The United States military will now prioritize defending the homeland and deterring China, while providing “more limited” support to allies in Europe and elsewhere, according to the Pentagon’s newly released 2026 National Defense Strategy.
The document signals a major shift in U.S. defense policy, emphasizing that allies must take on greater responsibility for their own security and adopting a softer tone toward traditional rivals China and Russia.
“As US forces focus on homeland defense and the Indo-Pacific, our allies and partners elsewhere will take primary responsibility for their own defense with critical but more limited support from American forces,” the strategy states.
Previously, the NDS under President Joe Biden labeled China as Washington’s most consequential challenge and described Russia as posing an “acute threat.”
The new strategy, in contrast, calls for “respectful relations” with Beijing, makes no mention of U.S. ally Taiwan, and characterizes Russia as a “persistent but manageable” threat, particularly for NATO’s eastern members.
While both the Biden and Trump strategies stress the importance of homeland defense, they differ on how threats are framed.
Trump’s NDS criticized previous administrations for neglecting border security, linking this to a “flood of illegal aliens” and widespread narcotics trafficking. “Border security is national security,” it declared, adding that the Pentagon “will therefore prioritize efforts to seal our borders, repel forms of invasion, and deport illegal aliens.”
Unlike Biden’s strategy, which identified climate change as an “emerging threat,” the 2026 NDS omits environmental risks and instead elevates Latin America as a top focus.
The strategy declares that the U.S. “will restore American military dominance in the Western Hemisphere. We will use it to protect our Homeland and our access to key terrain throughout the region,” dubbing it the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.”
Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly used the military in Latin America, including a controversial raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife, as well as strikes on more than 30 alleged drug-smuggling boats that reportedly killed over 100 people.
Rights groups and international law experts argue that many of these strikes likely targeted civilians and could amount to extrajudicial killings, as the administration has provided no conclusive evidence linking the vessels to drug trafficking.
