China is no longer the Pentagon’s top security priority

According to the Pentagon’s new national defense strategy, China is no longer the top security priority of the United States.

The document, released every four years, said the security of the continental United States and the Western Hemisphere was the department’s primary focus, adding that Washington had long ignored Americans’ “concrete interests.”

The Pentagon also said it would provide “more limited” support to U.S. allies.

Previously, the National Security Strategy released by the United States last year stated that Europe faced a “collapse of civilization” and did not regard Russia as a threat to the United States. At the time, Moscow said the document was “broadly consistent” with its vision.

In contrast, the 2022 National Defense Strategy lists the “multi-domain threats” posed by China as a primary defense priority. In 2018, the document described “revisionist states” such as China and Russia as a “core challenge” to U.S. security.

The 34-page document released on Friday largely reinforces policy positions laid out by the Trump administration during its first year in office.

At that time, U.S. President Donald Trump Capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Madurowent on strike Suspected drug trafficking ship in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, and more recently to put pressure on U.S. allies Acquisition of Greenland.

The strategy reiterates that the Pentagon “will ensure U.S. military and commercial access to critical areas, particularly the Panama Canal, the Gulf of America, and Greenland.”

The document also said the Trump administration’s approach would be “fundamentally different from the grand strategies of past post-Cold War administrations.”

It added: “Get rid of utopian idealism; adopt hard-nosed realism.”

Relations with China should be handled through “strength, not confrontation.” The goal “is not to dominate China, nor to stifle or humiliate them,” the document said.

Unlike previous versions of the strategy, there was no mention of Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China. The document does say, however, that the U.S. goal is to “prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies.”

At the end of last year, the United States announced Large-scale arms sales to Taiwan worth $11bn (£8.2bn), leading China to hold military drills around the island in response.

The strategy also calls for greater “burden-sharing” by U.S. allies, saying partners are “content” to let Washington “subsidize their defense.”

However, it denied that this showed a trend towards “isolationism”.

“Rather, it means taking a targeted, truly strategic approach to the threats our country faces,” it said, adding that it did not want to conflate U.S. interests “with those of the rest of the world — threats to people on the other side of the world are the same as threats to Americans.”

Instead, it said allies, especially Europe, “will take the lead in dealing with threats that are less serious for us but more serious for them”.

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, has been described as a “continuous but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members.”

The strategy also outlines a “more limited” U.S. role in deterring North Korea. South Korea “is capable of assuming primary responsibility for this mission,” the report added.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the old world order was “Not coming back” and urged middle powers such as South Korea, Canada and Australia to unite.

“The middle powers have to act together because if we are not at the table, we will be on the menu,” Carney told the Davos conference.

At the same time, French President Macron also warned that “the world will shift to a world without rules.”