In Labyrinth, US players generally try to keep their government in the Hard category in order to more efficiently prosecute the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Regime Change Operations are only permissible when the US has a Hard posture, and Disrupt Operations performed against Jihadist Cells in the US are more effective if the US is Hard. Events that could make the US become Soft, such as US Election, Leak or Safer Now, where frequently seen as a distraction requiring the US player to play two 3-value Cards to perform a Reassessment to switch back.
The complimentary strategy to the US staying Hard is a worldwide War of Ideas (WOI) campaign to convince Allies to join the cause and adopt a Hard posture too. US player’s typically find this to be an efficient use of 1 cards as most European countries are Good governance thus only require a 1 card to dice for their posture, and frequently a 1 card cannot be used by itself for Disrupt operations as most Muslim countries are Fair or Poor requiring a greater expenditure of OPS (2 or 3 respectively).
The Labyrinth: Awakening expansion to Labyrinth requires greater consideration in deciding upon US Posture; no longer is it nearly a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the US to stay Hard. The expansion begins with the Arab Spring in December 2010. The United States is still engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan, though the former is winding down. President Obama has a different agenda for the Middle East than his predecessors and the Awakening expansion reflects this by assigning the US a Soft posture at the beginning. Not so with America’s Allies. France and Britain are leading the response to international events in ways that we have not seen since the Suez Crises of 1956, and they both begin the game as Hard, thus the US starts with a GWOT penalty of -2 (starting position below).