Power Projection: Continuity and Change

Abstract

This chapter addresses U.S. power projection capabilities as they developed over the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, and compares these capabilities to future requirements. For lack of an official definition, power projection will be defined here as offered by Mark Alan Gunzinger, “the finite application of military power by the national command authorities to achieve discrete political ends outside the borders of the United States, its territories, and its possessions. Powerprojection contingencies are characterized as wars and operations short of war, but not conflicts that are global or total in nature.” Since the founding of the Republic, the insular position of the United States has predetermined that, aside from brief conflicts with Canada (1812–14) and Mexico (1846–48), U.S. power projection has necessarily meant overseas power projection. Thus our discussion will be limited to projection beyond the coastline of North America.