The US will concentrate mostly on protecting the homeland and combating the threat posed by China, while expecting allies to look after their own defense with reduced help from Washington, according to a strategy document released by the Pentagon on Friday.

The 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS), subtitled "Restoring peace through strength for a new golden age of America," differs markedly in its priorities from previous such documents.

It highlights a very different set of threats to US security, with immigration seen as a top danger and that posed by Russia and China downplayed.

The Pentagon document is based on US President Donald Trump's National Security Strategy, which was published last year.  

That strategy foresaw a reassertion of US dominance in the western hemisphere, building up military strength in the Indo-Pacific and a potential reassessment of relations with Europe.

What does the NDS say?

"As US forces focus on homeland defense and the Indo-Pacific, our allies and partners elsewhere will take primary responsibility for their own defense with critical but more limited support from American forces," the strategy says.

In the Indo-Pacific region, the document says, the Pentagon is intent on preventing Chinese dominance over the US or its allies, but the strategy urges "respectful relations" with Beijing.

It says combating Chinese territorial ambitions "does not require regime change or some other existential struggle. Rather, ‍a decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under, is possible."

Notably, the document does not mention Taiwan, a US ally that China claims as its territory.

The document describes Russia as "a persistent but manageable threat to NATO's eastern members for the foreseeable future" and calls on the US's NATO allies to "take the lead" in defending Ukraine against Moscow's invasion "with critical but more limited US support."

Other points in the strategy include the statement that "border security is national security," with the Pentagon set to "prioritize efforts to seal our borders, repel forms of invasion, and deport illegal aliens."

The paper also says that the Pentagon will provide Trump with options to "guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain" in different parts of the world, including in Greenland, which Trump has vowed to take over.

How does the Trump admin NDS compare to Biden's strategy?

The contrast between the 2026 NDS and its immediate predecessor is made strikingly obvious from the outset, with the current document peppered with pictures of Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, both together and alone.

The previous NDS, released under President Donald Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, did not feature a single picture either of the then president or the defense secretary at the time, Lloyd Austin.

The current strategy document is also full of praise for Trump and his alleged achievements in "[rebuilding] the American military to be the world’s absolute best—its most formidable fighting force," while denigrating previous administrations for "eroding our military’s readiness and delaying modernization."

Very notably, the 2026 NDS makes no mention of climate change as an existential threat, while the one released under Biden contains a whole section on the issue.

Among other things, the 2022 document states: "Climate change is creating new corridors of strategic interaction, particularly in the Arctic region. It will increase demands, including on the Joint Force, for disaster response and defense support of civil authorities, and affect security relationship with some Allies and partners." 

The 2022 NDS also accords a much higher priority to the threat posed by China, calling its actions in the Indo-Pacific and beyond the most "comprehensive and serious challenge" to US security.

It also emphasized what it called the "acute threat" of Russia, accusing Moscow of seeking to "reimpose an imperial sphere of influence."

Edited by: Wesley Dockery