Yves here. Given how utterly incompetent the Trump Administration has shown itself to be, the credible charge that the US National Defense Strategy document is misleading is likely more a result of self (or US voter) deception than an attempt to snooker allies and competitors. In a fresh talk with Daniel Davis, Jeremy Scahill describes the astonishment of Iranian officials at seeing the extreme case of Dunning Kruger effect all across the Trump team.
The document was rife with contradictions, for instance, depicting a plan to have the US focus on its hemisphere, which implied action against China would be to reduce its influence in spots like Panama and not globally. Yet it was Trump 1.0 that declared economic war on China via tariffs and trying to reduce Huawei’s market share in the US and abroad, and now taking up the misguided mission of trying to beat China in AI with Silicon Valley hucksters as national champions.
More generally, the strategy paper employed a bizarre, chest-thumping style. Planning documents by competent organizations are big on clear articulation of internally consistent goals and how to achieve them, and not on largely empty exhortations in lieu of that.
One can contend that the US is not honest about its intentions. Aside from deploying fake-noble/vassal-friendly framing, that is not as true as one might think. Brian Berletic has regularly argued that Trump represents continuity of US policy. Berletic regularly highlights key US strategy/policy papers that have served as roadmaps for US foreign policy.
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan, and Nurina Malek, an economics graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is currently working on policy research at the Khazanah Research Institute Originally published at Jomo’s website
The January 2026 US National Defense Strategy (NDS) departs significantly from those preceding it, including from Trump’s first term. Is it deliberately misleading? Or is actual policy, including war, being driven by other considerations?
National Defense Strategy
The 34-page NDS begins by asserting: “For too long, the US Government neglected – even rejected – putting Americans and their concrete interests first”.
Much like the latest National Security Strategy (NSS), released by Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio in December 2025, the NDS claims to be about putting ‘America First’.
Both documents promise ‘no more business as usual’. They claim to change decades of strategy, supposedly in the national interest. Unlike earlier US military blueprints, the NDS is filled with vague rhetoric and eschews interventions abroad.
But in Trump 2.0’s first year alone, the US bombed ten countries, threatening at least four more, all in the Americas. Despite scant mention in both documents, the US-Israel war on Iran resumed on 28 February!
Europe
The NDS claims the US is reducing its direct military role in Europe but still wants to be influential.
It pledges to remain central to NATO “even as we calibrate US force posture and activities in the European theater” to meet US priorities.
Noting “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future”, the NDS insists NATO allies must “take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense”.
The NDS blows hot and cold on Europe’s aggressive support for Ukraine’s Zelensky, envisaging a reduced troop presence on NATO’s borders with Ukraine.
Many European allies complain the Trump administration has created a ‘security vacuum’ by leaving Europe to confront Russia with uncertain US support.
They also complain about Secretary Pete Hegseth’s insistence on “credible options to guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain”. The NDS insists on more than access to Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Issued days after Trump claimed he had a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security with NATO chief Mark Rutte, he insisted it ensured the US “total access” to Greenland, long a territory of NATO ally, Denmark.
However, Danish officials insisted formal negotiations had not yet begun. Trump also threatened European nations opposing his Greenland plan with tariffs.
Western Hemisphere
The NDS supports the NSS and Trump’s ‘Donroe doctrine’ focus on the Western Hemisphere, envisaging the Americas as the US backyard.
In his January Davos speech, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that recent US actions are disrupting established international norms.
The NDS was issued three days later, after a week of tensions between the White House and its Western allies. Cooperation with the Americas, including Canada, is conditional, to “ensure that they respect and do their part to defend our shared interests”.
It warns the US will “actively and fearlessly defend America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere. And where they do not, we will stand ready to take focused, decisive action that concretely advances US interests.”
Trump had declared the US should retake Panama and its Canal, accusing the government of ceding control to China. Later, however, Trump was more ambiguous about ‘taking back’ both the country and the canal.
