The Pentagon’s recently released National Defense Strategy details increasing military threats as countries grow in their “conventional strike and space, cyber, electromagnetic warfare capabilities.”
The strategy’s introduction notes that President Trump took office during “one of the most dangerous security environments in our nation’s history,” listing issues such as the border, narcoterrorism, and threats posed by China and the Middle East.
“It is only prudent for the United States and its allies to be prepared for the possibility that one or more potential opponents might act together in a coordinated or opportunistic fashion across multiple theaters,” the report notes. “Such a scenario would be less of a concern if our allies and partners had spent recent decades investing adequately in their defenses. But they did not.”
According to the Pentagon’s strategy, defending the U.S. homeland is the top priority, explaining that “direct military threats” to the nation have “grown in recent years.” Adversaries’ influence has also grown from “Greenland in the Arctic to the Gulf of America, the Panama Canal, and locations farther south,” a move that “not only threatens U.S. access to key terrain throughout the hemisphere; it also leaves the Americas less stable and secure, undermining both U.S. interests and those of our regional partners.”
Both China and Russia remain threats to the nation’s security, although Russia is described as “manageable.”
The White House also released a National Security Strategy in December. Discussing the principle of the Primacy of Nations, the strategy states, “The United States will put our own interests first and, in our relations with other nations, encourage them to prioritize their own interests as well. We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests.”
