Outside the Beltway

The 2026 National Defense Strategy

The long-awaited document is less disruptive than it appears on the surface.

James Joyner · Saturday, January 24, 2026 · 5 comments

The unclassified version of the National Defense Strategy was released yesterday evening. The early press reaction has been interesting.

WaPo (“Trump administration’s defense strategy tells allies to handle their own security“)

The Pentagon released a priority-shifting National Defense Strategy late Friday that chastised U.S. 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 U.S. administrations to subsidize their defense. It called for “a sharp shift — in approach, focus, and tone.” That translated to a blunt assessment that allies would take on more of the burden countering nations from Russia to North Korea.

AP (“Trump administration’s defense strategy tells allies to handle their own security“):

The Pentagon released a priority-shifting National Defense Strategy late Friday that chastised U.S. 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 U.S. administrations to subsidize their defense. It called for “a sharp shift — in approach, focus, and tone.” That 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 U.S. Government neglected — even rejected — putting Americans and their concrete interests first,” read the opening sentence.

It capped off a week of animosity between President Donald 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 confront what some see as a hostile attitude from the U.S., they will almost certainly be unhappy to see that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s department will provide “credible options to guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain,” especially Greenland and the Panama Canal.

POLITICO (“Pentagon no longer views China threat as top priority“):

The Pentagon on Friday night released a long-awaited strategy that prioritizes the U.S. homeland and Western Hemisphere — a stunning reversal from previous administrations that aligns with President Donald Trump’s military strikes in Venezuela and efforts to acquire Greenland.

The National Defense Strategy — a dramatic shift from even the first Trump administration — no longer focuses primarily on countering China. Instead, it blames past administrations for ignoring American interests and jeopardizing the U.S. military’s access to the Panama Canal and Greenland.

The strategy calls for attention to the “practical interests” of the U.S. public and an abandonment of “grandiose strategies.”

The Pentagon’s plan, in contrast to the National Security Strategy released last month, does not focus heavily on Europe or call the continent a place in “civilizational decline.” But it does emphasize what the administration perceives as its declining importance.

“Although Europe remains important, it has a smaller and decreasing share of global economic power,” according to the strategy. “Although we are and will remain engaged in Europe, we must — and will — prioritize defending the U.S. Homeland and deterring China.”

WSJ (“Pentagon’s New Defense Strategy Strikes Conciliatory Tone on China“):

The Pentagon struck a conciliatory tone toward Beijing in its new defense strategy, stating that its overarching goal is to establish “strategic stability” in the Indo-Pacific region and de-escalate tensions with the Chinese military.

The national defense strategy, which was issued Friday night, comes as President Trump is preparing for an expected summit meeting in April with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and as the White House has sought to lower tensions over Taiwan.

The Pentagon document also underscores that U.S. pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere is a priority and signals that the Trump administration’s longer-term goal is to reduce its military role in Europe, the Korean peninsula and the Middle East.

“As U.S. forces focus on Homeland defense and the Indo-Pacific, our allies and partners elsewhere will take primary responsibility for their own defense with critical but more limited support from American forces,” it states.

The Pentagon’s strategy in 2018, issued during Trump’s first term in the White House, described China in far-harsher terms. It cast China then as a “revisionist” power that along with Russia was seeking “veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.”

In contrast, the Pentagon’s new strategy document underscores the administration’s interest in opening more military-to-military communications with the Chinese military and reducing tensions to establish a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The goal would be to establish “a decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under.”

The foreign press characterized it in similar fashion.

Reuters (“Pentagon foresees ‘more limited’ role in deterring North Korea“):

The Pentagon foresees a “more limited” role in deterring North Korea, with South Korea taking primary responsibility, according to a policy document released on Friday, a move that could lead to a reduction of U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea hosts about 28,500 U.S. troops in combined defense against North Korea’s military threat, and Seoul has raised its defense budget by 7.5% for this year.

“South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited U.S. support,” the Pentagon said in the 25-page National Defense Strategy document that guides its policies.

“This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America’s interest in updating U.S. force posture on the Korean Peninsula.”

In recent years, U.S. officials have signaled a desire to make U.S. forces in South Korea more flexible, to potentially operate outside the Korean Peninsula in response to a broader range of threats, such as in defending Taiwan and checking China’s growing military reach.

South Korea has resisted the idea of shifting the role of U.S. troops but has worked to grow its defense capabilities in the past 20 years, with the goal of being able to take on the wartime command of combined U.S. and South Korean forces. South Korea has 450,000 troops.

Its Defense Ministry said the U.S. military based in the country is the “core” of the alliance that has deterred North Korean aggression and ensured peace on the peninsula and the region.
“We will be cooperating closely with the U.S. to continue developing it in that direction,” it said.

BBC (“Pentagon to offer ‘more limited’ support to US allies in defence strategy shift“):

The US will offer “more limited” support to allies, according to the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy.

In a significant shift to its security priorities, the US Department of Defense now considers security of the US homeland and Western Hemisphere – not China – as its primary concern.

Previous versions of the strategy – published every four years – named the threat posed by China as the top defence priority. Relations with China will now be approached through “strength, not confrontation”, the report says.

The defence strategy reinforces recent calls from President Donald Trump, including for greater “burden-sharing” from allies in countering threats posed by Russia and North Korea.

The new 34-page report follows last year’s publication of the US National Security Strategy, which said Europe faced civilisational collapse and did not cast Russia as a threat to the US. At the time, Moscow said the document was “largely consistent” with its vision.

By comparison, in 2018, the Pentagon described “revisionist powers”, such as China and Russia, as the “central challenge” to US security.

The new strategy calls on American allies to step up, saying partners have been “content” to let Washington subsidise their defence, although it denies the shift signals a US move towards “isolationism”.

