Our military forces must perform three sets of tasks to achieve the military objectives of promoting stability and thwarting aggression. These three components of the strategy are peacetime engagement, deterrence and conflict prevention, and fighting and winning our nation's wars. Accomplishing the specific tasks of the strategy is facilitated by the two complementary strategic concepts of overseas presence and power projection. Overseas presence takes the form of both permanently stationed forces and forces temporarily deployed abroad. Thus we maintain overseas presence not only through forces permanently stationed overseas but also through a broad program of routine air, ground and naval deployments, various contingency operations and global pre-positioning of equipment.
Overseas presence helps to keep important infrastructure available and ready in times of crisis.
Although the size of our permanent overseas presence has decreased significantly in recent years, because of changes in the international environment the importance of these forces has not diminished. They provide visible proof of our commitment to defend American interests and those of our allies and friends. With fewer U. S. forces permanently stationed overseas we must proportionately increase our capability to project forces abroad. The existence of a credible power-projection capability complements our overseas presence in acting as a deterrent to potential adversaries. It further provides our national leaders greater flexibility in employing military force.