Trump Administration Releases 2026 National Defense Strategy
On Jan. 23, the Trump administration released the 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS), entitled “Restoring Peace Through Strength for a New Golden Age of America,” the first iteration since 2022 during the Biden administration. The NDS follows the Trump administration’s release of its 2025 National Security Strategy last month.
Following an introduction, the NDS begins with an assessment of the “security environment,” which includes subsections on “Homeland and Hemisphere,” China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and “The Simultaneity Problem and Implications for Allied Burden-Sharing.” The simultaneity problem describes the challenges posed by a scenario in which “one or more potential opponents might act together in a coordinated or opportunistic fashion across multiple theaters,” which the NDS claims Trump has addressed by making clear that U.S. “allies and partners must shoulder their fair share of the burden of our collective defense.”
In the following section, the NDS breaks down the U.S.’s “strategic approach” into four “lines of effort”: 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”.
The NDS concludes with a “demand only that [potential opponents] respect our reasonably conceived interests,” but adds that the Department of Defense “will be ready if our gracious offer is spurned.”
Read the 2026 National Defense Strategy here or below:
