Yves here. Given how utterly incompetent the Trump Administration has shown itself to be, the credible charge that the US National Defense Strategy document is misleading is likely more a result of self (or US voter) deception than an attempt to snooker allies and competitors. In a fresh talk with Daniel Davis, Jeremy Scahill describes the astonishment of Iranian officials at seeing the extreme case of Dunning Kruger effect all across the Trump team.
The document was rife with contradictions, for instance, depicting a plan to have the US focus on its hemisphere, which implied action against China would be to reduce its influence in spots like Panama and not globally. Yet it was Trump 1.0 that declared economic war on China via tariffs and trying to reduce Huawei’s market share in the US and abroad, and now taking up the misguided mission of trying to beat China in AI with Silicon Valley hucksters as national champions.
More generally, the strategy paper employed a bizarre, chest-thumping style. Planning documents by competent organizations are big on clear articulation of internally consistent goals and how to achieve them, and not on largely empty exhortations in lieu of that.
One can contend that the US is not honest about its intentions. Aside from deploying fake-noble/vassal-friendly framing, that is not as true as one might think. Brian Berletic has regularly argued that Trump represents continuity of US policy. Berletic regularly highlights key US strategy/policy papers that have served as roadmaps for US foreign policy.
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan, and Nurina Malek, an economics graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is currently working on policy research at the Khazanah Research Institute Originally published at Jomo’s website
The January 2026 US National Defense Strategy (NDS) departs significantly from those preceding it, including from Trump’s first term. Is it deliberately misleading? Or is actual policy, including war, being driven by other considerations?
National Defense Strategy
The 34-page NDS begins by asserting: “For too long, the US Government neglected – even rejected – putting Americans and their concrete interests first”.
Much like the latest National Security Strategy (NSS), released by Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio in December 2025, the NDS claims to be about putting ‘America First’.
Both documents promise ‘no more business as usual’. They claim to change decades of strategy, supposedly in the national interest. Unlike earlier US military blueprints, the NDS is filled with vague rhetoric and eschews interventions abroad.
But in Trump 2.0’s first year alone, the US bombed ten countries, threatening at least four more, all in the Americas. Despite scant mention in both documents, the US-Israel war on Iran resumed on 28 February!
Europe
The NDS claims the US is reducing its direct military role in Europe but still wants to be influential.
It pledges to remain central to NATO “even as we calibrate US force posture and activities in the European theater” to meet US priorities.
Noting “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future”, the NDS insists NATO allies must “take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense”.
The NDS blows hot and cold on Europe’s aggressive support for Ukraine’s Zelensky, envisaging a reduced troop presence on NATO’s borders with Ukraine.
Many European allies complain the Trump administration has created a ‘security vacuum’ by leaving Europe to confront Russia with uncertain US support.
They also complain about Secretary Pete Hegseth’s insistence on “credible options to guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain”. The NDS insists on more than access to Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Issued days after Trump claimed he had a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security with NATO chief Mark Rutte, he insisted it ensured the US “total access” to Greenland, long a territory of NATO ally, Denmark.
However, Danish officials insisted formal negotiations had not yet begun. Trump also threatened European nations opposing his Greenland plan with tariffs.
Western Hemisphere
The NDS supports the NSS and Trump’s ‘Donroe doctrine’ focus on the Western Hemisphere, envisaging the Americas as the US backyard.
In his January Davos speech, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that recent US actions are disrupting established international norms.
The NDS was issued three days later, after a week of tensions between the White House and its Western allies. Cooperation with the Americas, including Canada, is conditional, to “ensure that they respect and do their part to defend our shared interests”.
It warns the US will “actively and fearlessly defend America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere. And where they do not, we will stand ready to take focused, decisive action that concretely advances US interests.”
Trump had declared the US should retake Panama and its Canal, accusing the government of ceding control to China. Later, however, Trump was more ambiguous about ‘taking back’ both the country and the canal.
Many also doubt Trump’s intentions in kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, ostensibly for trial on drug charges in the US.
Asia-Pacific
The previous NDS, issued in 2022 under then-President Joe Biden, had deemed China the US’s principal threat. Biden also embraced Trump 1.0’s Indo-Pacific alliance to encircle China.
In contrast, the new NDS describes China as an established power in the Indo-Pacific region that only needs to be discouraged from dominating the US and its allies.
The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them… This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle…President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China”.
The NDS even proposes “a wider range of military-to-military communications” with Chinese counterparts! The U-turn followed the administration’s retreat from its threatened tit-for-tat tariff escalation after China’s successful retaliation.
Biden’s 2022 NDS promised the US would “support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense”. The new NDS offers no such assurances to the self-governing island province of China, which Beijing warns it will take by force if necessary.
The NDS also calls for “a sharp shift – in approach, focus, and tone”, insisting US allies must take more responsibility for countering adversaries such as China, Russia and North Korea.
It insists, “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support”.
Cutting Costs of Empire
Like Trump, the new NDS wants allies to pay much more for US ‘protection’.
It echoes his frequent criticisms of allies for taking advantage of previous administrations to subsidise their defence and being ungrateful for US protection.
But the terms of such subordination remain ambiguous and arbitrary, even extortionate and corrupt. Gulf monarchies may now regret their generous donations to the president, apparently to little avail so far.
Trump’s treatment of allies, the Netanyahu-led war on Iran, and continuing US-led efforts to ‘contain’ China suggest both documents offer poor guidance to knowing and understanding, let alone anticipating, US policies abroad.
