Pentagon issues position paper reorienting defense strategy
WASHINGTON—The Pentagon on Friday released a priority-shifting National Defense Strategy that chastised US allies to take control of their own security and reasserted the Trump administration’s focus on dominance in the Western Hemisphere above a longtime goal of countering China.
The 34-page document, the first since 2022, was highly political for a military blueprint, criticizing partners from Europe to Asia for relying on previous US administrations to subsidize their defense.
It called for “a sharp shift—in approach, focus, and tone.” This translated to a blunt assessment that allies would take on more of the burden countering nations from Russia to North Korea.
“For too long, the US Government neglected—even rejected—putting Americans and their concrete interests first,” read the opening sentence.
The new strategy simultaneously courts help from partners in America’s backyard while warning them that the United States will “actively and fearlessly defend America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere.”
It specifically points to access to the Panama Canal and Greenland. It comes just days after President Donald Trump said he reached a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security with Nato leader Mark Rutte that would offer the US “total access” to Greenland, a territory of Nato ally Denmark.
‘Stable peace’ with China
The policy document also views China—which the Biden administration saw as a top adversary—as a settled force in the Indo-Pacific region that only needs to be deterred from dominating the United States or its allies.
The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them,” the document says. It later adds, “This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle.”
“President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China,” it says, which follows efforts to climb down from a trade war sparked by the administration’s sky-high tariffs.
It says it will “open a wider range of military-to-military communications” with China’s army.
The strategy makes no mention of or guarantee to Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own and says it will take by force if necessary. The United States is obligated by its own laws to give military support to Taiwan.
By contrast, the National Defense Strategy of 2022, under then President Joe Biden, said the Unted States would “support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense.”
The Biden administration’s defense strategy also focused on China as America’s “pacing challenge.”
In another example of offloading regional security to allies, the document also said “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support.”
Tensions with Nato
The position paper capped off a week of animosity between Trump’s administration and traditional allies like Europe, with Trump threatening to impose tariffs on some European partners to press a bid to acquire Greenland before announcing a deal that lowered the temperature.
As allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) confront what some see as a hostile attitude from the United States, they will almost certainly be unhappy to see that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s department will provide “credible options to guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain,” especially Greenland and the Panama Canal.
“We will engage in good faith with our neighbors, from Canada to our partners in Central and South America, but we will ensure that they respect and do their part to defend our shared interests,” the document said. “And where they do not, we will stand ready to take focused, decisive action that concretely advances US interests.”
While noting that “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to Nato’s eastern members for the foreseeable future,” the defense strategy also asserts that Nato allies are much more powerful and so are “strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense.”
It says the Pentagon will play a key role in Nato “even as we calibrate US force posture and activities in the European theater” to focus on priorities closer to home.
The United States said earlier it will reduce its troop presence on Nato’s borders with Ukraine, with allies expressing concern that the Trump administration might drastically cut their numbers and leave a security vacuum as European countries confront an increasingly aggressive Russia. —AP
