The Art of War: Power Projection

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Video originally published on May 21, 2024.

This analysis examines The Art of War: Power Projection in historical and strategic context. It traces how the core developments unfolded, which institutions and actors shaped outcomes, and what those decisions changed on the ground. Rather than repeating headline-level claims, it focuses on concrete mechanisms, constraints, and tradeoffs that explain the trajectory of events. The discussion moves from Key Developments through Strategic Implications to Risk and Uncertainty, then evaluates wider consequences. The goal is to clarify not only what happened, but why these developments still matter for current planning, risk assessment, and policy decisions.

Key Takeaways

To prove it, you now wage your wars with the pen, and harangue the kings and emperors of faraway lands, who you know would never challenge you on your own doorstep.
The Method. Typically, in our Art of War series, we discuss strategies and tactics that just about any military or armed group could figure out, if they just put their mind to it.
At its core, a strategy of power projection can be simplified to one basic concept: that a military—and, yes, in this case, almost always a proper military—can deploy its forces far outside its own territory, in a way that's sustainable across the long term.
A nation needs to have an abundance of troops and military equipment, enough that sending a power-projecting force abroad doesn't compromise their ability to defend their own homeland.
It's sending in peacekeeping forces to stabilize a place that might otherwise become hostile to you or become internally violent; and it's responding to crises, like famines or natural disasters abroad, by using.

Key Developments

To prove it, you now wage your wars with the pen, and harangue the kings and emperors of faraway lands, who you know would never challenge you on your own doorstep. You've really done it this time, with a cutting epithet designed to inspire outrage from a powerful king who lives half a continent away. The scroll your envoy carries, sends a message you know will leave your rival seething: “ur dumb”. But when your rival's response arrives, it doesn't come from a man on a fast horse; it comes from a grand naval armada, one that appeared over the horizon just as it began to lay waste to your grand city. As your palace crumbles, as your people flee for their lives across cobblestone streets, you beg your advisors to explain what went wrong—and they tell you. Your rival, far away though he may be, is very good at this little thing called power projection—and you, dear king, are not. Your rival, far away though he may be, is very good at this little thing called power projection—and you, dear king, are not. Art of War series, take a closer look at the military strategy of power projection: how nations can extend their military force far beyond their own territory, why they do it, and who, in the 21st century, is doing it as we speak. Typically, in our Art of War series, we discuss strategies and tactics that just about any military or armed group could figure out, if they just put their mind to it. With the right training and the requisite knowledge, any war party can travel through and survive the high mountains or the dense jungles. Any nation with the will to do it, can cultivate dangerous pathogens and unleash them on an enemy; any nation with allies and diplomatic skill can find a partner willing to participate in a proxy conflict; and any nation at war had better figure out how to do military intelligence, if it wants to remain a nation at all. Power projection, though…well, that's a little different. At its core, a strategy of power projection can be simplified to one basic concept: that a military—and, yes, in this case, almost always a proper military—can deploy its forces far outside its own territory, in a way that's sustainable across the long term. A medieval party of Viking raiders, pillaging their way through the British Isles all by themselves, isn't power projection; a modern-day group of, let's say, Iranian soldiers, loading up into airplanes and conducting a one-time assault on Israel before packing up and returning home, isn't power projection either. In order for power projection to happen, you don't just have to put your forces on or near somebody else's territory, far away from your own.

