China is no longer the top security priority for the US, according to the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy.
The document, published once every four years, instead says that the security of the US homeland and Western Hemisphere is the department’s chief concern, adding that Washington has long neglected the “concrete interests” of Americans.
The Pentagon also says it will offer “more limited” support to US allies.
It follows the publication last year of the US National Security Strategy, which said that Europe faced “civilizational 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, the 2022 National Defense Strategy named the “multi-domain threat” posed by China as its top defence priority. In 2018, the document described “revisionist powers”, such as China and Russia, as the “central challenge” to US security.
The 34-page document, released on Friday, largely reinforces policy positions staked out by the Trump administration over its first year back in office.
In that time, US President Donald Trump 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 reiterated that the Pentagon “will guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland”.
The document also 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.”
Relations with China are to be approached through “strength, not confrontation”. The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them”, the document says.
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 calls for greater “burden-sharing” from US allies, saying that partners have been “content” to let Washington “subsidize their defense”.
Though, it denies this demonstrates a move towards “isolationism”.
“To the contrary, it means a focused and genuinely strategic approach to the threats our nation faces,” it says, adding that it 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”.
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 a speech made at the World Economic Forum earlier this week, 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”.
