reassuring anxious regional allies and partners. 

71
 
Colin Kahl, Raj Pattani, and Jacob Stokes, If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran, Washington, DC: Center 

for a New American Security, 2013, p. 36. 

86. Offshore balancers have occasionally discounted this 

prospect by arguing that the United States could mitigate proliferation, even following retrenchment, by simply stating that countries in East Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Europe remained under 

the U.S. “nuclear umbrella”—in essence, that Washington would 

still defend them from attack by a nuclear-armed aggressor. (See 

Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” p. 32.) Yet this assertion is 

dubious. Leaving aside the fact that this approach would leave 

the United States saddled with precisely the security guarantees 

to which offshore balances often object, this argument misses 

the fact that forward presence is so frequently what makes security commitments credible. During the Cold War, for example, it 

was one thing to say that the United States was committed to the 

defense of West Germany. It was another thing entirely to station U.S. troops in West Germany to ensure that any attack on 

West Germany would be an attack on American forces as well. In 

other words, reassurance is as much a function of presence as of 

declared intent—indeed, the former makes the latter believable. 

87. These arguments draw on the founding statement of “proliferation optimism,” Kenneth Waltz’s “The Spread of Nuclear 

Weapons: More May Be Better,” Adelphi Papers, No. 171, London, 

UK: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981. 

88. The danger of nuclear terrorism is discussed in Graham 

Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, 

New York: Macmillan, 2004. 

89. See Peter Feaver, “Command and Control in Emerging 

Nuclear Nations,” International Security, Vol. 17, No. 3, Winter 

1992/93, pp. 160-187; also the contributions by Peter Feaver, Scott 

Sagan, and David J. Karl, “Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging 

Nuclear Powers,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2, Fall 1997, 

pp. 185-207. 

90. See Robert Rachhaus, “Evaluating the Nuclear Peace Hypothesis: A Quantitative Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 

Vol. 53, No. 2, April 2009, pp. 258-277; S. Paul Kapur, “Ten Years 

of Instability in a Nuclear South Asia,” International Security, Vol. 

72
 
33, No. 2, Fall 2008, pp. 45-70; and Michael Horowitz, “The Spread 

of Nuclear Weapons and International Conflict: Does Experience 

Matter?” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 53, No. 2, April 2009, 

pp. 234-257. 

91. A thorough analysis of the impact of the Iraq War on U.S. 

soft power is Ole Holsti, To See Ourselves as Others See Us: How 

Publics Abroad View the United States after 9/11, Ann Arbor, MI: 

University of Michigan Press, 2008. 

92. The best critique is Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, “Hard Times for Soft Balancing,” International Security, Vol. 

30, No. 1, Summer 2005, pp. 72-108; also Keir Lieber and Gerard 

Alexander, “Waiting for Balancing: Why the World is Not Pushing Back,” International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1, Summer 2005, 

pp. 109-139. 

93. The best analysis is Zachary Selden, “Balancing Against 

or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,” Security Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, 

May 2013, pp. 330-363. See also Michael Green, “The Iraq War 

and Asia: Assessing the Legacy,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 31, 

No. 2, Spring 2008, pp. 181-200. 

94. See the analysis in Jordan Becker, “Offshore Balancing or 

Overbalancing? A Preliminary Empirical Analysis of the Effect of 

U.S. Troop Presence on the Political Behavior of Regional Partners,” in Joseph da Silva, Hugh Liebert, and Isaiah Wilson III., 

eds., American Grand Strategy and the Future of Landpower, Carlisle, 

PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2014, pp. 

261-286, quoted on p. 263; also Nigel Thalakada, Unipolarity and 

the Evolution of America’s Cold War Alliances, New York: Palgrave 

Macmillan, 2012, esp. pp. 12-13, 17-19. 

95. This leverage could even be invoked in dealing with major 

allies. In 1963, for example, Washington employed the influence 

generated by its security presence to help push Konrad Adenauer out of office after he sought to realign West German policy in 

ways unfavorable to the United States. On this episode, see Marc 

Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European 

Settlement, 1945-1963, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1999, pp. 370-379. 

