The US’ New National Defense Strategy Calls For A World War-Like Military Build-Up

This final “Line of Effort” underpins the preceding three regarding the Western Hemisphere, the Indo-Pacific, and burden-sharing, all of which are being pursued in furtherance of Trump 2.0’s grand strategic goal of restoring the US’ predominant position over the world, including over China and Russia.

Trump 2.0 just released its National Defense Strategy (NDS) two months after its National Security Strategy (NSS), and as could be expected, they each preach the need to prioritize the Western Hemisphere. The “Trump Doctrine” that’s discernable within both, which was analyzed here, aims to restore the US’ predominant position (unipolarity) over the Americas and then the rest of the world. “Flexible, practical realism” will explicitly guide the implementation of this grand strategic goal.

Instead of redundantly pointing out all the similarities between the NDS and the NSS, the present piece will draw attention to how the administration envisages applying the aforesaid realist approach. Four “Lines of Effort” (LOEs) are enumerated: 1) “Defend the U.S. Homeland”; 2) Deter China in the Indo-Pacific Through Strength, Not Confrontation”; 3) Increase Burden-Sharing with U.S. Allies and Partners”; and 4) “Supercharge the U.S. Defense Industrial Base”. They’ll now be briefly described in order.

The Department of War’s (DOW) primary tasks in the Western Hemisphere are defending the US’ borders, countering (Islamic and narco-) terrorists, building the “Golden Dome”, and ensuring military and commercial access to key terrain like Greenland, the Gulf of America, and the Panama Canal. The last-mentioned task is the essence of the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine”. The DOW’s explicit goal in this LOE is described as “restor[ing] American military dominance in the Western Hemisphere”.

By way of comparison, its explicit goal in the Indo-Pacific LOE is “peace through strength”, which the DOW plans to pursue through “strong denial defense” in the First Island Chain. This will be carried out together with the US’ regional allies, which can be described as the AUKUS+ network, although that terminology isn’t used in the NDS. The authors expect that this will create a favorable “balance of power” for achieving a “decent peace” that allows for mutually beneficial coexistence with China.

The third LOE embraces the “Lead From Behind” (LFB) concept that was described here in 2015 by incentivizing partners to do more to advance their shared regional interests with the US. The NDS earlier described Russia as a “persistent but manageable threat” in the sense that “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power.” The aforesaid just have to be fully unleashed through US incentives and strategic guidance in order to more effectively contain Russia.

The last LOE underpins the preceding ones. Without “Supercharg[ing] the U.S. Defense Industrial Base”, the US cannot “restore American military dominance in the Western Hemisphere”, practice a “strong denial defense” in the First Island Chain, or LFB to contain shared adversaries like China (described as “the most powerful state relative to us since the 19th century”), Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This part ends with a call for military-industrial production comparable to the two World Wars and Cold War.

Therein lies the top takeaway from the NDS, namely that the US will resume World War-like levels of military-industrial production in furtherance of Trump 2.0’s grand strategic goal of restoring the US’ predominant position (unipolarity) over the world. Although the US will try to avoid Great Power conflict with China and Russia, this will be very difficult to do given its attempt to establish strategic superiority over them through this new undeclared arms race, which risks a war breaking out by miscalculation.