The forward strategy transformed the US from opposing standing armies to global military patrol.

Evidence

The rapid spread of lily pad bases today risks arousing more opposition, despite their small size. Intimately linked with the deployment of special operations forces to nearly every nation on earth, the lily pad strategy and the new way of war that it represents appear to be part of a troubling and dangerous expansion of the Cold War–era “forward strategy.” After World War II, the forward strategy transformed U.S. ideas about security, defense, and threats to the United States. As the base expert Catherine Lutz put it, the United States moved from being “a nation suspicious of standing armies to one whose military patrols the globe in all of its corners, twenty-four hours each day.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1048

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of the rise of US global military presence and ‘lily pad’ basing strategy discussed elsewhere in the book.