Many also doubt Trump’s intentions in kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, ostensibly for trial on drug charges in the US.
Asia-Pacific
The previous NDS, issued in 2022 under then-President Joe Biden, had deemed China the US’s principal threat. Biden also embraced Trump 1.0’s Indo-Pacific alliance to encircle China.
In contrast, the new NDS describes China as an established power in the Indo-Pacific region that only needs to be discouraged from dominating the US and its allies.
The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them… This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle…President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China”.
The NDS even proposes “a wider range of military-to-military communications” with Chinese counterparts! The U-turn followed the administration’s retreat from its threatened tit-for-tat tariff escalation after China’s successful retaliation.
Biden’s 2022 NDS promised the US would “support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense”. The new NDS offers no such assurances to the self-governing island province of China, which Beijing warns it will take by force if necessary.
The NDS also calls for “a sharp shift – in approach, focus, and tone”, insisting US allies must take more responsibility for countering adversaries such as China, Russia and North Korea.
It insists, “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support”.
Cutting Costs of Empire
Like Trump, the new NDS wants allies to pay much more for US ‘protection’.
It echoes his frequent criticisms of allies for taking advantage of previous administrations to subsidise their defence and being ungrateful for US protection.
But the terms of such subordination remain ambiguous and arbitrary, even extortionate and corrupt. Gulf monarchies may now regret their generous donations to the president, apparently to little avail so far.
Trump’s treatment of allies, the Netanyahu-led war on Iran, and continuing US-led efforts to ‘contain’ China suggest both documents offer poor guidance to knowing and understanding, let alone anticipating, US policies abroad.
18 comments
Comments are closed.
By the sounds of it, this was not a document written by professionals but by the ideologues that came in with Trump. They have all sorts of grand plans and all sorts of ideas but they are not the sort of people that could distill it all into a well thought out plan. You ask them about the industrial capacity to back up their plans and their eyes kinda glaze over as this is boring stuff. They are the same sort of people I am willing to bet that went along with Trump’s attack on Iran while not paying attention to US weapons stocks. In short, this is amateur hour stuff.
Rev,
Most such hacks think bullets in a Power Point presentation can be used in combat. They should all be mobilized and dropped at the LoC armed with their laptops. One can dream…
Assume a Can
Openerof Whoop Ass.I would agree as well that the NDS is bizarre, and hard to take seriously. It makes claims that are already inconsistent with US actions. The almost unbelievable incompetence, hubris, and ignorance make anything that the current regime produces hard to take at face value. As has been said many times before, we should focus on actions and not the inconsistent irrational rhetoric.
In addition to Michael Hudson, Brian Berletic and others who see long-term consistency in US policy, journalist Caitlin Johnstone has pointed this out many times as well. US policy is long-term and has not substantively changed. The mask is off and the Ugly American face is clear to see even for those who try to look away: ignorant, incompetent, lawless, corrupt to the point of bufoonery.
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/donald-trump-is-the-empire-unmasked
‘
Some have welcomed the current regime in that although they lie about almost everything, the actions speak louder and the vulgar disregard for the law and morality is more honest than the slick-talking Obama types.
We don’t have Marcus Aurelius, we have Commodus (who fancied himself a god) but it’s still the same empire.
The US has ignored “international norms”, the law and common decency many times before, but memories are short. Carpet bombing SE Asia in by Kissinger/Nixon was an historical atrocity few seem to recall reading about, for example. Even before that we had the carpet bombing of Korea. The US has tortured people, invaded many countries and slaughtered millions since WWII. The latest atrocities are not inconsistent with that, perhaps more vulgar in style.
The vassals of the US like European countries and Canada don’t like the crude discourse coming out of Warshington, but I see them supporting illegal “sanctions” on Iran. They continue to support Genocide in Palestine, Lebanon, etc. The EU has become an embarrassment, despite their rhetorical attempt to hide behind the bad ol yanks, they are just as complicit in the atrocities.