73
 
96. On the intersection between U.S. presence and the dollar, 

see Francis Gavin, Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971, Chapel Hill, NC: University 

of North Carolina Press, 2004, esp. pp. 30-31, 113-114, 165-166. 

On the U.S.-South Korea negotiations, see Brooks, Ikenberry, and 

Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America,” pp. 43-44. 

97. Mearsheimer, “Why is Europe Peaceful Today?” European Political Science, Vol. 9, No. 2, September 2010, esp. p. 388. 

Mearsheimer is talking here about the post-Cold War period 

specifically, but the argument applies equally to the Cold War 

era. For an account of how U.S. power played a stabilizing role 

(and how U.S. efforts to withdraw could be intensely destabilizing) during the early decades of the Cold War, see Trachtenberg, 

Constructed Peace. 

98. Mandelbaum, Case for Goliath, pp. 31-87, esp. p. 35. 

99. The importance of interoperability and training is emphasized in John Deni, The Future of American Landpower: Does Forward Presence Still Matter? The Case of the Army in Europe, Carlisle, 

PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2012; also 

Deni, The Future of American Landpower: Does Forward Presence Still 

Matter? The Case of the Army in the Pacific, Carlisle, PA: Strategic 

Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2014. 

100. As noted, however, it is not assured that withdrawal 

would indeed compel local or regional powers to provide more 

effectively for their own defense (at least on terms that would be 

favorable to the United States). If a U.S. withdrawal left local actors with little hope of effectively resisting a larger, expansionist 

neighbor, they might choose to acquiesce to that neighbor instead. 

101. Mearsheimer, “Why is Europe Peaceful Today?” p. 389. 

In fact, Mearsheimer himself has long predicted that increased instability would follow U.S. retreat from key geopolitical areas. See 

Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future.” 

102. For a good recent analysis, see Stephen Larrabee, Peter 

Wilson, and John Gordon IV, The Ukrainian Crisis and European 

Security: Implications for the United States and U.S. Army, Santa 

Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015. 

74
 
103. For the early post-Cold War analysis, see Aaron L. Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,” 

International Security, Vol. 18, No. 3, Winter 1993/94, pp. 5-33. On 

Asia particularly, see also the essays in Thomas Mahnken and 

Dan Blumenthal, Strategy in Asia: The Past, Present, and Future of 

Regional Security, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. 

For a good analysis tying many of the recent regional trends together, see Walter Russell Mead, “The Return of Geopolitics: The 

Revenge of the Revisionist Powers,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 3, 

May/June 2014, pp. 69-79. 

104. Christopher Layne, for one, has contended that more intense regional security competitions in key regions would actually benefit Washington by absorbing the energies of countries that 

might otherwise challenge it for international primacy. He writes: 

As an offshore balancer, the United States could maximize 

its relative power effortlessly by standing on the sidelines 

while other great powers enervate themselves in security 

competitions with one another. 

Layne, Peace of Illusions, p. 161. 

105. See, for instance, Smith, America’s Mission, pp. 146-176; 

Ikenberry, After Victory, esp. pp. 236-239; John Lewis Gaddis, 

We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1997, pp. 198-200. 

106. Art, Grand Strategy for America, p. 221. See also Richard 

Rosecrance, “Shaping Strategies: Geopolitics and the U.S. Army,” 

in da Silva, Liebert, and Wilson, eds., American Grand Strategy and 

the Future of U.S. Landpower, pp. 256-257. 

107. As Tony Smith notes, the impact of those initiatives has 

indeed been quite significant. Smith, America’s Mission. 

108. See Mandelbaum, Case for Goliath, pp. 88-140. 

109. This point is mentioned in Thomas Christensen, “Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and U.S. 

Policy toward East Asia,” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 1, 

Summer 2006, esp. p. 106. 

