Trump administration’s defense strategy tells allies to handle their own security
WASHINGTON– The Pentagon late Friday released a national defense strategy shifting priorities that chastised U.S. allies to take control of their own security and reaffirmed the Trump administration’s focus on dominance in the Western Hemisphere beyond its long-standing goal of countering China.
The 34-page document, the first since 2022, was highly political on military planning, criticizing partners from Europe to Asia for relying on previous US administrations to subsidize their defense. He called for “a radical change in approach, focus and tone.” This translates into a stark assessment that allies would shoulder more of the burden in fighting nations from Russia to North Korea.
“For too long, the U.S. government has neglected – even rejected – putting Americans and their concrete interests first,” the first sentence reads.
It capped 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 pressure their bid to acquire Greenland before announcing a deal that would lower the temperature.
As allies face 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 ensure U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain,” particularly Greenland and the Panama Canal.
After an argument this week at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the strategy immediately calls for cooperation with Canada and other neighbors while issuing a stark warning.
“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 states. “And where that is not the case, we will be prepared to take targeted and decisive action that concretely advances American interests.” »
Like the White House national security strategy that preceded it, the defense plan reinforces Trump’s “America First” philosophy, which favors non-intervention abroad, calls into question decades of strategic relationships and puts American interests first. The latest National Defense Strategy was released in 2022 under President Joe Biden and focused on China as America’s “cutting edge challenge.”
The strategy simultaneously seeks 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 targets access to the Panama Canal and Greenland. It comes just days after Trump said he had reached a “framework for a future agreement” on Arctic security with NATO chief Mark Rutte that would offer the United States “full access” to Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Danish officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday to discuss sensitive negotiations, say formal negotiations have not yet begun.
Trump previously suggested that the United States should eventually consider regaining control of the Panama Canal and accused Panama of ceding its influence to China. When asked this week whether America’s recapture of the canal was still on the table, Trump demurred.
“I don’t want to tell you that,” the president replied. “Kind of, I have to say, kind of. It’s kind of on the table.”
The Pentagon also touted the operation that toppled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month, saying “all narcoterrorists should take note.”
The new policy document views China — which the Biden administration considered a prime adversary — as an established 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 to strangle or humiliate it,” the document says. He later adds: “This does not require regime change or another existential struggle. »
“President Trump seeks stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China,” says the text, which follows efforts to end a trade war sparked by the administration’s exorbitant tariffs. He says this will “open up a wider range of military-to-military communications” with the Chinese military.
The strategy, meanwhile, makes no mention or guarantee of 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 provide military support to Taiwan.
In contrast, the Biden administration’s 2022 strategy predicted that the United States would “support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense.”
In another example of shifting regional security to allies, the document said: “South Korea is capable of assuming primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited U.S. support.”
While asserting that “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future,” the defense strategy asserts that NATO allies are much more powerful and are therefore “strongly positioned to assume primary responsibility for the conventional defense of Europe.”
He says the Pentagon will play a key role within NATO “even as we calibrate the posture and activities of U.S. forces in the European theater” to focus on priorities closer to home.
The United States has already confirmed it will reduce its troop presence on NATO’s borders with Ukraine, with allies expressing concern that the Trump administration could significantly reduce troop numbers and leave a security vacuum as European countries face an increasingly aggressive Russia.
