When Political Messaging Supplants Strategic Planning: What's Missing from the 2026 National Defense Strategy

All views in this newsletter are my own and do not represent the views of The R Street Institute, the US Navy, or any other organization I am affiliated with.

With a hectic holiday season and preparing to clear some academic hurdles (and succeeding!), it's been a bit since my last newsletter. I'm happy to welcome you back to my return to weekly publishing.

Last week, the Pentagon released its 2026 National Defense Strategy. Back when I worked as the Head of Strategic Planning at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, the release of high-level strategic documents was something I looked forward to with excitement. Each new NSS, NDS, and Navy strategy presented an opportunity to reshape our strategic approach and align what we were doing with higher-level guidance. This year, I feel exceptionally fortunate that I don't have to try to align any kind of strategic planning with this NDS.

Retired Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, someone who I have greatly admired from afar since the Project Maven days and standing up the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, offered a blunt assessment: "This is less of a defense strategy than a 34-page political manifesto." He's completely correct, but the document fails on multiple levels, both as politics and as strategy.

Shanahan suggested a test: search the document for the President's name. Try it yourself. The document reads less like strategic planning and more like a loyalty oath wrapped in policy language. Real strategies don't require constant genuflection to leadership. Compare this to Eisenhower's New Look, Kennedy's Flexible Response, or even the Trump administration's own 2018 National Defense Strategy. Those documents articulated strategic approaches without performative signaling.

The phrase "peace through strength" appears ten times in the document without articulating anything about what that means or how to achieve it. It's strategic planning through campaign slogans. The act of saying "peace through strength" repeatedly doesn't constitute strategic planning any more than saying "synergy" repeatedly constitutes a business plan.

The Questions Strategy Must Answer

Classical military strategy requires answers to fundamental questions: What are we trying to achieve (ends)? How will we achieve it (ways)? What resources do we have (means)? In what order and over what timeline (sequencing)? What happens when the plan encounters reality (contingency)?

Consider how the NDS addresses deterring China:

• Ends: "Deter China in the Indo-Pacific Through Strength, Not Confrontation"
• Ways: Build "denial defense along First Island Chain"
• Means: [No specifics provided. Assumes allied capability that doesn't currently exist]
• Sequencing: [Not addressed]
• Contingency: "Peace through strength" [Not a plan]

Taiwan, the most likely flashpoint that could trigger great power war, receives zero mentions in the entire document. Cyber gets one substantive paragraph. Artificial intelligence appears once. Information operations receive no meaningful treatment. These are the domains where gray-zone strategic competition is happening right now, not in some theoretical future.

Defending Everything Means Prioritizing Nothing

In a previous newsletter, I used Mahan's naval strategy principles to critique CISA's sprawling critical infrastructure approach. The same analytical framework applies here. As historian Hanson Baldwin wrote in 1955 about the Soviet Navy, "Geography is the Russian Navy's undoing." Divided into four fleets separated by vast distances, the Soviets couldn't concentrate forces effectively. They had to defend everything and could control nothing decisively.

The 2026 NDS makes the same strategic error. Despite rhetoric about "prioritization," look at what the strategy actually commits to: comprehensive homeland defense including borders, maritime approaches, air defense, cyber, counter-drone systems, and nuclear modernization. Western Hemisphere dominance covering narco-terrorists, key terrain control, and guaranteed access to Greenland, Panama, and the "Gulf of America." Building a denial defense along the First Island Chain against China. Maintaining deterrence requirements against Russia in Europe. Countering Iran and its proxies across the Middle East. Deterring North Korea on the peninsula. Global counter-terrorism against Islamic extremist groups. If that wasn't enough, throw in complete defense industrial base mobilization.

This approach shows no prioritization. It's strategic sprawl with snappy branding.

The document claims "we will prioritize the most important, consequential, and dangerous threats to Americans' interests" while simultaneously insisting "even those of lesser salience still matter and must not be ignored." Translation: we're defending everything, which means we're prioritizing nothing. Mahan would recognize this problem immediately.

Reading Between the Lines - What the Budget Reveals

General Shanahan posed a fantastic question linking the strategy to the Presidential Budget Request: "Why push for a $1.5 trillion budget? This is a $300-500 billion strategy."

If the United States is genuinely stepping back from its role in upholding the post-WWII international order, it's not reflected in funding requests. If the approach is ending interventionism, rejecting endless wars, stopping regime change, withdrawing from nation-building, and relying on allies for "primary responsibility" in their regions with only "critical but limited" American support, that's fine, but you don't need a trillion and a half dollars at the same time.

