Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth does a television interview outside the White House on March 21. MUST CREDIT: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reoriented the U.S. military to prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense by “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, according to a secret internal guidance memo that bears the fingerprints of the conservative Heritage Foundation, including some passages that are nearly word-for-word duplications of text published by the think tank last year.
The document, known as the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance and marked “secret/no foreign national” in most passages, was distributed throughout the Defense Department in mid-March and signed by Hegseth. It outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama Canal.
The document - setting out a prioritization framework for senior defense officials and a vision to execute that work - also instructs the military to take a more direct role in countering illegal migration and drug trafficking.
The first Trump administration and the Biden administration characterized China as the greatest threat to the U.S. and postured the force to prepare for and deter conflict in the Pacific region. But Hegseth’s guidance is extraordinary in its description of the potential invasion of Taiwan as the exclusive animating scenario that must be prioritized over other potential dangers - reorienting the vast U.S. military architecture toward the Indo-Pacific region beyond its homeland defense mission.
The Pentagon will “assume risk in other theaters” given personnel and resource constraints, and pressure allies in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia to spend more on defense to take on the bulk of the deterrence role against threats from Russia, North Korea and Iran, according to the guidance.
The agency will shift focus to counterterrorism missions against groups with the capability and intent to strike the U.S., the guidance says, signaling that it will deprioritize militants in the Middle East and Africa who are regionally destabilizing but don’t have ambition to launch international attacks.
“China is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan - while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario,” Hegseth wrote. Its force planning construct - a concept of how the Pentagon will build and resource the armed services to take on perceived threats - will consider conflict only with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war, it says, leaving the threat from Moscow largely attended by European allies.
Where the Biden administration’s 2022 National Defense Strategy emphasized alliances in countering Russia’s aggression, calling “mutually-beneficial Alliances and allies … our greatest global strategic advantage,” the Hegseth interim guidance says NATO must take on “far greater” burden sharing because the U.S. will be reluctant to provide forces with its priorities focused elsewhere.
The Defense Department did not return a request for comment.
The guidance was provided to congressional national security committees, where Republicans and Democrats have described it as confusing, according to a congressional aide who reviewed the document. It calls for withdrawing from a presence in most of the world, including the Middle East, but the administration has focused on demonstrating firepower and deterrence against the Houthis in Yemen and pressuring Iran, the aide noted.
“There’s tension between ‘We want American strength and military dominance in the world, and we want to be everywhere, but also nowhere,’” the aide said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive documents. “And that’s inconsistent and going to be difficult for them to design a strategy around.”
The interim guidance is nine pages. Several passages throughout are similar to a longer 2024 report by the Heritage Foundation, some of which are nearly identical, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of both documents. One of the Heritage report’s co-authors, Alexander Velez-Green, is now in an interim role as the Pentagon’s top policy official.
The Heritage report, published in August, recommends that the Pentagon prioritize three core issues: Taiwan invasion deterrence, homeland defense, and increased burden sharing among allies and partners - which the Hegseth guidance mirrors. The congressional aide said it was readily apparent to Capitol Hill staff that the document bore the influence of the conservative think tank.
The Heritage Foundation did not return a request for comment.
Trump as a presidential candidate denied that Heritage’s Project 2025 plan, which set out a far-right transition agenda across the entirety of the federal government, was a blueprint for his second term. But his policies and appointments - including the Pentagon guidance - have made clear that Heritage’s plans have been deeply influential in the first months of his administration.
Senior U.S. military officials have directly tied Heritage’s vision to Hegseth’s guidance.
Maj. Gen. Garrick Harmon, the head of strategy and plans at Africa Command, recommended to staff that they read the Heritage report as part of a discussion of how to align their priorities with the new Pentagon guidance, according to a command staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Another official within the command distributed a copy of the Heritage report, the staff member said.
The recommendation did not appear partisan in nature, the staff member said, adding that the similarities suggest the Pentagon’s document was partly inspired by the Heritage report and that the information could be complementary to understanding Hegseth’s guidance.
Africa Command declined to comment on internal discussions but said the staff meets with experts on Africa to inform planning, said Kelly Cahalan, a spokesperson for the command. “The staff also regularly reads and shares publicly available research and reports,” she said. “As with all prudent military planning, we are continually leveraging the latest research to assess and develop our strategy.”
Hegseth recently visited the Pacific region to emphasize his priorities against China, telling service members in Guam that they are “the tip of the spear” for U.S. military operations.
The new Pentagon guidance for a “denial defense” of Taiwan includes increasing the troop presence through submarines, bombers, unmanned ships, and specialty units from the Army and Marine Corps, as well as a greater focus on bombs that destroy reinforced and subterranean targets. The plan also calls for improving defense of U.S. troop locations in the Indo-Pacific, generating pre-positioned stocks and improving logistics.
While emphasizing support to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the document also calls for “pressuring” Taipei to “significantly increase” its defense spending. Trump and his allies have criticized Taiwan as underinvesting in its own defense, urging the self-ruled democratic island to spend up to 10 percent of its GDP on military readiness - a proportion well above what the U.S. and its allies spend on defense.
Since taking office, he has dodged the question of whether the U.S. would allow Beijing to take the island by force.
Two people familiar with Taiwan’s official discussions said the government in Taipei has struggled to make inroads with the new U.S. administration, amid growing doubts about Washington’s support - concerns that intensified after February’s disastrous Oval Office meeting of Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In a message of reassurance to Washington, President Lai Ching-te said last week that Taiwan will boost its defense spending to over 3 percent of its GDP - up from around 2.5 percent - as part of an ongoing overhaul of its military infrastructure. China responded by launching a wave of fighter jets and ships near the island, warning that “those who play with fire will get burned.”
In 2023, U.S. analysts concluded Taiwan’s forces would be unlikely to thwart Chinese military air superiority, according to leaked classified documents.
Hegseth’s guidance synchronizes the Pentagon with some of Trump’s international fixations, describing undetermined threats from the “near abroad.” U.S. forces, he wrote, must be “ready to defend American interests wherever they might be threatened in our hemisphere, from Greenland, to the Panama Canal, to Cape Horn.”
Trump told reporters Friday that “we have to have Greenland,” escalating tensions with Denmark, a NATO ally that governs the foreign policy and defense of the island.
The guidance also directs military leaders to ensure access to the Panama Canal and take a more assertive role in combating drug trafficking, border protection and deportations, which are normally carried out by the Department of Homeland Security. Those details were previously reported by CNN and NBC News. It also calls for the expansion of U.S. nuclear forces and homeland missile defense through the still conceptual “Golden Dome” described by Trump.
Hegseth’s guidance acknowledges that the U.S. is unlikely to provide substantial, if any, support to Europe in the case of Russian military advances, noting that Washington intends to push NATO allies to take primary defense of the region. The U.S. will support Europe with nuclear deterrence of Russia, and NATO should only count on U.S. forces not required for homeland defense or China deterrence missions, the document says.
A significant increase in Europe sharing its defense burden, the document says, “will also ensure NATO can reliably deter or defeat Russian aggression even if deterrence fails and the United States is already engaged in, or must withhold forces to deter, a primary conflict in another region.”
Aaron Schaffer and Cate Cadell contributed to this report.
