Russia is a “persistent but manageable threat” to NATO’s eastern members, according to the US Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy released Friday, which signals a major shift in America’s defense priorities.
The 34-page report moves the security of the US homeland and the Western Hemisphere to the top of the list, replacing China as the central concern for US defense planning. Unlike past strategies, the document says relations with China should be handled “through strength, not confrontation.”
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The strategy also calls for “more limited” US support to allies, reflecting President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for greater burden-sharing in confronting threats from Russia and North Korea.
“We will defend the Homeland and ensure that our interests in the Western Hemisphere are protected. We will deter China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation. We will increase burden-sharing with allies and partners around the world,” the strategy states.
It stresses that allies, especially in Europe, “will take the lead against threats that are less severe for us but more so for them.”
Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, is described as a “persistent but manageable threat” for NATO’s eastern flank. The Pentagon notes that, despite demographic and economic challenges, Moscow “still retains deep reservoirs of military and industrial power” and “national resolve” to wage protracted conflicts in its near abroad.
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“In light of this, the Department will ensure that US forces are prepared to defend against Russian threats to the US Homeland,” the report says.
At the same time, the strategy stresses that Moscow cannot achieve European hegemony. European NATO “dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power.”
The strategy also pledges to guarantee US military and commercial access to strategic terrain, including the Panama Canal, the Gulf of America, and Greenland, and outlines a more limited role for US deterrence of North Korea, saying Seoul is “capable of taking primary responsibility” for the task.
Unlike in previous versions, Taiwan is not mentioned. Still, the strategy emphasizes that the US seeks to “prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies.”
The report comes after the 2025 National Security Strategy, which largely avoided labeling Russia a threat to the US, and frames the new document as a move away from the global ambitions of previous administrations. “Out with utopian idealism; in with hard-nosed realism,” the Pentagon writes.
At the World Economic Forum earlier this month, Trump criticised NATO, claiming the US “was paying for virtually 100% of NATO” and “never got anything” from the alliance. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron both warned of a shifting global order, urging middle powers to coordinate amid “a world without rules.”