The document, published once every four years, instead states that the security of the US homeland and the Western Hemisphere is the department’s chief concern, adding that Washington has long neglected the “concrete interests” of Americans.

The Pentagon also says it will provide “more limited” support to US allies. The shift follows the publication last year of the US National Security Strategy, which warned that Europe faced a “civilizational collapse” and did not identify Russia as a direct threat to the United States. At the time, Moscow said the document was “largely consistent” with its own vision.

By contrast, the 2022 National Defense Strategy identified the “multi-domain threat” posed by China as its top defence priority. In 2018, the strategy described “revisionist powers,” such as China and Russia, as the “central challenge” to US security.

The 34-page document, released on Friday, largely reinforces policy positions set out by the Trump administration during its first year back in office. During that period, US President Donald Trump has detained Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, carried out strikes against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, and more recently pressured US allies over the acquisition of Greenland.

The strategy reiterates that the Pentagon “will guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland.” It also says the Trump administration’s approach will be “fundamentally different from the grandiose strategies of past post–Cold War administrations,” adding: “Out with utopian idealism; in with hardnosed realism.”

Relations with China, the document says, will be approached through “strength, not confrontation.” The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them,” it adds.  (BBC)