In a significant shift, the Pentagon’s latest National Defence Strategy has deprioritised China as the top security threat, instead placing the security of the US homeland and Western Hemisphere as the department’s primary concern. This marks a departure from the previous strategy, which had identified “revisionist powers” like China and Russia as the “central challenge” to US security.
The 34-page document, released on Friday, reinforces many of the policy positions staked out by the Trump administration during its first year in office. This includes a focus on “burden-sharing” from US allies, who the strategy says have been “content” to let Washington “subsidise their defence”. The strategy denies this represents a move towards “isolationism”, stating it instead reflects a “focused and genuinely strategic approach to the threats our nation faces”.
Notably, the new strategy makes no mention of Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China. However, it does state the US aims to “prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies”. This comes after the US announced an $11 billion arms sale to Taiwan last year, prompting a military response from China.
Relations with China are to be approached through “strength, not confrontation”, the document says, with the goal being neither to “dominate China” nor “strangle or humiliate them”. Instead, the strategy calls for a “fundamentally different” approach from the “grandiose strategies of the past post–Cold War administrations”, advocating for “hardnosed realism” over “utopian idealism”.
Elsewhere, the strategy describes Russia as a “persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members”, while outlining a “more limited” role for US deterrence of North Korea, stating that South Korea is “capable of taking primary responsibility” for this task.
The shift in priorities outlined in the new strategy comes amid broader geopolitical changes, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warning at the World Economic Forum that the “old world order is not coming back” and urging middle powers to “act together” in the face of a “shift towards a world without rules”, as echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
