Trump’s national defense strategy is focused on the homeland. So far, that has included troops in the streets.
While calling out the National Guard makes a political statement, they’re not the best means of fighting crime, CSIS’s Mark Cancian says.
Meghann Myers | August 13, 2025
As National Guardsmen are sent for a second time in recent months to a U.S. city whose local leaders made no requests for their support, we may be seeing the Trump administration’s new national defense strategy play out in unprecedented ways ill-matched to military capabilities.
Civilian and uniformed Pentagon officials have said publicly that this administration is prioritizing the geographical United States in its national security policy, a departure from recent administrations—including Trump’s first—that have described conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific or terrorism in the Middle East as the biggest threats to America.
“I think we're learning in real-time what that means,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International studies, told Defense One.
Currently, the administration is operating under an interim NDS that is “focused on defending the homeland,” with China and the Indo-Pacific a lower priority, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee in June.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/08/trumps-national-defense-strategy-focused-homeland-so-far-has-included-troops-streets/407428/?oref=d1-homepage-river
