New US defense strategy shifts focus to the Americas, rattling allies
The arrival this week of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East, within striking range of Iran, comes as allies react to the release of a new report offering a blueprint for how America plans to expand its military power across the world.
Released Friday evening — the traditional news window for potentially controversial administration announcements — the National Defense Strategy (NDS) prioritizes the domestic hemisphere, calls on longtime U.S. allies to shoulder more of the burden of deterring threats from Russia and North Korea, and sets a goal of reducing tensions with China.
This also explains why the Trump administration is closely monitoring Iran.
Why we wrote this
The new national defense strategy is attracting worldwide attention as it promises “more limited” U.S. support for friendly nations. He plans to deter China “by force and not by confrontation”.
Defense analysts alternately describe the new strategy, revised and published by the Pentagon every four years, as a “marked” and “unprecedented” policy shift.
This “signals arguably the greatest shift in U.S. defense priorities since the end of World War II,” articulating “a significantly lesser role for the United States in global affairs,” writes Carrie Lee, a senior fellow at the U.S. German Marshall Fund, in an analysis published Monday.
In Washington and Europe, the NDS also had allies who considered its implications and privately complained about the scolding tone.
This tone was probably not a coincidence. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth writes in the strategy’s introduction that it will no longer be “America’s duty…to act everywhere on our own, nor will we make up for allies’ security deficits due to the irresponsible choices of their leaders.”
Instead, the United States will offer “more limited” support to friendly nations and deter China “by force, not confrontation.”
In the Middle East, according to the NDS, the US government says the Iranian regime is “weaker and more vulnerable than it has been in decades.” It remains to be seen what this portends for possible US strikes against Tehran, as the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group arrived in the region this week.
The report also mentions projects aimed at “boosting” the American defense industry.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the strategy:
Defend the American Homeland
Previous administrations, including that of President Donald Trump, viewed competition with China and Russia as the primary threats to the country’s security. The current emphasis on US military supremacy in the region was expected but nevertheless striking.
He cites the “wisdom” of the Monroe Doctrine as the United States seeks to “restore American military dominance” in the Western Hemisphere.
To this end, the Department of Defense will work to “ensure U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain.” The Panama Canal, the Gulf of Mexico and Greenland fall into this category, he says.
The Pentagon will now focus on developing Mr. Trump’s plan for a “Golden Dome” — a conceptual space-based missile defense system intended to block hypersonic and long-range missile threats — for the United States and on cheaper ways to defeat large missile barrages.
It also emphasizes finding new ways to counter drones, which the NDS describes as a growing “threat.”
Deter China by force, not confrontation
The Pentagon, the report said, is trying to cultivate “respectful relations with China,” which the NDS calls “the second most powerful country in the world.”
This week, during a policy debate in South Korea, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby said the goal of the strategy document was to end “unnecessary confrontation” with Beijing.
With this in mind, the Pentagon will seek to communicate with the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army in more and different ways.
There is no mention of Taiwan in the document, analysts point out, although there have long been concerns about a possible Chinese invasion of the island.
Nonetheless, the United States must be clear-eyed about “the speed, scale, and quality of China’s historic military buildup,” the NDS strategy advises.
The goal, he adds, “is not to dominate China” nor to “humiliate it” but to prevent the country from “being able to dominate us or our allies”.
“More limited” support for allies
Russia will remain “a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future,” the NDS says.
The Pentagon will also ensure that U.S. forces are prepared to defend against Russian threats to their country – especially since Russia has, as the document notes, the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
But the new strategy makes clear that the United States expects its European allies to take primary responsibility for their own defense against Russia.
So far, the strategy asserts, allies have “too often been content to allow the United States to defend them, while it reduced defense spending and invested instead in things like public welfare.” Even without the United States, NATO countries collectively have sufficient resources to defend themselves against aggression, including from Russia, the report said. He points out, using a bar graph, that “non-NATO” countries have a total gross domestic product of $26 trillion, compared to Russia’s $2 trillion.
Serhii Korovainyi/Reuters
“European NATO dwarfs Russia in terms of economic scale, population and, therefore, latent military power,” the NDS asserts. “Our allies are significantly more powerful than Russia – they’re not even close. »
This idea, however, aroused reluctance. “If anyone thinks once again that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the United States, let them continue to dream,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declared Monday in Brussels. “You can’t. We can’t. We need each other.” It was also a response to growing calls from some European leaders for greater strategic autonomy.
Iran and North Korea: still threats
North Korea’s “increasingly numerous and sophisticated” nuclear forces pose a danger to the American homeland, the report said. It also asserts that South Korea is “capable of assuming primary responsibility” for its defense, “with critical but more limited American support.”
But in the Middle East, the report sounds a warning.
Although Iran has suffered “serious setbacks” following military strikes on its territory in recent months, “it appears determined to rebuild its conventional military forces,” the NDS says.
Tehran’s leaders “also left open the possibility that they might try again to obtain nuclear weapons,” he adds. “We also cannot ignore the fact that the Iranian regime has American blood on its hands, that it remains determined to destroy our close ally Israel, and that Iran and its proxies routinely provoke regional crises that not only threaten the lives of American service members in the region, but also prevent the region itself from pursuing the type of peaceful and prosperous future that so many of its leaders and people clearly desire. »
For this, in addition to his concerns about the violent repression of protests in Iran, Mr. Trump has frequently mentioned the constant threat of American military force.
The carrier strike group is now in the region, “just in case,” Mr. Trump said last week. “Maybe we won’t need to use it.”
