Trump administration's defense strategy tells allies to handle their own security

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"For too long, the U.S. Government neglected — even rejected — putting Americans and their concrete interests first," read the opening sentence.

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Much like the White House's National Security Strategy that preceded it, the defense blueprint reinforces Trump's "America First" philosophy, which favors nonintervention overseas, questions decades of strategic relationships and prioritizes U.S. interests. The National Defense Strategy last was published in 2022 under then-President Joe Biden and focused on China as America's "pacing challenge."

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The strategy simultaneously courts help from partners in America's backyard, while warning them that the U.S. will "actively and fearlessly defend America's interests throughout the Western Hemisphere."

It specifically points to access to the Panama Canal and Greenland. It comes just days after Trump said he reached a "framework of a future deal" on Arctic security with NATO leader Mark Rutte that would offer the U.S. "total access" to Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark.

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Trump previously suggested that the U.S. should potentially consider retaking control of the Panama Canal and accused Panama of ceding influence to China. Asked this week if the U.S. reclaiming the canal was still on the table, Trump demurred.

"I don't want to tell you that," the president responded. "Sort of, I must say, sort of. That's sort of on the table."

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The new policy document views China — which the Biden administration saw as a top adversary — as a settled force in the Indo-Pacific region that only needs to be deterred from dominating the U.S. or its allies.

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The goal "is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them," the document says. It later adds, "This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle."

"President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China," it says, which follows efforts to climb down from a trade war sparked by the administration's sky-high tariffs. It says it will "open a wider range of military-to-military communications" with China's army.

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While saying that "Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO's eastern members for the foreseeable future," the defense strategy asserts that NATO allies are much more powerful and so are "strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense."

It says the Pentagon will play a key role in NATO "even as we calibrate U.S. force posture and activities in the European theater" to focus on priorities closer to home.

The U.S. already has confirmed that it will reduce its troop presence on NATO's borders with Ukraine, with allies expressing concern that the Trump administration might drastically cut their numbers and leave a security vacuum as European countries confront an increasingly aggressive Russia.

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