The “means” of grand strategy are similarly enduring over time. Its basic components include fostering strong alliances and bilateral security arrangements; maintaining a strong and survivable nuclear deterrent; fielding balanced, powerful, and capable military forces, dominant in each warfighting domain, that can project and sustain military power globally and prevail in armed conflict; and providing intelligence services that can ensure global situational awareness and provide strategic early warning. These components are intrinsically linked to a powerful economy and industrial base, advanced technology, an extensive military reserve component, an educated and technically skilled population fit for military service, and a political system that is based on classically liberal democratic values and able to make clear and sustainable policy and resource decisions. In important ways these tools and capabilities are, or are perceived to be, eroding. The U.S. economy, still the largest in the world, has not fully recovered from the 2008 crisis. Mounting alarm over record deficits and an inability to control spending resulted in the 2011 Budget Control Act, approved against all expectations and mandating a 10 percent cut in defense spending over the next 10 years, triggering sequestration and a succession of budget crises. Confidence in America’s economic and fiscal future has been shaken. America’s traditional reliance on forward presence and forward-deployed forces, another strategic linchpin, has also declined since the end of the Cold War. Few combat forces remain in Europe (the last tank was removed in 2012), only a single ground combat brigade is based in Korea, and there are no ground combat troops based in the Middle East. Naval forward presence has also been scaled back in the post–Cold War era as the size of the fleet has declined. On the Alliance front, relations with NATO allies have been damaged by the Rebalance to Asia, widely perceived as a devaluation of Europe by U.S. leaders, and by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s stern speech in June of 2011, which castigated European allies for failing to meet targets for defense spending. President Barack Obama’s “leading from behind” stance in Libya, the pullout from Iraq, the pending withdrawal from Afghanistan, and inaction in Syria are interpreted by some as evidence of a disinclination to engage globally in the interests of international stability, though others see it as prudent and measured restraint.