Strategic Implications

The Method. Typically, in our Art of War series, we discuss strategies and tactics that just about any military or armed group could figure out, if they just put their mind to it. With the right training and the requisite knowledge, any war party can travel through and survive the high mountains or the dense jungles. Any nation with the will to do it, can cultivate dangerous pathogens and unleash them on an enemy; any nation with allies and diplomatic skill can find a partner willing to participate in a proxy conflict; and any nation at war had better figure out how to do military intelligence, if it wants to remain a nation at all. Power projection, though…well, that's a little different. You've got to be able to keep them constantly supplied, keep them constantly equipped with strategic and tactical directives and intelligence, and use them to assert not just their own will, but the broader will of your nation, even while they're operating far afield. But that list of requirements is a pretty high barrier to entry, and both historically and in the modern day, it's meant that power projection is really difficult to pull off. In order to do it, a nation needs to have ample wealth to be able to fund such an expedition, and pay the continual expenses required to maintain it. A nation needs to have an abundance of troops and military equipment, enough that sending a power-projecting force abroad doesn't compromise their ability to defend their own homeland. And they've got to have both the requisite personnel, and the requisite expertise, to enable a power-projecting mission to survive. That doesn't just mean sending infantry or tanks or air power; it requires devoting experts in logistical supply, experts in gathering intelligence far afield, experts in the language and customs of another land, experts in constructing large-scale field accommodations and medical infrastructure to support the people expected to fight. In order to engage in effective power projection, a nation needs to be able to leverage a massive team of experts in their respective fields: both expert warfighters, and experts in taking every part of a large-scale military infrastructure, and making it happen seamlessly, very far away from home. And just as complex as the question of how power projection works, is the question of why: Why would another country go to the trouble of expending so many of its own resources, and working so hard for so long, that it could project power against a nation or a people that wasn't its neighbor, or even anywhere nearby? Generally speaking, there are a few reasons: deterrence, resource acquisition, or direct response to a threat. In the case of deterrence, power projection is a tool used by powerful nations, to discourage other powerful nations from beginning to flex their muscles a bit more actively.

Risk and Uncertainty

At its core, a strategy of power projection can be simplified to one basic concept: that a military—and, yes, in this case, almost always a proper military—can deploy its forces far outside its own territory, in a way that's sustainable across the long term. A medieval party of Viking raiders, pillaging their way through the British Isles all by themselves, isn't power projection; a modern-day group of, let's say, Iranian soldiers, loading up into airplanes and conducting a one-time assault on Israel before packing up and returning home, isn't power projection either. In order for power projection to happen, you don't just have to put your forces on or near somebody else's territory, far away from your own. You've got to be able to keep them constantly supplied, keep them constantly equipped with strategic and tactical directives and intelligence, and use them to assert not just their own will, but the broader will of your nation, even while they're operating far afield. But that list of requirements is a pretty high barrier to entry, and both historically and in the modern day, it's meant that power projection is really difficult to pull off. In order to do it, a nation needs to have ample wealth to be able to fund such an expedition, and pay the continual expenses required to maintain it. Take the United States sending warships through the South China Sea, in an attempt to demonstrate to the most powerful nation in that area, China, that they've got to account for American military power if they're going to consider expanding into waters near to their territory. In the case of resource acquisition, power projection is a tool to lay claim to certain territories and their known or suspected resources, building a military presence that will cause anybody else with designs on that territory, to think twice before deciding to claim it. Take, by example, the efforts of European nations to lay claim to various parts of Africa, Asia, and the New World by sending powerful naval assets, and establishing land occupations in areas they wanted to control. Finally, there's the case of a direct response to a threat. Like we mentioned earlier, power projection is a lot harder than launching raids or one-off attacks, but those smaller military actions are well within the range of nations and non-state actors who can't project power. If they attack a more powerful nation, power projection is often a gateway to either issuing reprisals, or eliminating a faraway security threat. Take the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, in partial, but direct response to a one-off attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. When nations project power abroad, distance and cost almost always go together: the further away you're going to try and project your forces, the harder it's going to be, and the more it's going to cost.

