BERLIN ¨C The Trump administration¡¯s new National Defense Strategy (NDS) places ¡°deterrence¡± at the center of America¡¯s grand strategy. Deter China from dominating the Indo-Pacific. Deter threats to American access to Asian markets. (Taiwan, strangely, goes unmentioned.)
The document bears the traces of dual authorship: the cool strategic realism of Elbridge Colby (grandson of former CIA director William Colby) on China and the fevered nativism of Trump¡¯s White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on migration. It rebrands alliance-shedding as ¡°burden-sharing.¡± And by demanding that China stay out of the Western Hemisphere while insisting on total U.S. access to the Indo-Pacific, it explodes the very concept of spheres of influence.
But the document¡¯s central concept, deterrence, has a specific meaning, developed through decades of strategic theory. And the authors of the NDS seem to have lost the thread.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.