What Does the Trump Administration’s New National Defense Strategy Say About China?

On January 23, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), recently renamed the Department of War, released the unclassified version of its long-awaited National Defense Strategy (NDS). In line with the broader National Security Strategy (NSS), which the Trump administration released in late 2025, the new NDS signals shifts in U.S. defense strategy and priorities compared to past administrations—including notable differences in how the document discusses the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nevertheless, the NDS continues to emphasize the importance of deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.

Q1: How important is China in the 2026 NDS?

A1: The 2026 NDS identifies homeland defense and the Western Hemisphere as the priority region, and it lists deterring China in the Indo-Pacific as the second strategic regional priority. This is in line with the 2025 NSS, which significantly recast U.S. priorities by focusing on the U.S. Homeland and the Western Hemisphere as part of a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.

This is a marked shift from prior U.S. administrations, including the first Trump administration. The 2018 summary of the first Trump administration’s NDS identified long-term competition with China and Russia as the “principal priorities” for the department. Similarly, in assessing the global threat environment, the Biden administration’s 2022 NDS ranked strategic competition with China as the top challenge and Russia’s “acute” threats as the second major challenge to the global security environment.

Although the new NDS places China as the second priority, it seeks to recast how U.S.-China relations are framed. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby explained in Seoul that the strategy document seeks to end “needless confrontation” and said that the United States “should strive for a stable, peaceful relationship with China.” The new NDS further adds “respectful relations with China” to this list.

Accordingly, one of the first actionable items related to China that the strategy document lists is: “open a wider range of military-to-military communications with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with a focus on supporting strategic stability with Beijing as well as deconfliction and de-escalation.” If put into practice, this would reverse the trend of limiting contacts and exchanges between the two militaries that the first Trump administration pushed for out of concern that many of these engagements do not benefit the United States. It remains to be seen how wide an opening the DOD will allow and if such opportunities are restricted largely to senior, policy-level exchanges.

The NDS also offers China reassurances that the U.S. goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them.” It adds that protecting U.S. interests “does not require regime change or existential struggle.” Although similar reassurances were part of the talking points that U.S. officials shared with Chinese interlocutors privately, they have not appeared in recent U.S. national security or defense strategies. Their inclusion in the unclassified 2026 NDS shows that the department is taking additional steps to signal the U.S. military’s strategic intentions. This stands in sharp contrast to developments near the end of the first Trump administration, when then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo advocated for the United States to induce change in China, suggesting regime change was desirable or a possibility.

Q2: What does the NDS identify as the main threats or challenges from China?

A2: The 2026 NDS is very careful in how it explicitly characterizes China. In a clear departure from the 2018 NDS and 2022 NDS, this NDS neither labels China a strategic competitor nor emphasizes long-term competition with China. Much of the language on China is neutral and value-free, describing China as “the second most powerful country in the world.” It does not, for example, list the range of China’s predatory, coercive, or intimidating activities in the Indo-Pacific and beyond that are well-documented in prior strategy documents. It does not directly mention Taiwan or any other potential flashpoint with China. Instead, the focus of the NDS is to establish “a strong denial of defense along the First Island Chain” and to prevent China from dominating the Indo-Pacific region.

This does not mean, however, that the NDS is less focused on countering the Chinese military threat. The call for a denial of defense along the First Island Chain seeks to deny potential PRC aggression in most of the contested hotspots—in the Senkaku Islands, South China Sea, as well as the Taiwan Strait. This suggests continuing strong U.S. support to key allies and partners in the region, including Tokyo, Manila, and Taipei.

Implicit in many other sections of the NDS are also threats from China that are not explicitly called out. In the document’s section on “homeland and hemisphere,” the direct military threats to the U.S. homeland—“nuclear threats as well as a variety of conventional strike and space, cyber, electromagnetic warfare capabilities”—likely refer to both Chinese and Russian military threats. The statement that “we have seen adversaries’ influence grow from Greenland in the Arctic to the Gulf of America, the Panama Canal, and locations farther south” likely refers to China and Russia.

Similarly, in the section on “the simultaneity problem,” the Pentagon notes the possibility of “one or more potential opponents” acting together in a coordinated or opportunistic fashion and later mentions Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and South Korea. This suggests that the department is most worried about opportunistic or coordinated activities between China, Russia, and North Korea.

In terms of increasing burden sharing with allies and partners, the NDS calls for more burden sharing in most regions of the world, except for the Indo-Pacific. Within this section, the NDS states that “as the Department rightly prioritizes Homeland defense and deterring China, other threats will persist,” and U.S. allies and partners will need to step up. Instead of naming the entire Indo-Pacific region as needing greater burden sharing, this section only cites a specific region within the Indo-Pacific: the Korean Peninsula. The Pentagon notes that South Korea is more than capable of handling North Korea, and says “updating U.S. force posture on the Korean Peninsula” is consistent with U.S. interests. In other words, the United States seeks more flexibility in utilizing troops and capabilities from South Korea to deal with other regional contingencies involving China, including a conflict over Taiwan. The NDS makes clear that the focus in the Indo-Pacific is China, not North Korea.

Q3: How does the NDS fit within broader U.S.-China relations?

A3: Released in late January, this strategic document comes about two months before President Trump’s expected visit to China in April 2026. Given the priority President Trump attaches to engaging with PRC President Xi Jinping directly, it is not surprising that the NDS explicitly references this as the first sentence under the section about deterring China. The NDS’s muted characterizations of China likely reflect the Pentagon’s desire to tread carefully and leave more options open for President Trump, depending on how he wants to take U.S.-China relations.

Indeed, the NDS has garnered attention from China. One scholar from the China Institute of International Studies writes that the wording changes in the document are being interpreted as a “significant softening of U.S. rhetoric” on China, which offers “potential room for improving the atmosphere of bilateral relations.” However, the same author says that these rhetorical changes do not indicate that the United States has “‘abandoned’ or ‘relaxed’ its efforts to contain China in the Indo-Pacific.” Other Chinese scholars, even before the release of the NDS, have argued that the United States and China can move beyond adversarial competition to a normal relationship.

Regardless of whether Chinese strategists truly believe that or not, there will be significant incentives for Beijing to try to sell the idea that President Trump can reset the relationship between the United States and China in a more positive direction. In doing so, Beijing likely hopes that Washington will overlook coercive or problematic activities it is undertaking against U.S. allies and partners. It will be incumbent on Washington to guard against such attempts if it seeks to recast U.S.-China relations.

Bonny Lin is director of the China Power Project and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Brian Hart is deputy director and fellow of the China Power Project at CSIS.