The war secretary called Trump the ‘rightful heir’ to President Ronald Reagan’s military and foreign policy legacy.
SIMI VALLEY, Calif.—Secretary of War Pete Hegseth articulated the emerging “America First” national defense strategy of President Donald Trump’s second term in a keynote speech before the 2025 Reagan National Defense Forum on Dec. 6.
“The War Department will not be distracted by democracy-building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing, and feckless nation-building,” he said.
“We will instead put our nation’s practical, concrete interests first.”
Hegseth said the Pentagon would support this foreign policy approach by bolstering U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere, deterring China, shifting burdens in other areas of the globe onto regional allies and partners, and overhauling the U.S. arms industry.
The secretary of war’s policy remarks largely mirrored a new national security strategy the White House laid out on Dec. 5. His remarks also serve as a preview of a more detailed national defense strategy that the Pentagon is preparing.
At times throughout his remarks, Hegseth drew parallels between Trump and the forum’s namesake, President Ronald Reagan. He cast Trump as the “rightful heir” to Reagan’s legacy.
“It’s President Trump who has inherited and restored President Reagan’s powerful but focused and realistic approach to national defense,” he said.
Shifting Global Priorities
As he laid out the emerging burden-sharing strategy, Hegseth called for allies and partners around the world to embrace their martial heritage.
“Our allies are not children; they’re nations capable of doing far more for themselves than they have,” he told the Reagan National Defense Forum.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration pressed NATO members to commit 5 percent of their annual gross domestic product to military and defense.
Along with burden-sharing in Europe, Hegseth called for a balancing of responsibilities with partners in the Indo-Pacific region to check the ambitions of communist China. Hegseth said the United States is not trying to dominate or humiliate China.
With allies and partners taking on more responsibility for the security in their respective corners of the world, Trump is seeking to place more focus back on the Americas.
By Ryan Morgan
