WASHINGTON –– The Department of Defense revealed a new national defense strategy Tuesday that prioritizes deterring China in the Indo-Pacific over Middle East involvement while urging United States allies to take greater responsibility for their own defense.
“The American military, while without peer, is not infinite in its application and resources,” said Elbridge Colby, under secretary of defense for policy, before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We cannot do everything, everywhere, all the time.”
This strategy reflects a broader shift in U.S. defense planning toward prioritizing threats and allocating military resources more selectively. Officials said the plan aims to provide a middle ground between withdrawing from global security commitments and overextending U.S. military forces across too many regions.
The strategy is built around four pillars: strengthening homeland defense, prioritizing the Indo-Pacific, increasing allied burden sharing and expanding the defense industrial base.
“This strategy prudently adopts a middle course,” Colby said, describing an effort to avoid both “isolationism that pretends we can retreat from the world” and “unfettered use of military force for overly expansive ends.”
The strategy centers on the Indo-Pacific region, where Colby said maintaining a favorable balance of power is critical to U.S. economic and security interests. He also emphasized that the goal is not direct confrontation with China but preventing Beijing from dominating the region.
“We do not seek conflict with China,” Colby said. “Rather, we seek to prevent China from becoming the hegemon of the Indo-Pacific.”
A map of the “first island chain,” a strategic line of islands including Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines that U.S. defense planners view as critical to deterring China. (U.S. Department of Defense)
A central military objective of the strategy is ensuring U.S. forces can deter or defeat aggression along the first island chain, a string of strategic islands that includes Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. These form a key defensive line that U.S. military planners see as critical in limiting China’s ability to project power into the Pacific.
Under this strategy, the U.S. is pushing for a more balanced security partnership with allies.
“In Europe, we are urging our allies to move to a model of NATO 3.0, in which wealthy European allies take the lead for the conventional defense of European NATO,” Colby said.
Colby said encouraging allies to assume greater responsibility is necessary given the increasing scale of global threats and overreliance on U.S. military power.
“Over the last generation, many of our allies have functionally demilitarized,” he said. “This is untenable and unreasonable.”
Lawmakers also questioned how the strategy aligns with recent U.S. military operations in the Middle East. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., noted that the strategy calls for empowering regional allies to take the lead in deterring Iran but pointed to recent strikes in the region.
“This strategy was published just days before the secretary announced a military operation in the Middle East that seems completely contrary to the strategy the department has before us,” Reed said.
Other Democrats on the committee also raised concerns that recent U.S. military actions in the Middle East contradict the strategy’s stated goal of avoiding prolonged military intervention. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., questioned whether the administration had learned from two decades of war in the region and warned against repeating past mistakes.
“The national defense strategy says, ‘No longer will the department be distracted by interventionism, endless wars, regime change and nation building,’” Kaine said. “So, have we learned nothing from 25 years of war in the Middle East?”
Colby responded that the strategy still allows the president to use military force when necessary while encouraging allies to play a larger role in regional security.
“We actually are seeing a real example, our Israeli allies are really stepping up,” Colby said. “The strategy focuses our military effort on ensuring the preservation of a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.”
Colby said the strategy ultimately seeks to deter conflict by demonstrating that U.S. allied forces remain capable of overwhelming military strength.
“We want potential adversaries to look at the strength of the United States and its allies and decide that restraint is the better course,” Colby said.