US will seek to deter, not dominate, China

AUSTIN – In its

new national defence strategy

, the Trump administration takes a noticeably softer tone towards China, asserts its preference for allies to fight their own battles and dismisses the rules-based international order as an “abstraction”.  

The document – which landed with little fanfare on the evening of Jan 23 as much of the country hunkered down for a powerful winter storm – also makes several caustic references to Europe, which it takes pains to point out is no longer at the centre of American attention.

To no great surprise, the US defence strategy identifies the homeland, especially the Western Hemisphere, as its top priority. It also lays out three specific areas of interest.

“We will guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America and Greenland,” it says in a clear signal of its intention to assert primacy in these areas.

Farther from the shores, the Pentagon signals that it is looking upon the world through America-first glasses, but denies it is moving towards “isolationism”. 

“This strategy... does not conflate Americans’ interests with those of the rest of the world – that a threat to a person halfway around the world is the same as to an American,” it says.

Still, deterring China in the Indo-Pacific region is underlined as a vital goal.

“Some threats – like to our homeland – are more direct and visceral than others,” the strategy says.

“Yet... even those that may feel distant – like the importance of maintaining US access to the Indo-Pacific, the world’s largest market area – still have exceptionally real implications for our nation’s vital interests,” it adds.

While it mentions Japan twice and Germany once, there is not a single reference to Britain, the nation with which it shares a “special relationship”.

India, once touted as the spear to contain China in the region, also finds no mention.

Taiwan, Australia, as well as the Quad, which comprises the US, India, Australia and Japan, are also notable for their exclusion.

A dominant theme running through the document is the need for allies to step up in their neighbourhoods.

“The department will prioritise strengthening incentives for allies and partners to take primary responsibility for their own defence in Europe, the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula, with critical but limited support from US forces,” it says.

While President Donald Trump’s demands for the allies to do more are consistent with his stance in his first term, the change in approach to China has been eye-opening. 

China will test US resolve, says expert

Mr Trump’s first-term national security strategy, released in 2017, labelled China as a “strategic revisionist power” seeking to displace the US in the Indo-Pacific through military expansion, unfair trade practices and the export of its authoritarian model.

In the second term, Mr Trump has framed China as a potential economic partner rather than as an adversary.

Given that the Indo-Pacific will soon make up more than half of the global economy, the defence strategy makes it clear that the Pentagon intends to maintain a favourable balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific. 

“Not for purposes of dominating, humiliating, or strangling China,” it says, reiterating this sentiment twice in the document.

“To the contrary, our goal is far more scoped and reasonable than that: It is simply to ensure that neither China nor anyone else can dominate us or our allies. This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle. Rather, a decent peace, on terms favourable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under, is possible.”

The US will erect a “strong denial defence” along the first island chain, the document says, in reference to the area that stretches from Japan, past Taiwan and the Philippines, to the Malay peninsula. China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea overlap much of the chain.

Experts were quick to note the softer tone on China.

The strategy reframes China as a challenge to be managed and deterred, not defeated, said Mr Han Lin, China managing director for The Asia Group, a Washington, DC, strategic advisory group.

It is “less doctrinally hostile” to China, more focused on deterrence and alliance burden-sharing, and

much more ambiguous about Taiwan

and Indo-Pacific force commitments.

“It is a cocktail that regional leaders will find both pragmatic and unsettling,” he said.

It offers “relief” to China, he noted, but the elites in Beijing will still see it simply as a rebranding of the “China threat theory” and warn that it escalates distrust and undermines regional stability, 

“Strategic China voices typically treat successive US national security and defence texts as transition points rather than fixed blueprints, allowing room for pragmatism or tactical hedging,” he added.

“China will test US resolve without triggering a crisis,” he predicted.

“Beijing reads the softer language on China and Taiwan as room to push at the margins – more air and maritime pressure, more legal and cyber moves, but fewer actions that force Washington to draw a hard red line,” he said.

“Expect Chinese investment in missiles, cyber, space and electronic warfare rather than headline-grabbing deployments. The aim is denial, not domination.”

More pressure coming to allies

In his introductory memo to the strategy, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth brushes away the decades of American underpinning of the rules-based international order as a wasteful vanity project.

“Previous administrations squandered our military advantages and the lives, goodwill and resources of our people in grandiose nation-building projects and self-congratulatory pledges to uphold cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order,” he says.

“It is neither America’s duty nor in our nation’s interest to act everywhere on our own, nor will we make up for allied security shortfalls from their leaders’ own irresponsible choices,” he says.

The strategy returns to this theme several times. “Allies and partners have an essential role to play,” it says. “But not as the dependencies of the last generation”.

South Korea, in particular,

may find itself pushed to doing more to deter threats from North Korea.

“With its powerful military, supported by high defence spending, a robust defence industry and mandatory conscription, South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support,” the strategy says.

“South Korea also has the will to do so, given that it faces a direct and clear threat from North Korea. This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America’s interest in updating US force posture on the Korean peninsula,” it adds.

Europe losing favour; Israel a ‘model ally’

When it comes to the threat from traditional Western rival Russia, the strategy notes that Moscow is in no position to make a bid for European hegemony, comparing the gross domestic product of Russia at US$2 trillion (S$2.5 trillion) and NATO nations’ (excluding the US) at US$26 trillion.

“European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population and, thus, latent military power. 

“Although Europe remains important, it has a smaller and decreasing share of global economic power. It follows that, although we are and will remain engaged in Europe, we must – and will – prioritise defending the US homeland and deterring China.”

The paper singles Israel out as a “model ally”.

“In the Middle East, Israel showed that it was able and willing to defend itself after the barbaric attacks of Oct 7 – in short, that it is a model ally,” the document says, referencing Israel’s war against Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.

Dr Zack Cooper, a security expert at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that the new strategy focuses explicitly on the Western Hemisphere, where the US seeks to “restore American military dominance”, and the first island chain, where it seeks a “balance of power”.

“Everything else is a lesser priority and likely bill payer,” he said on X.

The call for allies to assume primary responsibility for their own defence in Europe, the Middle East and the Korean peninsula was also a clue, he said.

“One might expect US troop withdrawals from each.”