China is no longer the top security priority for the US, according to the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The Pentagon also says it will offer “more limited” support to US allies.<\/p>\n
It follows the publication last year of the US National Security Strategy, which said that Europe faced “civilizational 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.<\/p>\n
By comparison, the 2022 National Defense Strategy named the “multi-domain threat” posed by China as its top defence priority. In 2018, the document described “revisionist powers”, such as China and Russia, as the “central challenge” to US security.<\/p>\n
The 34-page document, released on Friday, largely reinforces policy positions staked out by the Trump administration over its first year back in office.<\/p>\n
In that time, US President Donald Trump has seized Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>, carried out strikes against alleged drug boats<\/a> in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, and more recently, applied pressure on US allies to acquire Greenland<\/a>. <\/p>\n The strategy reiterated that the Pentagon “will guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland”.<\/p>\n The document also says the Trump administration’s approach will be “fundamentally different from the grandiose strategies of the past post\u2013Cold War administrations”. <\/p>\n It adds: “Out with utopian idealism; in with hardnosed realism.”<\/p>\n Relations with China are to be approached through “strength, not confrontation”. The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them”, the document says.<\/p>\n 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”.<\/p>\n