Basis
/ Partnerships and Coalitions / Three-Tiered Approach
Chapter 6: Theater Strategy
Basis
/ Partnerships and Coalitions / Three-Tiered Approach
To achieve its vision, USCENTCOM has developed a theater strategy that relies on a combination of overseas presence, U.S. power projection capability, and carefully cultivated regional relationships.
The national security strategy, national military strategy, and the joint strategic capabilities plan, identify key U.S. interests and Central Command's tasks, while providing a basis for our theater strategy. In keeping with these guidelines, U.S. Central Command focuses on promoting regional stability by reassuring its friends, deterring conflict, and maintaining readiness to fight and win.
This concept underlies a theater strategy supported by five pillars. These are forward presence, exercises, security assistance, power projection, and readiness to fight.
Success in the region requires actions that stress U.S. partnerships with regional states and coalition building. One of the United States' great success stories for the past decade is the durability and depth of relationships and friendships that our military leaders have forged with their regional counterparts. These relationships support the achievement of strategic ends, provide access to the region, and facilitate implementation of our theater strategy.
Achieving long-lasting partnerships and building coalitions is made possible by a long-term and flexible, three tiered approach to deterring aggression. Tier One calls for each country to bear primary responsibility for its own self-defense. Next, if aggression occurs, friendly regional states should provide a collective defense known as Tier Two. Under Tier Three, the U.S. and other allies from outside the region stand ready to form a coalition to defend common interests in the region, if necessary.
