The following is the 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy. The document was released on Jan. 23, 2026.
President Trump in his first term and since reentering office in January 2025 has rebuilt the American military to be the world’s absolute best—its most formidable fighting force. But it is essential to emphasize how much of an achievement this has been.
The fact is that President Trump took office in January 2025 to one of the most dangerous security environments in our nation’s history. At home, America’s borders were overrun, narcoterrorists and other enemies grew more powerful throughout the Western Hemisphere, and U.S. access to key terrain like the Panama Canal and Greenland was increasingly in doubt. Meanwhile in Europe, where President Trump had previously led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to begin taking their defenses seriously, the last administration effectively encouraged them to free-ride, leaving the Alliance unable to deter or respond effectively to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the Middle East, Israel showed that it was able and willing to defend itself after the barbaric attacks of October 7th—in short, that it is a model ally. Yet rather than empower Israel, the last administration tied its hands. All the while, China and its military grew more powerful in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s largest and most dynamic market area, with significant implications for Americans’ own security, freedom, and prosperity.
None of this was foreordained. America emerged from the Cold War as the world’s most powerful nation by a wide margin. We were secure in our hemisphere, with a military that was focused on warfighting and far superior to anyone else’s, engaged allies, and powerful industry.
But rather than husband and cultivate these hard-earned advantages, our nation’s post–Cold War leadership and foreign policy establishment squandered them.
Rather than protect and advance Americans’ interests, they opened our borders, forgot the wisdom of the Monroe Doctrine, ceded influence in our hemisphere, and outsourced America’s industry, including the defense industrial base (DIB) upon which our forces rely. They sent America’s brave sons and daughters to fight war after rudderless war to topple regimes and nation-build halfway around the world, in doing so eroding our military’s readiness and delaying modernization. They condemned our warfighters, criticizing and neglecting the warrior ethos that was once cultivated and heralded by our forerunners—and that made this American military the envy of the world.
They allowed, even enabled, our cunning adversaries to grow more powerful, even as they encouraged our allies to behave as dependents rather than partners, weakening our alliances and leaving us more vulnerable. And so we found ourselves, in January 2025, facing not only a world with individual regions at war or descending toward it but also increased risk of America itself being drawn into simultaneous major wars across theaters—a third world war, as President Trump himself warned.
That is all changing now. Under President Trump’s leadership, consistent with his vision and direction as laid out in the National Security Strategy (NSS), the Department of War (DoW) is laser-focused on restoring peace through strength. As detailed in the NSS, the President’s approach is one of a flexible, practical realism that looks at the world in a clear-eyed way, which is essential for serving Americans’ interests.
