WASHINGTON — With the release of the National Defense Strategy weeks away, a group of analysts from a leading DC-based think tank said the document should shed light on what, so far, has been an incoherent foreign policy strategy by this second Trump administration.
“The Trump administration’s foreign policy, so far, and its defense policy … is a study in contradictions,” Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Reimagining US Grand Strategy program, told reporters at an event on Tuesday. One of those contradictions, she explained, centers around military priorities.
“We don’t have a clear … understanding of what the Indo-Pacific strategy is in this administration, what its approach to China is, and I think that’s really surprising given [that] … people like [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge] Colby are now in the Pentagon,” Grieco added. “We expected this to be an administration that would lead with China. … Instead, it seems to be leading with what every [other] administration [has done] … which is the Middle East and Europe.”
Colby has repeatedly asserted that China is a principal threat to the US and has also been tasked with designing the strategic roadmap for the Department of Defense, with the NDS expected to be released later this fall.
But while the administration has maintained that the Indo-Pacific region is its focus, the US force presence in Europe has remained, as has US support to Israel in the face of a regional conflict. An enhanced focus on the homeland and Western hemisphere is also emerging with the administration enhancing US military presence along the southern border, deeming transnational criminal organizations and cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and using military assets to strike small boats the administration claims are carrying drugs.
Politico previously reported that a draft of the NDS prioritizes protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere.
Christopher Preble, a senior fellow and director for Stimson’s Reimagining US Grand Strategy program, said for now he’s holding tight until the NDS is released before offering a critique. But, he cautioned, the NDS is just one piece of the puzzle. The forthcoming Global Posture Review and National Security Strategy will also factor in and be ways to look for “inconsistencies.”
“If the US presence in the Western Hemisphere is going to be larger, that’s the first time we’ll really know,” he said.
Grieco explained that a hard pivot to the Indo-Pacific or Western Hemisphere is going to require “actionable” steps like withdrawing US troops from Europe and the Middle East and a timeline for doing so.
“But, if it is vague in any way, or they don’t follow through even early on some of those critical moves, then I think there is a danger that what we will have will be the same level of commitments, the same level of presence, but actually [with] alliance relationships and partnerships that are not as strong,” she added. “And, that actually leaves us with all of these commitments, but in a way that we are having a harder time actually managing it all.”
Dan Grazier, a senior fellow and director for Stimpson’s National Security Reform Program, said he’s also holding his remarks for the forthcoming strategy documents but argued that China is unlikely to invade Taiwan. As such, preparing the US military to intervene in such a conflict, he added, is “bad defense policy” that has implications on everything from where troops are located to the weapons the US produces.
That Indo-Pacific focus is “going to have a huge cascading effect when we end up having to go fight someplace else eventually, which we will, and we have a military that’s built to fight this one very narrow scenario, and we try to shoehorn those weapons to fight the scenario someplace else,” he said. “Then there’s this big mismatch, and then we end up with, I don’t know, humiliating defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Buy-In From Lawmakers
If the Trump administration ultimately decides it wants to pursue a hard and fast change to where troops are located and the weapons being produced, in theory, it needs buy-in from lawmakers who control the purse strings and craft the defense authorization bill.
While both chambers are currently controlled by the GOP, there have been moves to prohibit a reduction of US forces in Europe and in South Korea until the secretary of defense certifies to Congress that such action is in the best national interest.
If the administration ultimately wants to win over lawmakers, Grieco said the Trump administration needs to work on its messaging and provide a level of reassurance that changes are part of a broader plan. For example, if the Department of Defense wants to draw down the number of troops inside Europe, officials should detail the theory behind it and detail why that’s not a withdrawal from NATO.
“We’re doing these things because it is about reprioritization and so staying on that message, and then also sending reassuring signals to allies in the Indo-Pacific,” she said.
“You have to message it, and you have to actually follow through, because there’s going to be pushback domestically, and there’s going to be pushback from allies that don’t want to actually, necessarily increase their defense spending and take on the commitments. And you have to actually follow through without necessarily making your allies enemies,” Grieco later added.