The Trump administration has released its National Defense Strategy, a document that in many ways marks a sharp break from the interventionist orthodoxies of the past 35 years, but possesses clear militaristic impulses in its own right.
Rhetorically quite compatible with realism and restraint, the report envisages a more focused U.S. grand strategy, shedding force posture dominance in all major theaters for a more concentrated role in the Western Hemisphere and Indo-Pacific. At the same time however, it retains a rather status quo Republican view of the Middle East, painting Iran as an intransigent aggressor and Israel as a model ally. Its muscular approach to the Western Hemisphere also may lend itself to the very interventionism that the report ostensibly opposes.
Echoing the rhetoric outlined in the National Security Strategy, the document begins by assailing the foreign policies of previous administrations, which “squandered our military advantages and the lives, goodwill, and resources of our people in grandiose nation-building projects and self-congratulatory pledges to uphold cloud-based abstractions like the rules-based international order.”
Jettisoning these once sacrosanct pieties of U.S. foreign policy — liberal interventionism and social engineering masked as democratization — the document lays forth an alternative approach based in “flexible, practical realism.” This approach is summarized in four pillars:
- Defend the U.S. Homeland
- Deter China in the Indo-Pacific Through Strength, Not Confrontation
- Increase Burden-Sharing with U.S. Allies and Partners
- Supercharge the U.S. Defense Industrial Base.
Such sequencing is quite significant in itself, suggesting that the administration now assesses the Western Hemisphere to be the most critical arena of U.S. foreign policy. Such relegation of the Indo-Pacific is a notable departure from Trump’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which identified China as the most pressing U.S. security threat. But it is indeed consistent with the National Security Strategy released this past December.
In rationalizing its prioritization of the U.S. homeland, this is how the document circumscribes U.S. vital interests:
“[This strategy] does not conflate Americans’ 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. Nor does it see imposing our way of life by force as necessary. It does not seek to solve all the world’s problems. Rather, it focuses in practical ways on real, credible threats to Americans’ security, freedom, and prosperity. As it does so, it recognizes that some threats—like to our Homeland—are more direct and visceral than others.”
This is a fundamentally realist assessment, grounded in a contained understanding of American power in a multipolar world. It calibrates national security threats based on territorial proximity and their deleterious effect on the American people, rather than as amorphous universal abstractions.
On China, the report outlines a strategy of both competition and cooperation, while explicitly rejecting U.S. domination and humiliation. It calls for more expansive military-to-military communications with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as part of a broader U.S.-China policy of de-escalation, deconfliction, and strategy stability.
Overall, its approach to the Indo-Pacific is to preserve a balance of power, with calls to “erect a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain (FIC),” predicated on increased defensive burden sharing by U.S. regional allies. Notably, the document does not mention Taiwan by name once, strategic ambiguity in its starkest form.
While this Indo-Pacific strategy does not altogether foreclose U.S. overreach and could in practice sustain the same deterrence framework of Trump’s first term and continued by Biden, it is nonetheless a more sensible approach based around balance of power, divorced from bombast around China’s supposed quest to upend the international “rules-based order.”
Relative to the Korean Peninsula, there is no mention of North Korean “denuclearization” as a policy goal. The document also calls for the South Koreans to take primary responsibility over North Korean deterrence, seemingly presaging a reduction in U.S. troops in South Korea.
This burden sharing extends to Europe and the Middle East, calling on NATO allies, Israel, and Arab Gulf partners to take on their own primary conventional defense. The document rightsizes Russia as a manageable threat for the Europeans, citing Europe’s overwhelming economic advantage compared to Russia. It calls for a recalibration of U.S. forces in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, suggesting continued military retrenchment from each region. Recent reports of U.S. plans to leave Syria and Iraq seem reflective of this strategy.
All of these aspects are compatible with realism and restraint, and reflect a positive course correction that, if actualized, would reduce America’s military footprint in the world, foster a more cooperative relationship with both Russia and China, and enable a greater focus on domestic governance.
But for a document squarely grounded in realist principles, its approach to Iran lacks a concrete course of action, and, instead, seems driven by ideological fanaticism. Touting the supposed success of Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER in purportedly “obliterating Iran’s nuclear program,” it nonetheless acknowledges that Iran is intent on rebuilding its conventional military forces, asserting that the Iranian regime “has the blood of Americans on its hands and remains intent on destroying our close ally Israel." Israel, conversely, is held up as a “model ally,” making no mention of points of divergence between U.S. and Israeli self-interest, or Israeli belligerence in its own right.
Such rhetorical flourishes on Iranian behavior mark a considerable departure from a document otherwise grounded in unemotional, realist threat assessment, seemingly foreclosing the possibility of diplomacy. But renewed kinetic military action against Iran does not accord with the practical realism outlined in this report, particularly absent a clearly achievable U.S strategic objective.
One must also be wary of the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which calls for the Defense Department to restore American military dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The prioritization of the U.S. homeland is, as previously mentioned, a prudent strategic pivot, but hemispheric predominance could become a grandiose project in its own right, justifying neoconservative quagmires in our backyard, rather than in far-off lands. Consider the recent report of U.S. machinations to spur regime change in Cuba by the end of 2026. In such an instance, the patina of realism does not change the reality of social engineering as the preferred policy prescription.
Counternarcotics, one of the identified American interests in the Western Hemisphere, has also demonstrated itself to be an extremely flexible undertaking, ranging from taking out alleged drug boats in the Caribbean to removing the leader of Venezuela. Worryingly, this war on drugs could become a perpetual endeavor akin to the war on terror, increasingly divergent from clear strategic objectives and infused with its own ideological pretenses.
There is much to like in the 2026 National Defense Strategy, but it also contains rhetorical inconsistencies and a clear slippery slope in the Western Hemisphere. We shall see what happens in the coming year, subject to the whims of the man in the bully pulpit.
