The 34-page Pentagon document offers specific steps the military will take to support Trump’s broader security and foreign policy strategy.
The Pentagon released its new National Defense Strategy late on Jan. 23, placing the homeland and a surrounding sphere of influence as the top priority for the U.S. military.
Nearly two months after the White House released President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy, the new 34-page Pentagon document provides specifics regarding how the U.S. military will support the president’s strategy. In particular, it describes four specific lines of effort for military planners going forward.
“No longer will the Department be distracted by interventionism, endless wars, regime change, and nation building. Instead, we will put our people’s practical, concrete interests first,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wrote in a memorandum accompanying the new strategy document.
Here are the four key lines of effort outlined in the new National Defense Strategy and how they fit into Trump’s security and foreign policy framework.
| 1. Sphere of Influence |
| 2. China and Indo-Pacific Deterrence |
| 3. Burden-Sharing |
| 4. Arms Manufacturing |
1. Sphere of Influence
The Pentagon describes defending the U.S. homeland as the “foremost priority” Trump has given the military.
“The Department will therefore prioritize doing just that, including by defending America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere,” the document states.
As part of this first priority, the Pentagon noted U.S. military efforts to secure the United States’ borders and to combat drug trafficking throughout the Western Hemisphere.
U.S. forces began amassing near Latin America in August 2025 and carried out strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific for months. They also seized sanctioned oil tankers sailing to and from Venezuela.
Those moves preceded an operation into Venezuela, during which U.S. forces apprehended the country’s wanted leader, Nicolás Maduro, to face federal charges for an alleged drug trafficking conspiracy.
President James Monroe articulated a U.S. pledge to oppose European colonial efforts in the Western Hemisphere in an address to Congress in December 1823 that later came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine.
In the weeks leading up to Maduro’s capture, the Trump administration began increasingly referring to a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.
In a press conference following Maduro’s capture, Trump explicitly referenced Monroe’s 1823 doctrine and said, “Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
Since ordering Maduro’s capture, Trump has also ramped up talk of a U.S. acquisition of Greenland, which is currently a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Trump has said the island territory is key to U.S. national security.
The new strategy document states that the Pentagon will “provide the President with credible options to guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain from the Arctic to South America, especially Greenland, the Gulf of America, and the Panama Canal.”
The document further declared the Pentagon’s intent to support Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative.
U.S. nuclear force modernization and cybersecurity are also listed under the first line of effort, as is countering Islamic terrorism.
“The Department will maintain a resource-sustainable approach to countering Islamic terrorists, focused on organizations that possess the capability and intent to strike the U.S. Homeland,” the document states.
By Ryan Morgan
