What Trump's National Defense Strategy Gets Right — and Wrong

The Trump administration quietly released its 2026 National Defense Strategy on Friday evening as the largest storm in years barreled down on much of the United States. Much like the snow that blanketed the country, the new NDS brings a combination of positive and negative elements.

Starting with the positive elements, the NDS (more so than the NSS) has the earmarks of a serious strategic effort, one that establishes priorities, identifies the most serious threats, and attempts to allocate resources accordingly — seeking to “correlate ends, ways, and means in a realistic fashion.”

The urgent focus in the NDS on revitalizing the defense industrial base is laudable and long overdue. When combined with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s prioritization of defense acquisition and foreign military sales reform, as reflected in his November 7 speech, there is real potential for improvements.

Even if the administration’s approach to alliance management has at times been deeply counterproductive, there is strategic wisdom in the NDS’s focus on burden sharing. While the United States is powerful, it lacks sufficient resources or military power to address all threats and challenges alone and needs allies and partners to “do their part” (a term the NDS repeats five times), especially when it comes to “threats in their regions.” That is perhaps part of the reason why the administration expresses such frustration with allies and partners that fail to fully “step up” and carry a necessary share of the burden. Trump’s new “global standard” for allies and partners to spend 3.5% of gross domestic product on core military spending is well timed, especially for our partners in Asia, including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.

Moreover, in a laudable recognition of reality and to encourage other allies and partners to emulate the example, the NDS twice identifies Israel as a “model ally.” After the barbaric attacks of October 7, “Israel showed that it was able and willing to defend itself,” the NDS observes. With the assistance of the U.S. military, the NDS notes that Israel achieved “historic operational and strategic successes,” weakening Iran and “severely” degrading Tehran’s terror proxy network.

The NDS rightly highlights that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a regime that “has the blood of Americans on its hands” and that “routinely” starts crises that “threaten the lives of American servicemembers in the region” and prevents a more “peaceful and prosperous future” in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, the United States also confronts threats from China, Russia, North Korea, and others. To help share the burden and lighten the U.S. load, Americans need an ally that is both motivated and capable of taking the fight to Tehran and its terror proxies.

That is exactly what Americans have in Israel, as the NDS notes. 

No wonder the NDS now seeks to “further empower [Israel] to defend itself and promote our shared interests.” The administration can start by expediting and expanding efforts to replenish, modernize, and expand Israel’s arsenal, as well as strengthening further the U.S.-Israel Operations-Technology Working Group, building a regional security architecture that includes Israel, and replacing the current U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding with a Strategic Partnership Agreement. 

The NDS’s positive elements are unfortunately accompanied by several shortcomings. One of them is an approach toward Europe that undervalues its importance to Americans, underestimates the Russian threat and Putin’s ambitions, increases the chances of additional aggression (that would undermine America’s efforts in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific), and advances an approach that is out of step with the views of Congress and the American people. 

The wording in the NDS makes clear that additional reductions in U.S. force posture in Europe may be coming in the department’s impending “Global Posture Review.” Premature U.S. withdrawals would seem to reward Russia for its aggression in Ukraine and weaken deterrence on NATO’s eastern flank during a window of particular vulnerability as Europe needs time to translate increased defense spending into increased defense production capacity, larger inventories, and force structure, and strengthened defense posture and capability. 

The administration must also ensure that its increased focus in the Western Hemisphere and reduced commitments in some regions abroad are not interpreted as a “spheres of influence” strategy that is some form of retreat. If the United States takes unprincipled “might makes right” license in its hemisphere, we should not be surprised if America’s enemies double down on efforts to do the same, inviting more aggression and wars that could have been prevented. 

Another shortcoming in the NDS is the administration’s caustic “tone” that the administration and its NSS and NDS celebrate and mistakenly view as a “necessary” virtue rather than a counterproductive vice. If we need allies and partners to do more and work with us more closely, habitually insulting them is not a smart approach. To be sure, many partners need to invest more in defense, but as the NDS notes, many are already starting to do so, and we can achieve that result without belittling allies who have fought and died alongside Americans from Yorktown to D-Day to Afghanistan. 

A good rule of thumb is to treat America’s allies and partners with at least as much respect as we treat our enemies, such as China and Russia. Oddly, the administration often reserves respect for authoritarian adversaries and disdain for America’s democratic allies. That makes achieving the administration’s goals more difficult. 

Unfortunately, the administration also brings its caustic tone to domestic discussions, confusing as enemies Americans of good faith who simply have different policy positions. If the Trump administration wants its approach to enjoy support in Congress now, and “for many years to come” after Trump leaves office, it should spend more time respectfully listening, persuading, and building bipartisan consensus and less time using language that unnecessarily creates opponents who might otherwise be ready to cooperate in working toward common goals.

One of the most consequential shortcomings, however, in the NDS is its failure to clearly articulate an effective strategy for confronting America’s most formidable adversary: China. To be sure, the NDS lays out the broad outlines of a sound strategy of denial along the First Island Chain in the Pacific that seeks to preserve American access and interests in the Pacific, strengthen deterrence, and prevent China from dominating the United States or its allies in the region. 

That is a necessary but wildly insufficient response to Beijing, particularly because it does not explicitly describe how we will support our most vulnerable partner, Taiwan, and ignores the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) ongoing cyber aggression against America’s national critical infrastructure. 

Notably, the NDS does not even mention Taiwan once. That oddity is exacerbated by Hegseth’s comment in his introduction that “We will deter China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation.” War with China would be a disaster, but if Beijing believes the United States will avoid confrontation at almost any cost, our military strength becomes less relevant, and we are more likely to see PRC aggression. 

The administration calls for a “clear-eyed” and objective assessment of threats, yet there is little indication in the NSS or the NDS that the administration understands that Beijing’s ambitions extend well beyond the Pacific and that the PRC is engaged in current aggression against the United States in the cyber domain. The U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment and the Pentagon’s 2025 report to Congress demonstrate this understanding, but it is less evident in the NDS. That does not bode well for the strategy. 

China says it will respond to the U.S. threat by a process of “systems destruction warfare,” paralyzing, controlling, or destroying critical components of America’s operational systems. This includes military power projection systems (carriers and bases), our logistics hubs, our command-and-control and information-sharing networks (space and cyber), and America’s ability to generate future forces. Likely out of concern for not “provoking” or “offending” China, the NDS fails to acknowledge these ongoing PRC efforts, much less describe a strategy to respond. 

In 2024, the FBI detailed China’s aggressive “Volt Typhoon” campaign to penetrate and place at risk key U.S. critical infrastructures. Beijing’s goal is to prevent the Pentagon from conducting military mobilization and movement through key rail systems, airports, and maritime ports to the fight overseas. The failure to clearly identify and address this ongoing Chinese activity risks undermining the Trump administration’s entire strategy for deterring aggression in the Pacific. 

As Americans experience the joys and pains associated with the recent snowstorm, they would be wise to put the new NDS on their reading table. Understanding its strengths and weaknesses will enable Americans and their representatives in Congress to support what the administration gets right and push back where it is misguided. 

Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where RADM Mark Montgomery (U.S. Navy, ret.) is senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation.