From NBC News: The Defense Department said in an influential strategy document published Friday that the U.S. military’s top focus is no longer on China but instead the homeland and Western Hemisphere.
The priorities laid out in the 2026 National Defense Strategy, a quadrennial report last published in 2022, diverge significantly from those of the Biden administration, with efforts geared more inward, such as securing the border and countering narcotics.
The document says the country is not pursuing an isolationist agenda, but lays out why the U.S. wants allies to do more while the military focuses more on the homeland.
The U.S. will no longer cede key terrain in the Western Hemisphere, the document states, with the Pentagon providing President Donald Trump with “credible options to guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain from the Arctic to South America, especially Greenland, the Gulf of America, and the Panama Canal.”
“We will ensure that the Monroe Doctrine is upheld in our time,” the document states.
The Monroe Doctrine, first articulated in 1823 by President James Monroe, declared that the Western Hemisphere was within the United States’ sphere of influence and warned European powers against further colonization or intervention in the Americas. In return, the U.S. pledged to remain neutral in European conflicts.
The doctrine established a clear stance that any attempt by foreign nations to control or interfere with states in the Americas would be considered a hostile act against the United States.
Read more at NBC News
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