SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — President Donald Trump’s newly unveiled national security plan divided leading defense lawmakers and sparked questions about how the United States will project power abroad.
The National Security Strategy seeks to refocus American foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere while downplaying the value of traditional alliances and offering muted criticism of Russia.
Here’s what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a speech in California Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum:
“[The military] will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building.”
Congressional react. But it remains to be seen how the strategy will translate into a potential redistribution of U.S. resources, personnel and firepower throughout the world – especially to support a buildup of military assets in the Western Hemisphere.
“We need to see more information,” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) told us at the forum. “But I think it shows a realization, as the president talked about the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, that this is our neighborhood.”
While Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) applauded the emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, he said the strategy amounts to a 1930s-era document and “an isolationist type of foreign policy.”
“They’re more interested in criticizing Europe than Russia,” he said.
Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the strategy portends a return to dividing the world into “spheres of influence.” He said it wasn’t clear what “values” underpin the document.
Reconciliation redux. Top Trump administration officials at the forum also pledged defense spending will rise in the coming years, but they hinted those increases could come in the form of another reconciliation package.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought lauded the $150 billion DOD spending package included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a “paradigm shift” for military funding. The GOP-only approach bypassed the 60-vote threshold in the Senate and avoided the “ratcheting up of nondefense spending” that usually comes with proposed military budget increases during the appropriations process, Vought said.
The OMB chief was responding to a Wall Street Journal editorial from Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the top Republican on the Senate defense funding panel. McConnell made the case for bolstering base DOD spending and argued relying on OBBB to increase investments in shipbuilding and other multiyear efforts “left critical programs on the cutting-room floor.”
But Vought promised defense dollars will “continue to grow.” Hegseth, after his keynote address, said he anticipates military spending as a percentage of GDP “is going up.”
“There will not be a hole there,” Vought said, adding officials “have not” made a decision about a second reconciliation bill.
House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) acknowledged in a Saturday interview that another reconciliation bill would be a heavy lift.
“I can count. It was hard last time. It’ll be harder next time,” he told us. “And they don’t have all the little sugar that goes on the side.”
