China is no longer the US Pentagon’s top priority, shifting its focus to the homeland and Western Hemisphere, an influential new strategy document says.
Where it had been viewed under former president Joe Biden as a top adversary, Beijing is now seen as a settled force in the Indo-Pacific region that only needs to be deterred from dominating the US or its allies, according to the 2026 National Defence Strategy.
The document is based on President Donald Trump‘s National Security Strategy, published last year, which said the US will reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere, build military strength in the Indo-Pacific, and possibly reassess its relationship with Europe.
The new paper calls for the US military to provide “critical but more limited support” for allies in Europe and elsewhere.
It says there is a need for “a sharp shift – in approach, focus, and tone” in order to “shift away from the legacy course headed for disaster and toward making America great again”.
The strategy’s release is likely to unnerve US allies even further, coming after disagreements over a desired US takeover of Greenland and claims by Mr Trump that NATO troops did not fight on the frontline in Afghanistan.
The new document says the country is not pursuing an isolationist agenda, but lays out why the US wants allies to do more while the military focuses more on the homeland.
The main focus on the homeland includes a section about the US no longer ceding key terrain in the Western Hemisphere and how the Pentagon will provide Mr Trump with “credible options to guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain from the Arctic to South America, especially Greenland, the Gulf of America, and the Panama Canal.”
