Any time there is a military presence, even on home soil, there is a projection of PHYSICAL power. And it is to be at least worrisome, if not outright fear. In ancient Rome, governors/generals were to disband their legions before entering Italy, as in crossing the river Rubicon. That was fear.
Within this overall fear is the fear of a foreign military presence whether it is at one's borders or worse, inside one's borders. The longer the duration of this presence, the greater the intensity of this fear. It does not matter if this foreign military presence is authorized or not, authorized as in a mutual agreement between two or more parties. Just because the US have military garrisons in other countries by invitations of host countries, that does not mean host citizens, including the politicians that authorized those agreements, do not have apprehensions about US and our intentions. Less threatening but still worrisome is a foreign military presence that is outside one's borders but within combat range between that foreign military and one's own forces.
Since the world is mostly covered by water, navies are the preferred method of establishing military presence outside of one's home soil. If for clarity's sake, we need to classify what kind of power any country can have, then land armies are occupying powers while navies are projection powers. In this modern age, air power as a credible military force did not mature as that force until WW II. So for now, an air force could rightly be narrowly classified as a striking power. What this mean is that the countries that have access to the seas are the ones most likely to produce all three capabilities to varying degrees.
One capability may form later than others but usually an occupation power, the land army, is the first to be created. If the country is not an island but there is access to the seas then often both occupation and projection powers are parallel in creation. If the country is an island, then the projection power, the navy, is often the most capable in terms of technology and allocation of national resources to build up that power.
With the advent of the aircraft, it was inevitable that there is a combination of the projection and striking powers, aka the 'aircraft carrier'. WW II was the first to see this lethal combination in action where fleets can finally destroy each other without seeing each other as navies have done in the past. A battleship can destroy targets only as far as the ballistic arcs of its unpowered artillery shells and there are no flexibility in those shells, whether the targets are other ships or on land. For the targets, they can displace themselves to increase the odds of survival against the battleship. Not so against the aircraft as it can pursue the targets. This make the aircraft carrier even more unique and desirable than any other types of ships in terms of being a mean of creating wariness and even fear in countries beyond one's borders.
In sum, the organic nature of the aircraft carrier make it NEVER a defensive power but always an offensive one. We can pettily argue on what kind of aircraft is carried, fixed or rotary wings, but that argument would be about the reach of that type of aircraft to pursue and destroy targets. Against a country that is inferior in many ways, a rotary winged force is just as worrisome as the fixed winged force.