Fortess America: US seems to be withdrawing from the world in favor of new Monroe Doctrine

TOI correspondent from Washington: Strategic thinkers and planners in America and across the world are holding their breath to see the final shape of the US National Defense Strategy which reportedly advocates Washington dialing down on global commitments to prioritize homeland defense and primacy in the western hemisphere.

A draft of the 80-page NDS 2025 now circulating in the Pentagon and the US strategic community has stirred intense debate among those who see it as Washington potentially abdicating commitments to European and Asian allies and partners, and ceding ground to Russia and China in their sphere of influence.

Key features of the draft, which could undergo revisions before the new Department of War and the White House sign off on it, includes emphasis on homeland defense and regional missions over countering China and Russia in distant territories; increasing burden-sharing with allies and partners to the extent adversaries need to be deterred (pay for your own defense), and revitalizing the domestic defense industrial base, with investment in advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons, and space-based capabilities to re-assert US lead.

Highlights of the draft, first reported in Politico, has agitated sections of the strategic illuminati who see it as the Trump/MAGA dispensation giving up on US global primacy and leadership, seen as American hegemony in some quarters. Others argue that it is a strategic readjustment that is needed in keeping with the times, recognizing US limitations and priorities to make sure it plays to its strengths and is not overstretched.

Some analysts are seeing in it shades of the Monroe Doctrine, which emphasized US primacy in the Americas (stay out of our backyard), and was illustrated among other things by Washington reasserting control over the Panama Canal. They are also noting the more aggressive US posture in the region, including recent deployment of warships and F-35s to the Caribbean to combat drug trafficking, including strikes on Venezuela, and even the use of the military to support domestic law enforcement in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The Fortress America vision also includes deploying troops on the southern border and viewing Canada from an adversarial lens.

Such a drawdown by the US from its global engagement and footprint will have major fallout, particularly on allies like Japan, South Korea, and some European nations that have virtually been US protectorates. Many nations, including India, will have to readjust their strategic outlook if the final version of the NDS hews to what some experts are characterizing as US isolationism.

The traditionalist strategic community is alarmed over the prospective US retreat, which is also evident in the Trump administration's benign approach towards Russia and its handling China with kid gloves while punishing India on the tariff issue. "Trump tariffs on India are a strategic error of the first order. The Chinese were afraid of the Quad because it brought India, America, Japan and Australia together. Now we've just given it away,” Nick Burns, who was US ambassador in Beijing during the Biden Presidency, said in a recent Bulwark podcast. There is now speculation that Trump may not even make it to the Quad summit scheduled later this year in India.

For nearly two decades across four presidencies (Bush Jr, Obama, Trump 1 and Biden), US policy in Asia has been premised on Washington supporting India’s rise as a counterweight to China, to the extent the US jettisoned the term Asia-Pacific for Indo-Pacific. Ironically the term became current during Trump One, when then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson used it extensively, and it carried over into the Biden administration. Now it looks like Trump 2 is on the verge of abandoning it, along with dialing down commitments to Nato and other multilateral alliances and even organizations, in keeping with the MAGA supremo’s America First agenda.