Pentagon shifts focus away from China in new defense strategy
Source: NBC News
Jan. 23, 2026, 10:36 PM EST
WASHINGTON — The Defense Department said in an influential strategy document published Friday that the U.S. military's top focus is no longer on China but instead the homeland and Western Hemisphere. The priorities laid out in the 2026 National Defense Strategy, a quadrennial report last published in 2022, diverge significantly from those of the Biden administration, with efforts geared more inward such as securing the border and countering narcotics.
The document says the country is not pursuing an isolationist agenda, but lays out why the U.S. wants allies to do more while the military focuses more on the homeland.
The main focus on the homeland includes a section about the U.S. no longer ceding key terrain in the Western Hemisphere and how the Pentagon will provide President Donald Trump with “credible options to guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain from the Arctic to South America, especially Greenland, the Gulf of America, and the Panama Canal."
"We will ensure that the Monroe Doctrine is upheld in our time,” it adds, referring to the 19th century foreign policy doctrine that asserts the U.S. sphere of influence extends throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-shifts-focus-away-china-new-defense-strategy-rcna255701
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