75
 
110. On the concept of underbalancing, see Randall Schweller, 

Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power, 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. 

111. As Ernest May has argued, in fact, the French and the 

British actually had a number of significant advantages over the 

Germans in early-1940, which made their subsequent collapse all 

the more startling. See Ernest May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. Similarly, at the outset of the Pacific War, Japan conquered vast swaths 

of the Asia-Pacific in far less time and with far less difficulty than 

most observers had expected. 

112. As one U.S. military official later recalled: 

Quite frankly, we could not have issued speeding tickets to 

the tanks as they would have come rolling down the interstate highway on the east coast. It was an opportunity the 

Iraqis did not take. 

Quoted in Frederick Kagan, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy, New York: Encounter Books, 

2007, p. 133. Similarly, President George H.W. Bush later offered 

a similar assessment: if Saddam had moved into Saudi Arabia 

promptly, “he would have had a free run.” See George Bush 

and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, New York: Vintage, 

1999, p. 335. 

113. A good assessment of the limitations of Chinese capabilities is Michael Chase et al., China’s Incomplete Military Transformation: Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 

Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015. 

114. Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” p. 33. On the rise of 

Chinese power and its implications for East Asia, see also Thomas Mahnken et al., Asia in the Balance: Transforming U.S. Military 

Strategy in Asia, Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 

2012, esp. pp. 9-12; Aaron Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: 

China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, New York: 

Norton, 2011; Michael Swaine et al., China’s Military and the U.S.-

Japan Alliance in 2030: A Strategic Net Assessment, Washington, DC: 

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013. 

76
 
115. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, New 

York: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 194. For a contemporary application of this insight, see Colin Dueck, The Obama 

Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today, New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2015. 

116. Quoted in Seth Mydans, “Vietnam Finds an Old Foe Has 

New Allure,” The New York Times, April 13, 2000. See also Selden, 

“Balancing Against or Balancing With?” esp. pp. 338-339. 

117. Selden, “Balancing Against or Balancing With?” esp. pp. 

331, 338-339. The Thai observer is also quoted here. 

118. In fairness to offshore balancers, it might be objected that 

not all of the pernicious consequences of offshore balancing can 

materialize at the same time. If U.S. retrenchment leads to widespread nuclear proliferation in East Asia, for instance, then that 

would presumably indicate that underbalancing was not occurring, and that China might have more difficulty asserting primacy 

in the region. For the sake of argument, assume that this objection 

is warranted and that these two scenarios—underbalancing and 

proliferation—are mutually exclusive. Either way, the probable 

outcome of offshore balancing would still be worse than the situation that prevails today. Instead of a relatively underproliferated 

East Asia in which U.S. presence fortifies local actors against a 

rising China, the United States would face either: a) a more proliferated and dangerous region; or b) an underproliferated region 

that might have less confidence in facing a rising China. Neither 

option is desirable from a U.S. perspective; the only question is 

which would be worse. 

119. According to many accounts, U.S. intervention in the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-96 was a crucial turning point, convincing 

Beijing that it needed far greater military capabilities if it were to 

prevent future U.S. meddling in the Taiwan issue. On that episode, see Robert Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-

China Relations, 1989-2000, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution 

Press, 2003, pp. 246-263. 

120. This point is made by Christensen, “Fostering Stability or 

Creating a Monster?” esp. pp. 116-119. 

77
 
121. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy, p. 254, raises a similar 

concern about U.S. retrenchment in the face of a rising China. 

122. As discussed earlier, the argument that offshore balancing would allow the United States to increase its focus on East 

Asia is also undercut by the fact that the strategy would likely 

encourage increased instability and conflict in other key regions, 

thereby harming important American interests in the process. 

123. Holmes and Yoshihara, “An Ocean Too Far,” p. 11. 

124. Art, A Grand Strategy for America, p. 205. On the value of 

forward presence in the Pacific, see also Deni, The Future of American Landpower: Does Forward Presence Still Matter? The Case of the 

Army in the Pacific. 

