{"id":7810,"date":"2026-01-24T13:24:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T07:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/2026\/01\/24\/china-no-longer-pentagons-top-security-priority\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T13:24:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T07:54:22","slug":"china-no-longer-pentagons-top-security-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/2026\/01\/24\/china-no-longer-pentagons-top-security-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"China no longer Pentagon&#8217;s top security priority"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>32 minutes agoShareSaveClaire KeenanShareSave<\/p>\n<p>China is no longer the top security priority for the US, according to the Pentagon&#x27;s new National Defense Strategy.<\/p>\n<p>The document, published once every four years, instead says that the security of the US homeland and Western Hemisphere is the department&#x27;s chief concern, adding that Washington has long neglected the &quot;concrete interests&quot; of Americans. <\/p>\n<p>The Pentagon also says it will offer &quot;more limited&quot; support to US allies.<\/p>\n<p>It follows the publication last year of the US National Security Strategy, which said that Europe faced &quot;civilizational collapse&quot; and did not cast Russia as a threat to the US. At the time, Moscow said the document was &quot;largely consistent&quot; with its vision.<\/p>\n<p>By comparison, the 2022 National Defense Strategy named the &quot;multi-domain threat&quot; posed by China as its top defence priority. In 2018, the document described &quot;revisionist powers&quot;, such as China and Russia, as the &quot;central challenge&quot; to US security.<\/p>\n<p>The 34-page document, released on Friday, largely reinforces policy positions staked out by the Trump administration over its first year back in office.<\/p>\n<p>In that time, US President Donald Trump has <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cdred61epg4o\">seized Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>, carried out strikes against <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cdjzw3gplv7o\">alleged drug boats<\/a> in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, and more recently, applied pressure on US allies to <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c86vvjxe9z7o\">acquire Greenland<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The strategy reiterated that the Pentagon &quot;will guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>The document also says the Trump administration&#x27;s approach will be &quot;fundamentally different from the grandiose strategies of the past post\u2013Cold War administrations&quot;. <\/p>\n<p>It adds: &quot;Out with utopian idealism; in with hardnosed realism.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Relations with China are to be approached through &quot;strength, not confrontation&quot;. The goal &quot;is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them&quot;, the document says.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike in previous versions of the strategy, Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China, is not mentioned. However, the document does write that the US aims to &quot;prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Late last year, the US announced a <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c87l7xjp235o\">vast arms sale to Taiwan<\/a> worth $11bn (\u00a38.2bn), leading China to hold military drills around the island in response.<\/p>\n<p>The strategy also calls for greater &quot;burden-sharing&quot; from US allies, saying that partners have been &quot;content&quot; to let Washington &quot;subsidize their defense&quot;. <\/p>\n<p>Though, it denies this demonstrates a move towards &quot;isolationism&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;To the contrary, it means a focused and genuinely strategic approach to the threats our nation faces,&quot; it says, adding that it does not want to conflate American interests &quot;with those of the rest of the world \u2013 that a threat to a person halfway around the world is the same as to an American.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Instead, it says allies, especially Europe, &quot;will take the lead against threats that are less severe for us but more so for them&quot;. <\/p>\n<p>Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, is described as a &quot;persistent but manageable threat to NATO&#x27;s eastern members&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>The strategy also outlines a &quot;more limited&quot; role for US deterrence of North Korea. South Korea is &quot;capable of taking primary responsibility&quot; for the task, it adds. <\/p>\n<p>In a speech made at the World Economic Forum earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the old world order is <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cly3d28p4p8o\">&quot;not coming back&quot;<\/a> and urged fellow middle powers &#8211; like South Korea, Canada and Australia &#8211; to come together. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;Middle powers must act together because if we&#x27;re not at the table, we&#x27;re on the menu,&quot; Carney said at the Davos meeting. <\/p>\n<p>That came as French President Emmanuel Macron also warned of a &quot;shift towards a world without rules&quot;. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c04vdengk3do\" target=\"_self\"><\/p>\n<h2>Trump administration says Europe faces &#x27;civilisational erasure&#x27;<\/h2>\n<p><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cly3d28p4p8o\" target=\"_self\"><\/p>\n<h2>Carney says old world order &#x27;is not coming back&#x27;<\/h2>\n<p><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c301jgd1qj6o\" target=\"_self\"><\/p>\n<h2>Fact-checking Trump&#x27;s Davos speech<\/h2>\n<p><\/a><a href=\"\/news\/world\/europe\">Europe<\/a><a href=\"\/news\/topics\/cez73j9xnppt\">Security<\/a><a href=\"\/news\/topics\/cwlw3xz0ljmt\">European Union<\/a><a href=\"\/news\/topics\/cx1m7zg01xyt\">United States<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China no longer Pentagon&#x27;s top security priority32 minutes agoShareSaveClaire KeenanShareSaveReutersHomeland security is the top priority in the Pentagon&#x27;s new National Defense StrategyChina&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}