(VOVWORLD) - The Pentagon released a priority-shifting National Defense Strategy late Friday that urged US allies to take control of their own security and reasserted the Trump administration's focus on dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
 The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., US (Photo: Reuters) |
The quadrennial report says the US will no longer cede key terrain in the Western Hemisphere and the Pentagon will provide President Donald Trump with “credible options to guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain from the Arctic to South America, especially Greenland, the Gulf of America, and the Panama Canal."
The Monroe Doctrine will continue to be upheld, the 2026 National Defense Strategy says, referring to the 19th century foreign policy doctrine that asserts the US sphere of influence extends throughout the Western Hemisphere.
It says the US does not seek to strangle China, which was characterized in the 2022 report as the most significant strategic competitor to the US, but rather should deter the country “through strength, not confrontation.” It says the Pentagon will “provide the military strength for President Trump’s visionary and realistic diplomacy, thereby setting conditions for a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.”
Moscow gets a relatively brief mention in the report. Russia is described as a “persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future.”
The Department of Defense will encourage allies and partners to take primary responsibility for their own defense, supported by critical but limited US forces, while making it easier for them to assume a greater share of collective defense responsibilities, according to the report.