Outlook

A nation needs to have an abundance of troops and military equipment, enough that sending a power-projecting force abroad doesn't compromise their ability to defend their own homeland. And they've got to have both the requisite personnel, and the requisite expertise, to enable a power-projecting mission to survive. That doesn't just mean sending infantry or tanks or air power; it requires devoting experts in logistical supply, experts in gathering intelligence far afield, experts in the language and customs of another land, experts in constructing large-scale field accommodations and medical infrastructure to support the people expected to fight. In order to engage in effective power projection, a nation needs to be able to leverage a massive team of experts in their respective fields: both expert warfighters, and experts in taking every part of a large-scale military infrastructure, and making it happen seamlessly, very far away from home. And just as complex as the question of how power projection works, is the question of why: Why would another country go to the trouble of expending so many of its own resources, and working so hard for so long, that it could project power against a nation or a people that wasn't its neighbor, or even anywhere nearby? Generally speaking, there are a few reasons: deterrence, resource acquisition, or direct response to a threat. With that distance, relaying orders gets more and more difficult, especially in historical cases prior to the advent of quick-communication technologies like the telegraph or the telephone. Keeping control over forces deployed far from home, can be just as difficult, and can even present an active danger for weaker regimes, who might have reason to fear that a major force sent abroad will start getting ideas about regime change at home. Hard assets can make all those problems easier to manage: by example, having a grand naval flotilla and an abundance of supply ships to relay materials and messages, in historical cases. In more modern cases, it's things like strategic bombers, aircraft carriers, paratroopers, or prefabricated military bases that make the process go more smoothly. But, again, that's a question of wealth: in order to make power projection as painless as possible, a nation has to be able to foot the bill, meaning that for nations who can't, even attempting power projection just isn't worth the trouble. Specific acts of power projection can be categorized in a number of different ways, but in a broad sense, they're best broken up into two key types: hard power, and soft power. Generally speaking, soft power is anything that doesn't involve chopping up one's enemies or marching armies onto hostile territory. It's establishing military bases on friendly nations' territories, or on unclaimed territory to indicate that it's yours; and it's establishing safe, secure sea routes or parking your maritime power in or around an important body of water.

The Evolution of Power Projection: From Conquest to Coercion

It's sending in peacekeeping forces to stabilize a place that might otherwise become hostile to you or become internally violent; and it's responding to crises, like famines or natural disasters abroad, by using military resources, as if to implicitly show the world that your military forces are capable of establishing a presence there. Hard power, is a bit different. That's the sort of power projection that's all about kicking down doors and deciding what the status quo is going to be. It's hearing a foreign power halfway around the world talk about how much it hates you, and parking an army on their doorstep, even if no shots are fired. It's seeing that a country is about to bring, say, a chemical weapons facility online, and bombing that facility into destruction before it's finished. It's seeing an ongoing civil war in another nation, between one faction you perceive as friendly and one you perceive as hostile, and sending your own troops in to help bring a favorable end to the fighting. And at times, it's straight-up military conquest, deposing an unfriendly regime or taking over a foreign nation for any number of reasons. Of course, delineating soft power versus hard power isn't always an exact science. Together, they form a continuum of escalation, from which a nation that wishes to project power, can do it using whichever option they deem most important in the moment. In some cases, a nation might use both soft power and hard power at once, or use soft power with the implicit threat of resorting to hard power, or come in, guns blazing, with hard power, in order to incentivize an unfriendly nation to agree to a longer-term imposition of soft power. Invade and batter a foreign military hard enough, and they might lease you land for a military base in order to stop the violence; that sort of thing. But it's in the ability to leverage any and all of these options, to be able to choose between them, and to use any of them at will, that distinguishes nations who can project their power, from those who can't. Early examples of power projection show up, on a small scale, across millennia in the historical record, but if there's one clear name that we've got to start with…it's Alexander the Great, of Macedon. Over the course of about thirteen years from 336 to 323 BCE, Alexander III's Macedonian armies embarked on a major campaign of conquest, building a Macedonian Empire that far eclipsed most of the civilizations that had come before. But unlike most ancient wars of territorial expansion, simply swallowing up nearby land, Alexander the Great's wars were an expedition. They sustained relationships with lesser kingdoms and tribes across north Africa, who relied on the Carthaginian navy for protection and their trade ships for prosperity, and who, in turn, pacified the smaller groups on their own territory. The Carthaginians' network of trading posts quickly grew into cities, and then de-facto colonies all across the Mediterranean, and while Carthage faced a major barrier to military operations due to a relatively small population from which to raise troops, they got around that issue by projecting power navally instead. The Carthaginian navy was a powerful tool of coercion through which many wars were avoided, and many of their military sailors worked double-duty on trade ships, so that even the appearance of a peaceful Carthaginian merchant vessel all but guaranteed at least some military force on board. Making up for their own manpower problems, Carthage also paid good money to secure the services of vast mercenary forces, many of whom could wage war effectively against the same nations that they'd originally come from. Carthage was able to dominate the seas of the western Mediterranean for centuries, until the Punic Wars eventually devastated Carthage on its own territory. Of course, the most famous example of Carthaginian force projection—by far—was its ability to send a massive war party through continental Europe, even including war elephants, in order to attack Rome from the north on its own territory.

