‘Sharp shift’: New US defence strategy tells allies to sort out their own security

Washington: The Pentagon has released a priority-shifting National Defence Strategy that chastises US allies to take control of their own security and reasserts the Trump administration’s focus on dominance in the western hemisphere above a long-time goal of countering China.

The 34-page document, the first since 2022, is highly political for a military blueprint, criticising partners from Europe to Asia for relying on previous US administrations to subsidise their defence.

It called for “a sharp shift – in approach, focus, and tone”. That translated to a blunt assessment that allies would take on more of the burden countering nations from Russia to North Korea.

“For too long, the US Government neglected — even rejected — putting Americans and their concrete interests first,” read the opening sentence of the document released late on Saturday (AEDT).

It capped off a week of animosity between US President Donald Trump’s administration and traditional allies such as Europe, with Trump threatening to impose tariffs on some European partners to press a bid to acquire Greenland before announcing a deal that lowered the political temperature.

As allies confront what some see as a hostile attitude by the US, they will almost certainly be unhappy to see that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s department will provide “credible options to guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain,” especially Greenland and the Panama Canal.

The document’s release follows a tiff between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney this week at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where Carney cast doubt on America’s reliability as a friend.

The strategy at once urged cooperation with Canada and other neighbours while still issuing a stark warning:

“We will engage in good faith with our neighbours, from Canada to our partners in Central and South America, but we will ensure that they respect and do their part to defend our shared interests,” it said.

“And where they do not, we will stand ready to take focused, decisive action that concretely advances US interests.”

Much like the White House’s National Security Strategy that preceded it, the defence blueprint reinforced Trump’s “America First” philosophy, which favours non-intervention overseas, questions decades of strategic relationships and prioritises US interests. The 2022 National Defence Strategy, published under then-president Joe Biden, focused on China as America’s “pacing challenge”.

The new strategy simultaneously courts help from partners in America’s backyard, while warning them that the US will “actively and fearlessly defend America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere.”

It specifically pointed 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 US “total access” to Greenland, a territory of NATO-ally Denmark.

Danish officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said formal negotiations have yet to begin.

Trump previously suggested that the US should potentially consider retaking control of the Panama Canal and accused Panama of ceding influence to China. Asked this week if the US reclaiming the canal was still on the table, Trump demurred: “I don’t want to tell you that. Sort of, I must say, sort of. That’s sort of on the table.”

The Pentagon also touted the operation that ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro this month, saying “all narco-terrorists should take note”.

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 US or its allies.

The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them”, the document said. It later added, “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 said. This follows efforts to climb down from a trade war sparked by the administration’s sky-high tariffs.

The US would “open a wider range of military-to-military communications” with China’s army.

The strategy, meanwhile, made no mention of, or guarantee to, Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own and says it will take by force if necessary. The US is obligated by its own laws to give military support to Taiwan.

By contrast, the Biden administration’s 2022 strategy said the US would “support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defence”.

In another example of offloading regional security to allies, the document said, “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support”.

While saying that “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future,” the defence strategy asserted that NATO allies were much more powerful and so were “strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defence”.

It said the Pentagon would play a key role in NATO “even as we calibrate US force posture and activities in the European theatre” to focus on priorities closer to home.

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

AP

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