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The Bush Administration launched in 2004 the 'Global Posture Review'. This plan will, over several years, reorganize the ways US forces are stationed or deployed overseas, therefore amounting to the biggest change in the US military's overseas posture since the end of the Cold War. The major objectives of the realignment are to alleviate political constraints stemming from foreign governments, increase US freedom of action, reposition US forces closer to the 'arc of instability', and experiment with stationing US troops in and around Africa or Central Asia. Such an ambitious plan is fraught with risks, notably whether this extension of the US global security perimeter will be supported domestically and whether it will overextend the US armed forces internationally.

Etienne de Durand, Specialist of strategic and military issues, is Research Fellow at the Security Studies Department at Ifri and teaches at the École spéciale militaire of Saint-Cyr (Coëtquidan) and at the Institut d’études politiques of Paris.