Rebalancing US Forces: Basing and Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific.

• Author: Raska, Michael
• Position: Book review

Rebalancing US Forces: Basing and Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific. Edited by Carnes Lord and Andrew S. Erickson. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2014. Hardcover: 226pp.

Can the United States rely on its land bases, major naval surface combatants, and above all, its fleet of formidable nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to sustain a forward military presence in the Asia-Pacific region in the coming decades? This is the key question for Carnes Lord and Andrew Erickson, the editors of Rebalancing US Forces: Basing and Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific. For nearly seven decades, US strategy in the Asia Pacific has remained relatively constant: to maintain a robust forward and active presence coupled with bilateral alliances to ensure peace, stability and prosperity. Since the end of the Cold War, however, East Asia's regional strategic template has become progressively more complex and multifaceted with the confluence of unresolved historical legacies in traditional flashpoints such as the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan Straits, territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas as well as a range of non-traditional security challenges such as energy and cyber security.

Above all, however, it is China's increasing power projection capabilities embedded in the People Liberation Army's (PLA) growing technological developments, including long-range precision-strike assets, that is gradually redefining the regional military balance and subsequently US strategy. In particular, China's asymmetric "counter-intervention" concepts and weapons technologies, designed to deny the American military and its allies the freedom of action in China's "near seas" by restricting deployments of US forces into theatre (anti-access) and denying them freedom of movement there (area denial), amplify the magnitude of strategic and operational challenges for US commanders in the region. In this context, Lord and Erickson argue that the current constellation of US forward bases in East Asia--"main operating bases" with a permanent US military presence, "forward operating sites" maintained by a relatively small US support presence for temporary deployments and "cooperative security locations" designed for contingency use with little or no permanent US presence--will become increasingly vital, yet paradoxically vulnerable (p. 9).

The question of the long-term strategic effectiveness of America's forward presence in the region is analyzed in detail through...