A secret internal memorandum from the United States (U.S.)Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been revealed, showing that the priority of the U.S. military has shifted. Now, the primary focus is on deterring China from taking Taiwan, while countering Russia is no longer one of the key points in the National Defense Strategy adopted during the Biden administration in 2022.
Journalists who had access to the secret memorandum claim that parts of it were literally copied from a manual by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which the think tank published last year. One of the co-authors of the Heritage report, Alexander Velez-Green, is now temporarily serving as the Pentagon’s highest-ranking political official. As a presidential candidate, Trump denied that Heritage’s Project 2025, which laid out a far-right transition agenda for the entire federal government, was a blueprint for his second term. However, his policies and appointments – including Pentagon directives – clearly showed that Heritage’s plans had been deeply influential in the early months of his administration.
Defense Secretary’s Memorandum
The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance“, with most of its sections marked as “secret/no foreign nationals,” was distributed within the Department of Defense in mid-March and signed by Hegseth. It outlines President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and to defend the U.S. from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama Canal. The document also instructs the military to take a more direct role in combating illegal migration and drug trafficking.
The document envisions the Pentagon pressuring allies in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia to spend more on defense and take on the primary role in deterring threats from Russia, North Korea, and Iran, while the U.S. prioritizes deterring China from taking Taiwan and shifting its vast military infrastructure toward the Indo-Pacific region.
The agency will focus on counterterrorism missions against groups with the capability and intent to attack the U.S., according to the guidelines, signaling a deprioritization of militants in the Middle East and Africa who destabilize the region but do not plan international attacks.
Russian threat
Hegseth’s guidelines acknowledge that the U.S. is unlikely to provide significant, if any, support to Europe in the event of a Russian military advance, noting that Washington intends to push NATO allies to take primary responsibility for the region’s defense. According to the memorandum, the U.S. will largely leave European allies to face the Moscow threat on their own. It explicitly states that the U.S. will support Europe with nuclear deterrence against Russia, but NATO should not count on U.S. forces that are needed for homeland defense or the mission to deter China.
A significant increase in Europe’s share of the defense burden, the document states, “will also ensure that NATO can reliably deter or defeat Russian aggression even if deterrence fails and the U.S. is already engaged, or must retain forces for deterrence, in a primary conflict in another region.”
“Tip of the spear”
The guidelines have already been presented to congressional national security committees, where both Republicans and Democrats described them as confusing, according to a congressional aide who reviewed the document. While the U.S. Secretary of Defense expects to withdraw military presence from much of the world, including the Middle East, he is simultaneously attacking the Houthis in Yemen. Meanwhile, Trump warns Iran that he holds it “fully responsible” for supporting the Houthis and states that Washington “will not be at all lenient about it.”
Hegseth recently visited the Pacific region to emphasize his priorities against China, telling military personnel in Guam that they are the “tip of the spear” for U.S. military operations. The Pentagon’s new guidelines related to Taiwan include increasing troop presence through submarines, bombers, unmanned ships, and specialty units from the Army and Marine Corps, as well as a greater focus on bombs designed to destroy fortified and underground targets.
Since taking office, Hegseth has avoided answering whether the U.S. will allow Beijing to take the island by force.
Hegseth’s leadership aligns the Pentagon with some of Trump’s international fixations, describing vague threats in the “near abroad.” U.S. forces, he wrote, must be “ready to defend U.S. interests wherever they may be threatened in our hemisphere, from Greenland, to the Panama Canal, to Cape Horn.”
