The Daily Populous Saturday January 24th, 2026 evening edition
Authored by bbc.com and submitted by ImperiumRome

Pentagon to offer 'more limited' support to US allies in defence strategy shift

12 hours ago Share Save Claire Keenan Share Save

Reuters Homeland security is the top priority in the Pentagon's new National Defense Strategy

The US will offer "more limited" support to allies, according to the Pentagon's new National Defense Strategy. In a significant shift to its security priorities, the US Department of Defense now considers security of the US homeland and Western Hemisphere - not China - as its primary concern. Previous versions of the strategy - published every four years - named the threat posed by China as the top defence priority. Relations with China will now be approached through "strength, not confrontation", the report says. The defence strategy reinforces recent calls from President Donald Trump, including for greater "burden-sharing" from allies in countering threats posed by Russia and North Korea.

The new 34-page report follows last year's publication of the US National Security Strategy, which said Europe faced civilisational collapse and did not cast Russia as a threat to the US. At the time, Moscow said the document was "largely consistent" with its vision. By comparison, in 2018, the Pentagon described "revisionist powers", such as China and Russia, as the "central challenge" to US security. The new strategy calls on American allies to step up, saying partners have been "content" to let Washington subsidise their defence, although it denies the shift signals a US move towards "isolationism". "To the contrary, it means a focused and genuinely strategic approach to the threats our nation faces," it says. Washington has long neglected the "concrete interests" of Americans, the report says, adding the US does not want to conflate American interests "with those of the rest of the world – that a threat to a person halfway around the world is the same as to an American." Instead, it says allies, especially Europe, "will take the lead against threats that are less severe for us but more so for them". Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, is described as a "persistent but manageable threat to NATO's eastern members".

Unlike in previous versions of the strategy, Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China, is not mentioned. However, the document does write that the US aims to "prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies". Late last year, the US announced a vast arms sale to Taiwan worth $11bn (£8.2bn), leading China to hold military drills around the island in response. The strategy also outlines a "more limited" role for US deterrence of North Korea. South Korea is "capable of taking primary responsibility" for the task, it adds. In the 12 months since Trump began his second term as president, the US has seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, carried out strikes against alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, and more recently, applied pressure on US allies to acquire Greenland. The strategy reiterates that the Pentagon "will guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland". The document says the Trump administration's approach will be "fundamentally different from the grandiose strategies of the past post–Cold War administrations". It adds: "Out with utopian idealism; in with hardnosed realism."

Nonions on January 24th, 2026 at 10:50 UTC »

I'll need to read the document, but as with everything under this administration it just seems incoherent.

If security in the western hemisphere is the priority, what/who are the threat? According to this, not China. And apparently not Russia?

But China and Russia are also why the US needs to jeopardise every alliance it has by threatening to annex Greenland. China is also the reason the US needs to build Trump's new battleships and scupper the US navy's only realistic plan of getting more hills in the water at a reasonable pace.

Must also be why although Russia is a problem, but not enough to actually do anything about it in Ukraine, in fact the US administration is sympathetic to Russia there.

Maybe it's not meant to be coherent. But the only way I can actually see logic is that this administration is willing to accept the spheres of influence idea, believes that great powers are entitled to do whatever they want within those spheres, and doesn't give a damn unless anyone encroaches on the western hemisphere. Europe doesn't feature in this, Trump fawns over dictators, only.

willseagull on January 24th, 2026 at 08:34 UTC »

How many own goals is the trump administration allowed to concede? I always thought that arrogance through American exceptionalism would bring the end of their empire but doing so so rapidly and embarrassingly was not on my bingo sheet.

ImperiumRome on January 24th, 2026 at 05:51 UTC »

Submission statement: China is no longer the top security priority for the US, according to the Pentagon's new National Defense Strategy. The document, published once every four years, instead says that the security of the US homeland and Western Hemisphere is the department's chief concern, adding that Washington has long neglected the "concrete interests" of Americans. The Pentagon also says it will offer "more limited" support to US allies. Unlike in previous versions of the strategy, Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China, is not mentioned. However, the document does write that the US aims to "prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies".