The
critiques from multiple top officers, including the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, come as Defense Secretary Pete
Hegseth reorders U.S. military priorities.
People
familiar with the editing process, who like others spoke on the
condition of anonymity to describe sensitive deliberations, described a
growing sense of frustration with a plan they consider myopic and
potentially irrelevant, given the president’s highly personal and
sometimes contradictory approach to foreign policy.
Pentagon
spokesperson Sean Parnell declined to comment on the substance of the
classified document or whether concerns had been raised in the editing
process.
“Secretary
Hegseth has tasked the development of a National Defense Strategy that
is laser focused on advancing President Trump’s commonsense America
First, Peace Through Strength agenda,” Parnell said in a statement.
“This process is still ongoing.”
Trump political appointees within the Pentagon’s policy office — including some
officials who have previously criticized long-standing American
commitments to Europe and the Middle East — drafted the strategy, now in
its final edits.
The
draft plan has been shared widely with military leaders from the global
combatant commands to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, some of whom
questioned what its priorities would mean for a force designed to
respond to crises around the globe, according to three people familiar
with the matter.
Dissent
during the drafting process is normal, but the number of officials
concerned about the document — and the depth of their criticism — is
unusual, several people said.
Caine shared his concerns with top Pentagon leadership in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“He
gave Hegseth very frank feedback,” one of the two people said, noting
that Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby was also included in the
discussion. “I don’t know if Hegseth even understands the magnitude of
the NDS, which is why I think Caine tried so hard.”
The
second person said Caine has tried to get the NDS to remain focused on
preparing the military to deter and, if necessary, defeat China in a
conflict.
Hegseth
and his policy officials have signaled that the Pentagon will withdraw
some forces from Europe and consolidate commands in a way that unnerves
some U.S. allies, particularly amid Russia’s war with Ukraine and its
recent, repeated incursions into NATO airspace. For years, Pentagon
strategy has been anchored in the idea that the nation’s best defense
was in building and maintaining strong military alliances abroad.
Critics
of that approach within the administration have argued that it has
mired the U.S. in expensive wars on foreign soil, instead of securing
domestic U.S. interests. Trump’s approach so far has largely been to
prod allies to spend more on their own defense, at times alienating
Republican defense hawks in Congress who are also urging higher defense
spending at home.
While
Trump has undertaken bombing campaigns in Yemen and Iran, his main
focus has been surging the military toward missions close to American
soil.
Under his command this year, the Pentagon has struck alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea, deployed U.S. troops and weapons to the southern border,
and sent the National Guard and Marines to U.S. cities, where they have
aided deportation efforts and sought to curtail what the president has
called “out of control” urban crime. Some of those domestic deployments
are being challenged in court.
Over the weekend, Trump on social media ordered troops to Portland, Oregon,
saying he was allowing them to use “full force” to protect Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agents whose operations have drawn sporadic
protests in the city. Hegseth said Sunday in a memo to the Oregon
National Guard that the mission would include the federalizing of about
200 Guard members.
Much
of the internal criticism of the new strategy regards the document’s
emphasis on threats to the U.S. homeland even as China continues a rapid
military buildup that uniformed leaders have warned is narrowing the
U.S.’s edge in the Pacific, according to several people familiar with
the matter.
There
are still substantial sections of the document that do focus on China,
but these are largely concentrated on the threat of an attack on Taiwan,
rather than global competition with the U.S.’s largest adversary, five
people said. Colby has long warned that the U.S. military is unprepared
for the risk of a Chinese invasion and called for Washington to shift
attention and resources toward the problem.
“There’s a concern that it’s just not very well thought out,” one former official said of the strategy.
The
document’s tone is also far more partisan than past strategies, saying
the Biden administration caused an erosion of America’s military in
rhetoric similar to Hegseth’s speeches, two people familiar with the
plan said.
Hegseth,
meanwhile, is leading an overhaul of the armed forces, promising to cut
the roughly 800 generals and admirals overseeing the U.S. military by
20 percent and redraw the lines of the U.S.’s combatant commands. The
secretary has already fired senior officers, including Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and Chief of Naval Operations
Adm. Lisa Franchetti. A disproportionate number of women have been
relieved during the sackings.
The Pentagon’s interim defense strategy, which The Washington Post first reported in detail in March,
included a similar focus on Taiwan and homeland defense, going as far
as to urge Pentagon leaders to “assume risk” in other parts of the globe
to meet both priorities.
That
interim document also hinted at the emerging strategy to use military
personnel in a more assertive role at home and abroad. The Pentagon was
directed by Hegseth to “prioritize efforts to seal our borders, repel
forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics
trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal
activities, and deport illegal aliens in coordination with the
Department of Homeland Security,” according to the document.