“To the contrary, it means a focused and genuinely strategic approach to the threats our nation faces,” it says.

Washington has long neglected the “concrete interests” of Americans, the report says, adding the US does not want to conflate American interests “with those of the rest of the world – that a threat to a person halfway around the world is the same as to an American.”

Instead, it says allies, especially Europe, “will take the lead against threats that are less severe for us but more so for them”.

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, is described as a “persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members”.

Unlike in previous versions of the strategy, Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China, is not mentioned. However, the document does write that the US aims to “prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies”.

Given the clashes with allies over Greenland and the tone of this fall’s National Security Strategy, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the NDS.

It has to be read for what it is: political messaging to the domestic audience rather than a strategy for U.S. military planning. To be sure, that’s not what this document is supposed to be or has been historically. But it’s clearly what this version is. Like the NSS, it repeatedly attacks previous administrations and boasts about Trump accomplishments. Indeed, it mentions Trump by name 47 times. (Which surely isn’t a coincidence.)

Certainly, like the NSS under which it nests, it rejects the postwar order that the U.S. helped build. Indeed, its opening paragraph declares, “Previous administrations squandered our military advantages and the lives, goodwill, and resources of ourpeople in grandiose nation-building projects and self-congratulatory pledges to uphold cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order.”

But the actual policy shift is not nearly as stark as portrayed.

Variants of “We will guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland” are concerning in light of the President’s recent rhetoric. But the United States already enjoys military and commercial access to all three.

While the tone regarding China is less confrontational than the 2017 version signed by Jim Mattis, it’s not at all clear that anything has changed.

[W]e will also be clear-eyed and realistic about the speed, scale, and quality of China’s historic military buildup. Our goal in doing so is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them. Rather, our goal is simple: To prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies—in essence, to set the military conditions required to achieve the NSS goal of a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific that allows all of us to enjoy a decent peace. To that end, as the NSS directs, we will erect a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain (FIC). We will also urge and enable key regional allies and partners to do more for our collective defense. In doing so, we will reinforce deterrence by denial so that all nations recognize that their interests are best served through peace and restraint.

Similarly, “In Europe and other theaters, allies will take the lead against threats that are less severe for us but more so for them, with critical but more limited support from the United States” is a restatement of existing policy.

The NDS restates that, “Trump has set a new global standard for defense spending at NATO’s Hague Summit—3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on core military spending and an additional 1.5% on security-related spending, for a total of 5% of GDP,” and declares, “We will advocate that our allies
and partners meet this standard around the world, not just in Europe.”

That’s not at all unreasonable. Nor is the stated rationale: “As our allies do so, together with the United States, they will be able to field the forces required to deter or defeat potential adversaries in every key region of the world, even in the face of simultaneous aggression.” It was the supposition of the Trump 45 and Biden administrations that, in the event of a military clash with China, Russia, Iran, and/or North Korea might well seize the opportunity to attack our allies and partners.

Nor does the document, as I had feared, wash its hands of the rest of the world. It states, correctly, that “not all threats are of equal severity, gravity, and consequence.” But quickly follows that with, “But even those of lesser salience still matter and must not be ignored.”

With regard to Europe, it’s not unreasonable to state, “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future.” Especially when caveating, later in the same paragraph, “although the Russian military threat is primarily focused on Eastern Europe, Russia also possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, which it continues to modernize and diversify, as well as undersea, space, and cyber capabilities that it could employ against the U.S. Homeland.”

So, our primary focus will be to “ensure that U.S. forces are prepared to defend against Russian threats to the U.S. Homeland.” But the very next sentence is reassuring: “The Department will also continue to play a vital role in NATO itself, even as we calibrate U.S. force posture and activities in the European theater.”

The document notes that “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power” and, indeed, “Germany’s economy alone dwarfs that of Russia.” It cites the World Bank in noting that the non-US NATO’s GDP is $26 trillion, compared to Russia’s $2 trillion.

Later in the document, they pledge to “leverage NATO processes in support of these goals, while also working to expand transatlantic defense industrial cooperation and reduce defense trade barriers in order to maximize our collective ability to produce forces required to achieve U.S. and allied defense objectives.” That’s the opposite of the abandonment that the headlines suggest.

Similarly, while noting that “The DPRK poses a direct military threat to the Republic of Korea (ROK) as well as to Japan, both of which are U.S. treaty allies,” it also acknowledges “DPRK’s nuclear forces are increasingly capable of threatening the U.S. Homeland.” There’s no indication of an abandonment of our allies. It rightly notes that “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited U.S. support.”

I continue to be quite leery of the rhetoric coming from the President and senior administration officials regarding longstanding allies. But, domestically-focused rhetoric notwithstanding, there’s little in the document that points to a major shift in U.S. policy.

The biggest shift—signaled in both the NSS and by recent actions—is the renewed emphasis on the Western Hemisphere. It continues to feel odd to me to talk about drug trafficking, much less illegal immigration, in the Defense Strategy or, indeed, to consider those military missions. But, the Maduro raid and blowing up some boats notwithstanding, that’s negligible in terms of a trillion-dollar defense budget (let alone the $1.5 trillion being proposed for the year).

Otherwise, China is still clearly the pacing challenge, if no longer called that explicitly. All of the focus on burden-sharing is simply an acknowledgment that, in order to deter PRC aggression, capable allies will need to do more in their own regions because the United States can’t deter other threats alone while also fighting China.

Russia is still seen as the biggest nuclear threat and a conventional threat in the region. It’s just that European NATO should shoulder the primary burden for the latter. Even at 5%, it’ll be some time before that’s feasible. 

Iran, the DPRK, and Islamist terrorists are still seen as lesser but significant threats. We’ve seen significant actions against the first and third of these under this administration.