Gabriel Elefteriu
The scenario that Brussels Signal warned about half a year ago in this very column seems to be coming to pass, with Pentagon leaks suggesting that an epochal shift in American global posture is upon us. The rumour is that the upcoming US National Defence Strategy, due shortly, will prioritise the US “homeland” and the western hemisphere (the Americas) over countering China, let alone Russia.
Such a decision would be so momentous in its implications and so shocking in its advent – going, as it would, squarely against the core Indo-Pacific focus of US strategy over the past decade – that the US and Western foreign policy community still exudes an overwhelming sense of incredulity at the prospect.
Bewilderment is amplified by a perception of intellectual betrayal. The main author of the document, Undersecretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, made his name as a China hawk specifically advocating a stronger, not weaker, US military posture in the Pacific. His widely-read 2021 book, The Strategy of Denial, is wholly concerned with denying China regional hegemony as a matter of the highest priority in US defence strategy. Admittedly, the book came out before China’s giant manufacturing capacity got firmly coupled to Russia’s vast raw materials after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the West’s response. Still, how could he now work towards a policy that is almost the complete reversal of what he always stood for?
As the rumoured strategy is not out yet, many still hope that there may yet be time for course-correction. And it is also not beyond imagining, given some of the unorthodox ways of handling political issues that this Administration has so far evinced, that this entire affair is part of US diplomatic signalling in Trump’s negotiations with China, rather than an actual strategic pivot.
For some reason, international opinion has not yet fully realised that the main priority for this second Trump Administration is trade policy – and specifically the settlement of US-China trade relations – rather than security or even foreign policy as a whole. Unlike most, or all, previous White House regimes, in the Trump 2.0 era it is the principals holding the top economic briefs who are they key players in the president’s entourage and who are shaping the direction of US global strategy the most.
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