The new U.S. National Defense Strategy released by the United States government in January is the first since 2022 and contrasts with its predecessor. Here’s a look at how the two Pentagon strategies address some of the traditional concerns of U.S. security policy.
The Western Hemisphere
2022: “The United States derives immense benefit from a stable, peaceful, and democratic Western Hemisphere that reduces security threats to the homeland. To prevent distant threats from becoming a challenge at home, the Department will continue to partner with countries in the region to build capability and promote security and stability.
“As in all regions, the Department will work collaboratively, seeking to understand our partners’ security needs and areas of mutual concern.”
2026: “We will actively and fearlessly defend America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere. We will guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland. We will provide President [Donald J.] Trump with credible military options to use against narco-terrorists wherever they may be. 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. And where they do not, we will stand ready to take focused, decisive action that concretely advances U.S. interests.”
Russia and European security
2022: “The Department will maintain its bedrock commitment to NATO collective security, working alongside Allies and partners to deter, defend, and build resilience against further Russian military aggression and acute forms of gray zone coercion. As we continue contributing to NATO capabilities and readiness — including through improvements to our posture in Europe and our extended nuclear deterrence commitments — the Department will work with Allies bilaterally and through NATO’s established processes to better focus NATO capability development and military modernization to address Russia’s military threat.”
2026: “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future.”
“European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power. At the same time, although Europe remains important, it has a smaller and decreasing share of global economic power. It follows that, although we are and will remain engaged in Europe, we must — and will — prioritize defending the U.S. Homeland and deterring China.”
“Fortunately, our NATO allies are substantially more powerful than Russia — it is not even close. Germany’s economy alone dwarfs that of Russia. At the same time, under President Trump’s leadership, NATO allies have committed to raise defense spending to the new global standard of 5% of GDP in total, with 3.5% of GDP invested in hard military capabilities. Our NATO allies are therefore strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense, with critical but more limited U.S. support. This includes taking the lead in supporting Ukraine’s defense.”
China and the Indo-Pacific
2022: “The NDS (National Defense Strategy) directs the Department to act urgently to sustain and strengthen U.S. deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the pacing challenge for the Department.”
“The most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security is the PRC’s coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences.”
“The PRC’s increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive activity towards Taiwan are destabilizing, risk miscalculation, and threaten the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait. This is part of a broader pattern of destabilizing and coercive PRC behavior that stretches across the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and along the Line of Actual Control.”
“The Department will support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense commensurate with the evolving PRC threat and consistent with our one China policy.”
2026: “Were China — or anyone else, for that matter — to dominate this broad and crucial region, it would be able to effectively veto Americans’ access to the world’s economic center of gravity, with enduring implications for our nation’s economic prospects, including our ability to reindustrialize. That is why the NSS (National Security Strategy) directs DoW (Department of War) to maintain a favorable balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific.
“Not for purposes of dominating, humiliating, or strangling China. To the contrary, our goal is far more scoped and reasonable than that: It is simply to ensure that neither China nor anyone else can dominate us or our allies. This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle. Rather, a decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under, is possible.”