125. One question that is sometimes raised with respect to 

U.S.-China relations and the future of East Asia is why the United 

States could not simply tolerate Chinese primacy in that region, 

just as Great Britain actually strengthened its faltering global position by acceding to U.S. primacy in the Western Hemisphere beginning in the 1890s. This analogy, unfortunately, is flawed on at 

least two grounds. First, for Great Britain, it made strategic sense 

to appease the United States because London faced another rising 

enemy that posed a far greater long-term threat to its security— 

Germany. In the current situation, by contrast, there is no greater 

threat—China itself poses the biggest long-term danger to American primacy. Second, Britain could more easily tolerate growing 

U.S. influence because both countries were democratic states that 

possessed roughly compatible views of world order. With respect 

to the United States and China today, there is greater reason to 

doubt whether such compatibility exists. 

126. Holmes and Yoshihara, “An Ocean Too Far,” p. 1; also 

Francis Fukuyama, “Dealing with ISIS: Offshore Balancing in 

the Middle East,” The American Interest, March 23, 2015, available 

from www.the-american-interest.com/2015/03/23/dealing-with-isis/, 

accessed May 14, 2015; Mearsheimer, “A Return to Offshore Balancing,” Newsweek, December 30, 2008, available from www.newsweek.com/return-offshore-balancing-82925, accessed April 14, 2015. 

78
 
127. See Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth, “Don’t Come 

Home, America”; Michael Beckley, “The Myth of Entangling Alliances: Reassessing the Security Risks of U.S. Defense Pacts,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4, Spring 2015, pp. 7-48; Beckley, 

“China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,” International Security, Vol. 36, No. 3, Winter 2011/12, pp. 41-78. 

128. The point is also made by Robert Kagan, “The Price 

of Power,” Weekly Standard, January 24, 2011, available from 

www.weeklystandard.com/articles/price-power_533695.html#, accessed May 18, 2015. 

129. For one such proposal, see Posen, “Pull Back,” p. 127. 

See also Gary Roughead and Kori Schake, “National Defense 

in a Time of Change,” Hamilton Project Discussion Paper Brief 

2013-01, February 2013, p. 13, available from www.ngaus.org/sites/ 

default/files/HamiltonProjectBrookingsRougheadPaper2013.pdf, accessed June 2, 2015. 

130. Quote from U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Special Operations Command, Strategic Landpower: Winning the Clash 

of Wills, October 2013, available from www.arcic.army.mil/app_Documents/Strategic-Landpower-White-Paper-28OCT2013.pdf, accessed 

June 2, 2015. On the enduring importance of Landpower, see also 

Deni, The Future of American Landpower, 2012 and 2014; Nathan 

Freier et al, Beyond the Last War: Balancing Ground Forces and Future 

Challenges Risk in USCENTCOM and USPACOM, Washington, 

DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2013; and Steven Metz, Strategic Landpower Task Force Research Report, October 

2013, available from www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/index. 

cfm/articles/STRATEGIC-LANDPOWER-TASK-FORCE/2013/10/3, 

accessed June 2, 2015. 

131. See Hal Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and 

Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. 

Bush, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. 

132. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment; Brooks, Ikenberry, and 

Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America,” pp. 12-13, 32-33, 50-51. 

133. On Eisenhower, see Robert Bowie and Richard Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War 

79
 
Strategy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998; on Nixon, see 

Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, Chaps. 9-10. 

134. For an assessment stressing both positive and negative 

aspects of this recalibration, see Hal Brands, “Breaking Down 

Obama’s Grand Strategy,” National Interest, June 23, 2014, available from nationalinterest.org/feature/breaking-down-obamas-grandstrategy-10719, accessed May 12, 2015. 

135. See Bruce Jentleson, “Strategic Recalibration: Framework 

for a 21st-Century National Security Strategy,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 115-136; Feaver, “American 

Grand Strategy at the Crossroads”; Art, “Selective Engagement in 

the Era of Austerity.” 

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