The budget request reveals what the strategy document obscures. We're not actually withdrawing from global commitments. We're attempting to maintain them while claiming we're not. The gap between rhetoric and resource allocation isn't an oversight. It's evidence that the document isn't serious strategic planning.

The Allied Capability Problem

The entire strategy rests on a single assumption: allies will rapidly increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, develop actual military capability (not just increase spending), become competent enough for "primary responsibility" in their regions, and do this on America's timeline despite seeing American commitment as conditional.

The NDS devotes substantial attention to "burden-sharing" and making allies do more. Why would allies make massive, irreversible investments in defense capability when American commitment appears contingent on their performance, the next administration might reverse course entirely, and the strategy offers no reassurance about staying power?

This represents what I've called the "deus ex machina delusion" in previous newsletters. The NDS treats a strategic capability problem (allies aren't ready to take primary responsibility) as if it were a policy problem (allies just need to spend more). Actual capability development takes decades. Asking Germany to become the primary counterweight to Russia or expecting South Korea to deter North Korea with only "critical but limited" American support requires capabilities those nations don't currently possess and cannot rapidly develop.

The strategy assumes this friction away. It has no contingency plan for when allied capability doesn't materialize on the assumed timeline. That's not strategic planning. As I heard often during my time at the U.S. Naval War College "hope is not a strategy."

What Strategic Thinking Actually Looks Like

Compare the 2026 NDS to Eisenhower's New Look strategy from 1953. The New Look provided a clear statement of the threat (Soviet Union combined with nuclear weapons), explicit trade-offs (conventional force reductions in exchange for nuclear emphasis), acknowledged resource constraints (America couldn't afford permanent mobilization), offered a theory of victory (massive retaliation makes aggression too costly), and was candid about risks (approach might encourage smaller conflicts below the nuclear threshold).

The New Look was wrong about several things. Arms control advocates criticized it for over-reliance on nuclear weapons. Regional allies worried it wouldn't protect them from conventional attacks. But it was unmistakably strategic thinking. It made arguments, proposed trade-offs, acknowledged constraints, and offered a theory connecting means to ends.

The 2026 NDS makes assertions, claims everything matters, assumes allies will perform as needed, and offers "peace through strength" as if repetition constitutes planning.

Strategy Requires Acknowledging Reality

Carl von Clausewitz observed that strategy requires understanding the war you're actually in, not the war you wish you were in. The 2026 NDS appears written for a different strategic environment than the one that exists.

It assumes allied capability that isn't there. It claims prioritization while committing to defend everywhere. It claims to reject global engagement despite tremendous budget requests. It ignores the domains where competition is most intense. It treats the most likely flashpoint as if it doesn't exist.

None of this makes the document wrong necessarily. Reasonable people can disagree about strategy. But it does make it something other than actual strategy.

A strategy is a theory about how limited means can achieve desired ends given constraints and adversary actions. It requires trade-offs, sequencing, contingency planning, and some relationship between ambitions and resources.

What we have instead is a political document that labels certain regions as priorities while committing to defend everywhere, assumes problems away through allied capability that doesn't exist, and requests budgets that contradict its stated approach.

Sun Tzu warned that strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. This document demonstrates something worse: rhetoric without strategy is the fastest route to confusion.

What This Means For...

Policymakers: Several questions remain unanswered and must be asked of the Department. Peace through strength how? Deter China with what? When allied capability doesn't materialize on your assumed timeline, what's the fallback? The absence of answers isn't an oversight. It reveals this document isn't strategic planning.

U.S. strategic competition: Competitors will read this document carefully. They'll notice what Shanahan noticed: massive budget requests contradicting stated priorities, no mention of Taiwan, minimal attention to cyber and information domains, and allied relationships treated as purely transactional. They'll see the gaps between rhetoric and planning. Strategic confusion advantages opponents.

Defense professionals: You'll be asked to implement guidance that isn't implementable because it isn't actually strategic guidance. "Peace through strength" isn't an operational plan. "Denial defense along the First Island Chain" without resource allocation, timeline, or allied coordination isn't strategy. When implementation fails, you'll take the blame for a document that never provided actual direction.

Aspiring strategic thinkers: Learn to distinguish between political messaging and strategic thinking. Both have their place, but confusing one for the other is dangerous. Strategy requires answering hard questions about trade-offs, constraints, and what happens when plans meet reality. If a document avoids those questions through bumper sticker slogans, it's not strategy, regardless of what it calls itself.