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