I’ve been saying this since Trump’s election in 2016. Try talking with Americans in 2015 about American empire, and the wall of lies was impenetrably thick. When Trump was elected, suddenly people couldn’t pretend as easily. And now Trump is back, the most honest politician of my life time. Not that the words he says are more factually correct, but his brazen dishonesty and uncaring is obvious for all to see. Trump makes it easier to talk about the rampant corruption, imperialism, and other deep troubles than any other president of my lifetime. For that little sliver of positive news, I’m grateful to him. Because the oppression, torture, and extraction of the Obama, Bush, Clinton, and other administrations was no more pleasant to live under.
Ultimately, we have a common that I believe is common in unhealthy nations – that is, nations with a ruling class. People are not able to hold ruling classes accountable for their actions. That is what makes them rulers — they can accumulate wealth and power and protect it without being held accountable. But part of how humans learn about the world is by hitting boundaries and learning lessons from the experience. In unhealthy nations, the ruling class often doesn’t encounter strong boundaries, and eventually becomes more and more disconnected from reality. I suspect its easier for rising-power ruling classes to stay connected with reality, but for a global hegemon, where is the feedback loop that forces ruling classes to care about reality? As Karl Rove said, they make their own reality. And it works ’til it doesn’t, but trapped citizens who obey the laws they’re given, but can’t enforce the law themselves are stuck noticing how incredibly unhinged their leaders become. It’s just a common story in history, as people who don’t face appropriate boundaries in their own society become detached from reality and end up causing huge harm.
F Scott Fitzgerald described this problem with 2 characters in his book The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that held them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”
Until we can free ourselves and create a healthy nation without a ruling class, we will always have this risk that the ruling class will learn to ignore reality and make profoundly foolish errors. This is simply a common risk when people cannot hold their leaders accountable. Luckily, there are many examples of such free nations that we could learn from.
Documents like this are political statements intended to do two things. One is to set out publicly the aspirations, fantasies and shopping-lists of different lobby groups within the enormous and fractured defence bureaucracy in Washington, whilst trying to make the various overlapping and conflicting demands sound more coherent and integrated than they actually are. The other is to present these in a way that offends as few external lobby groups as possible, recognising that you can’t pacify everybody. Most people who have worked in government have done a variant of this kind of task: as usual, it’s bigger in the US.
Such documents are best understood as communiqués from the never-ending battle for resources and priorities between different lobby-groups, and they are of interest insofar as you can sometimes work out which actors, or collection of actors, are currently able to impose their discourse upon others. In some cases, lobbies may be powerful enough to force a repetition of their priorities several years running. That’s not to say, of course, that such documents necessarily lead to any particular consequences in the real world (someone should perhaps gently take Berletic aside and explain this to him). The nearest equivalent I can think of is the apparent jockeying that used to go on among different actors in the old Soviet Union over the choice of slogans to chant and display at the annual May Day parade.
“(someone should perhaps gently take Berletic aside and explain this to him)”
😉
Although I often think the affirmative nature of video podcasts as a form of presentation favours the tendency to articulate analyses much more contained than the particular speaker´s views might truly be.
Berletic in private could possibly present much more contradictory views with a larger scope of interpretations than the particualr episode/format would allow (also “branding”).
Besides aesthetics often create obstacles to analysis. Which is why Adorno et. al. wrote the kind of hermetic texts, to escape this danger, which however have become unintelligible for today´s generations.
Just a thought.
Yes, to be fair, I am sure Berletic is aware of that. Regardless of policy documents from MICIMATT, there is also historical context, precedent, patterns etc. that are also consistent with the vested interests. Also, we mustn’t overlook the remarkable incompetence of this particular cohort of kakistocrats in Washington. It does make for some tragic entertainment at least.
Berletic is quite clear that the US policy papers and documents he refers to are being acted upon. He doesn’t refererence PR handwaves like the NDS, but to RAND and other papers such as Containing Russia and A Path to Persia.
