Claire Keenan
ReutersThe US will offer “more limited” support to its allies, according to the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy.
In a significant shift to its security priorities, the US Department of Defense now considers security of the US homeland and Western Hemisphere – not China – as its primary concern.
By comparison, previous versions of the defence strategy – published once every four years – named the “multi-domain threat” posed by China as the top defence priority for the US.
The new strategy reinforces recent comments made by US President Donald Trump, including calls for greater “burden-sharing” from US allies in countering threats posed by Russia and North Korea.
The new 34-page report follows last year’s publication of the US National Security Strategy, which said Europe faced civilisational collapse and did not cast Russia as a threat to the US. At the time, Moscow said the document was “largely consistent” with its vision.
By comparison, in 2018, the Pentagon described “revisionist powers”, such as China and Russia, as the “central challenge” to US security.
The new strategy calls on American allies to step up, saying partners have been “content” to let Washington subsidise their defence, although it denies the shift signals a US move towards “isolationism”.
“To the contrary, it means a focused and genuinely strategic approach to the threats our nation faces,” it says.
Washington has long neglected the “concrete interests” of Americans, the report says, adding the US does not want to conflate American 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.”
Instead, it says allies, especially Europe, “will take the lead against threats that are less severe for us but more so for them”.
Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, is described as a “persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members”.
Relations with China are to be approached through “strength, not confrontation”, the report says. The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them”.
Unlike in previous versions of the strategy, Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China, is not mentioned. However, the document does write that the US aims to “prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies”.
Late last year, the US announced a vast arms sale to Taiwan worth $11bn (£8.2bn), leading China to hold military drills around the island in response.
The strategy also outlines a “more limited” role for US deterrence of North Korea. South Korea is “capable of taking primary responsibility” for the task, it adds.
In the 12 months since Trump began his second term as president, the US has seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, carried out strikes against alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, and more recently, applied pressure on US allies to acquire Greenland.
The strategy reiterates that the Pentagon “will guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland”.
The document says the Trump administration’s approach will be “fundamentally different from the grandiose strategies of the past post–Cold War administrations”.
It adds: “Out with utopian idealism; in with hardnosed realism.”
At the World Economic Forum earlier this week, Trump claimed the US had “never gotten anything” from Nato and “we’ve never asked for anything”.
He further criticised the organisation, incorrectly claiming “the United States was paying for virtually 100% of Nato”.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the old world order is “not coming back” and urged fellow middle powers – like South Korea, Canada and Australia – to come together.
“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said at the Davos meeting.
That came as French President Emmanuel Macron also warned of a “shift towards a world without rules”.
