(VOVWORLD) - The Pentagon released its 2026 National Defense Strategy last Saturday, the second strategic document issued by President Trump’s administration. It released a National Security Strategy in early December, 2025. The new defense policy makes a profound adjustment to the US security mindset to focus more narrowly on US interests, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, and reveals an intention to shape a new world order.
The 2026 National Defense Strategy, the first new defense strategy since 2022, uses the name “Department of War” instead of the name “Department of Defense”.
Toward a new order
The new strategy places homeland defense above global priorities. It recognizes border security and the crackdown on illegal immigration and drug-related crimes as urgent security tasks. The Pentagon has announced plans to deploy a “Golden Dome” missile defense system and counter-drone technologies to protect domestic airspace.
A key point of the strategy is a shift in focus from distant conflicts to the Western Hemisphere. It reasserts the Monroe Doctrine in the current context and declares that the US is ready to move proactively against threats in the Western Hemisphere, particularly so-called “narco-terrorist” groups. Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Gulf of Mexico (referred to by the Trump administration as the “Gulf of America”) are identified as vital interests and strategic areas where the US will not tolerate any external intrusion or challenge.
This shift means the US no longer views China as its top security priority. Regarding China merely as its main strategic competitor, the US will adopt a more flexible approach to China in the Indo-Pacific.
Nolan Higdon, Professor of history and media at the University of California Santa Cruz, said, “You could really look at this whole event, and Trump's speech in particular, and actions over the last year as really America kind of writing like the epilogue to the post-World War II order, and saying, you know, that's done. And now the question is what's coming next, and it looks like these kind of spheres of influence between like Europe, the United States, Russia, China, seem to be where the global community is going.”
The 2026 National Defense Strategy views the defense industry as a pillar of the new US security priorities. The US intends to bring defense production chains back home, step up the use of artificial intelligence (AI), eliminate administrative barriers, and leverage the production capacities of its allies to build a defense industrial network capable of overwhelming superiority in all conflict scenarios.
What choices for allies?
Released just three weeks after the Venezuela incident, the new US Defense Strategy, together with the earlier National Security Strategy, underscores that under President Trump, the US will pursue an “America First” agenda, regardless of the impact on allies. In the new strategy, the US demands that allies share the cost by spending 5% of their GDP on defense, while offering “important but limited” support in return.
The US argues that European members of NATO have sufficient economic capacity to take primary responsibility for conventional defense and support for Ukraine. This stance, coupled with recent serious disagreements between the US and NATO allies over Washington’s intention to annex Denmark’s Greenland territory, poses a major problem for NATO countries.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, “But for Europe, if you really want to go it alone, and those of you who are planning for that, forget that you can ever get there with 5%. It will be 10%. You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros. You will lose then, in that scenario, you would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the US nuclear umbrella.”
To respond to the US’s major security shift, other NATO members are urgently working on new strategies of their own. Mr. Rutte said that in the immediate term NATO members need to focus on two things: first, increasing their military budgets and developing procurement arrangements with defense industry corporations; and second, maintaining current US security commitments, despite any discomfort caused by changes in US policy.
The new US Defense Strategy also requires other US allies worldwide to make policy adjustments. The US assessment that South Korea is now capable of playing a leading role in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula means Seoul will have to become more self-reliant in defense, both financially and technologically. That challenge is complicated by new friction in US-South Korea trade relations following President Trump’s decision on Monday to raise tariffs on South Korean imports from 15% to 25%.