Someone should perhaps gently encourage you to read them!
Berletic often felt to me like a one-trick pony, or a broken record. He only quotes western sources, chiefly think tank papers. But heck, can you really deny what he says? He’s repeated for years that the empire’s goal was to blockade China, and lo and behold, when everyone was wandering whether they were after Kharg island or the uranium, they were blockading China. His is a simple and neat theory, but as far as I can tell it explains the phenomena.
It’s the garbage can model of organizational behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_can_model (Wikipedia says the theory “describes the chaotic reality of organizational decision making in an organized anarchy. … The model portrays problems, solutions, and participants/decision-makers as three independent “streams” that are each generated separately, and flow disconnected from each other. “).
Solutions that can be done by existing institutional processes are generated at leisure (e.g. in a RAND paper), and then thrown in the garbage can to be pulled out when higher ups get stuck on how to proceed. The solution doesn’t have to match the problem. This mismatch becomes particularly noticeable when top level strategy is muddled, chaotic or runs into contradictions.
E.g China blockade may have little to do with solving Iran problem, but it’s a tool in their toolbox which they have to “do something assertive” but run out of ideas how. Aka various hegemonic tools becomes their default go-to when they can’t get consensus on smarter ways to proceed.
If you believe that the effect of system _is_ its intent, then you can easily prescribe intentionality to this. But the full scheme might not within the intent of most of its individual participants. It’s 5D chess by a garbage can full of sound and fury.
Jomo’s webstack is worth subscribing too. He restores the old-fashioned Darker Nations critique of western development discourse to the light where it belongs.
I do believe that the “is it purposely misleading” rhetorical ploy is just that, though. Nothing these people say should ever be believed; they may be very intellectually muddled, but their motives are murderous/avaricious.
Gonna agree. I think they’d like to be misleading, but they don’t agree on the goals and motives to be obscured and many, especially toward the top, do not know what they are talking about.
At one point I thought Trump had more than a bit of the “Après moi, le déluge” vibe, but I have amended that to “Moi, le déluge”. So, a written policy document that Trump has never read? Yeah, sure, whatever, worthless.
But I don’t want to paint Trump as all that unusual for American billionaires. He’s surrounded by American billionaires, and they seem perfectly happy with how things are going.
Absent black swans and assassination, surely the succession of US presidents an evolutionary process where each “next president’s birth” is incubated during the previous presidency and largely as a product of and a response to the events and personalities, the politics and forces that shaped the previous one?
That lends credibility to the Bereletic thesis continuity of intent, where the intent is sort of like a giant Ouiga board being moved around by the large Venn diagram of overlapping spheres of influence that we choose to call the deep state, the Epstein class, the MICIMATT and so on. Continuity is maintained via the Revolving Door, the crony selection process, promotion of the like minded and political appointments at every level including the court system.
Despite that, the American voter and most of the world tend to view each president’s actions more as the product of that president’s personality. Under the media spotlight a cult of personality is built around strong media players like Trump and that tends to hide the reality that it really doesn’t matter much whether the president is actually alive or dead as was evident with Biden.
As an alternative theory (just maybe) We The People actually got a say in it this time around, as per the wonderful quote by H.L. Mencken:
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people… On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Berletic’s thesis is NOT continuity of intent but continuity of policy. He often cites key documents to show that what is being done now is consistent with plans laid out many years ago.
You missed Africa. Trump’s national security document mentioned very little about Africa, but Ukraine has recently helped Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Mali do an offensive with a 12,000-fighter group. Trump has also been inking mining deals disguised as health deals all across Africa in recent months. He has also been deporting illegal immigrants to African countries. Trump seems to not talk much about Africa, but Africa is very pivotal in determining whether or not Trump can offload his liabilities and alleviate his weaknesses (lack of certain resources such as copper).
Please read with greater care. This is a cross post, so the “You missed” is off point.
The mining deals and deportations are not military strategy, which is the focus of this piece. So the substance of your comment is also misdirected.