The Limits of Traditional Military Might: A Lesson from Ancient Kingdoms

Riding at the helm of a massive army, Alexander first put down a string of revolts across Macedon's own territorial holdings, and then turned his attention outward. In the north, he crushed resistance in the Balkans, to build himself and his empire a bulwark against threats from the north, and then, he set out toward the east on a grand campaign. From Anatolia, to Asia Minor, to Egypt, to the heart of Persian territory, and then to Bactria in modern-day Iran and finally, all the way to India, Alexander and his forces marched through fruitless resistance. All the while, Alexander was able to challenge powerful city-states, kingdoms, and even other empires on their own turf, while he, himself, was hundreds and then thousands of kilometers from home. All the while, his army sustained itself as the final link of a robust logistical backbone, relying largely on Macedon's ability to sustain its troops very far afield. And from the example set by Macedon, came the armies of Rome. Over the course of a long line of kings and emperors, the Roman Empire expanded to include the entire Mediterranean and much of continental Europe. But while Rome's ability to project military power across the entire Mediterranean rim was impressive on its own, Rome proved an understanding of force projection that went a lot deeper than simple bloodshed. Instead, Rome was able to use the threat of force—especially in its early years—rather than actual conquest, in order to compel and coerce a wide variety of local nation-states into compliance. For a very long time, Rome was a pioneer in the use of soft power at a large scale, using a mix of intimidation against enemies and subsidization of reluctant friends in order to demonstrate that it was better to stand beside Rome, than to stand up to it. Eventually, Roman leaders began to grow tired of soft power and lean further into the application of hard power, but the Empire proved significantly less talented at projecting power this way. Internally, Rome ensured that it could project military force across its own territory and along all of its frontiers, relying on a modern road system, a network of aqueducts, and a substantial military force in order to do so. But while Rome could project hard power at its own fringes—like one famous incident, in which Julius Caesar rapidly built a bridge across the Rhine river in order to show Rome's ability to threaten people elsewhere—Roman legions were not equipped to travel far from their own territory. The same could not be said for Rome's ancient rival, Carthage, on the North African coast. Taking advantage of their location to become an epicenter for trade, the leaders of Carthage also built a powerful navy. But as impressive as that was, Carthage's longer-term ability to project power on the seas was its far more important feat. Then, we've got to talk about the Mongols, who, both in their time and throughout history, are the picture-perfect example of doing more with less as a military power. Via a military strategy that basically only relied on force projection, the Mongols were able to construct the largest contiguous land empire in all of history. Using light, and largely horse-mounted mobile war bands, the Mongols were able to show up on the doorstep of a wide range of foreign powers, basically all by themselves and so far from home that the people they were trying to conquer, might not even have maps showing the Mongols' own center of power. Mongol force projection worked because of three key abilities: they could maintain near-constant contact across war parties due to their massive numbers of mounted couriers, they could maintain logistical supply of essentials like gear and horses, and they could rely on knowledge and expertise to handle the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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