The Trump administration’s forthcoming National Defense Strategy (NDS) reportedly reorients U.S. defense priorities away from an external focus on great-power rivalry toward safeguarding the homeland and the Western Hemisphere.1Paul McLeary and Daniel Lippman, “Exclusive: Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat,” Politico Pro, September 5, 2025. https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/09/pentagon-national-defense-strategy-china-homeland-western-hemisphere-00546310 This marks a decisive break from the 2018 and 2022 NDS, which identified China as the “pacing challenge” and placed the Asia-Pacific at the center of U.S. strategy.2U.S. Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: DoD, 2018). https://media.defense.gov/2020/May/18/2002302061/-1/-1/1/2018-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-SUMMARY.PDF; U.S. Department of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture Review, and Missile Defense Review (Washington, DC: DoD, October 27, 2022). https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.pdf While critics dismiss this shift as naïve or isolationist, a more compelling interpretation is available: a hemisphere-first strategy represents a theory-grounded recalibration that reflects how security is actually produced and experienced.3Carlos Roa, “Welcome to Imperial America,” Institute for Peace & Diplomacy (Peace & Diplomacy), March 7, 2025, https://peacediplomacy.org/2025/03/07/welcome-to-imperial-america/
Three strands of international relations theory help explain this logic. Relationalism emphasizes that power and security grow from dense, proximate ties—familial, economic, institutional—that bind societies most tightly at shorter distances.4Daniel H. Nexon, The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). World-systems theory shows how these ties form regionalized core–periphery structures, sustaining prosperity but also enabling illicit flows that destabilize governance.5Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I–IV (New York: Academic Press; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974–2011). Regional security complex theory—especially as revisited and applied to the post-unipolar context by Moeini et al. (2022)—highlights how threats cluster and diffuse most rapidly within regions, making nearby insecurity both the most pressing and the most tractable.6Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Arta Moeini, Christopher Mott, Zachary Paikin, and David Polansky, “Middle Powers in the Multipolar World,” Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, March 2022, https://peacediplomacy.org/2022/03/26/middle-powers-in-the-multipolar-world/
Taken together, these perspectives suggest that U.S. security is inseparable from the stability of its own hemisphere. Competition with China and Russia persists, but through this lens it is refracted into regional terms: how adversaries exploit illicit networks, critical infrastructure, and chokepoints across the Americas. The practical test of strategy becomes clear—prioritize deployments, partnerships, and investments that most directly reinforce resilience at home and in the Western Hemisphere, where American interests are densest and threats most immediate.
As of early September 2025, the Department of Defense has not released the NDS. Nonetheless, credible reporting describes a draft on the Secretary of Defense’s desk that would prioritize homeland defense and Western Hemisphere missions above countering peer adversaries such as China and Russia.7McLeary and Lippman, “Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland.” Corroborating reports describe ongoing actions consistent with this emphasis: large-scale National Guard deployments in U.S. cities to support law enforcement; maritime and air assets shifted to the Caribbean for counternarcotics and interdiction; an expanded posture along the southern border; and operations against transnational criminal networks with hemispheric reach.8Axios, “Trump 2.0 refashions U.S. military muscle,” September 7, 2025 (Western Hemisphere focus; border/Caribbean operations). https://www.axios.com/2025/09/07/trump-hegseth-venezuela-border-military
These details underscore that—even prior to formal publication—implementation dynamics are already visible. Early signals from the State Department reinforce this orientation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made his first overseas trip to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, underscoring the enduring strategic importance of the Latin American region and the administration’s determination to foreground hemispheric security.9U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio’s Travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic,” January 31, 2025; and “Travel to Panama… (Feb 1–6, 2025),” February 1, 2025. https://www.state.gov/secretary-rubios-travel-to-panama-el-salvador-costa-rica-guatemala-and-the-dominican-republic; Reuters, “Rubio to visit Panama on first overseas trip,” January 23, 2025; and PBS NewsHour, “Rubio presses Panama to reduce Chinese influence over its Canal,” February 2, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/rubio-visit-panama-source-says-amid-trump-push-take-back-canal-2025-01-23/ At the same time, the administration has directed special attention to transnational organized crime, designating major drug cartels as Specially Designated Global Terrorist groups (SDGTs).10The White House, “Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” Executive Order 14157, January 20, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/designating-cartels-and-other-organizations-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations-and-specially-designated-global-terrorists/; U.S. Department of State, “Terrorist Designations of International Cartels,” February 20, 2025; and U.S. Treasury/OFAC Alert, March 18, 2025. https://www.state.gov/terrorist-designations-of-international-cartels Together, these moves suggest that both the Pentagon and State Department are aligning around a shared vision that places the Western Hemisphere—and particularly its critical chokepoints, its networks of illicit flows, and its resident great power competition dynamics—at the center of American strategy.
As noted above, this is a sharp departure from the last two strategies. The 2018 NDS declared that inter-state strategic rivalry—so-called great power competition—had replaced counterterrorism as the primary national security concern, placing China and Russia at the center of U.S. planning.11DoD, 2018 NDS Summary. The 2022 NDS reaffirmed China as the Department’s “pacing challenge,” integrated nuclear and missile defense reviews, and explicitly oriented force design and campaigning around deterring Beijing.12DoD, 2022 NDS/NPR/MDR. Both documents treated the Asia-Pacific as the arena in which American military credibility and the broader international order would be decided.
By contrast, the 2025 draft—not yet public and subject to change—appears to invert the organizing logic: start from home and the hemisphere, and treat extra-regional commitments as secondary unless and until they bear directly on domestic or regional security.13McLeary and Lippman, “Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland.” Several signals point that way already: the administration is reportedly winding down or not seeking additional appropriations for certain European security assistance lines (including Section 333 funds) and reviewing the Baltic Security Initiative, moves which have prompted public concern from European capitals and members of Congress.14Financial Times, “US to cut some security funds for European countries bordering Russia,” September 4, 2025. https://www.ft.com/content/0157d5f9-1b27-4d6c-b44e-f0a77da59b5d; Associated Press, “European countries near Russia puzzled by US plans to cut defense funding,” September 6, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-security-funding-baltics-russia-099050548a8aab5b086b36d7f6bb1203
In short: while the NDS remains unpublished, indicators align. The question is how to understand the shift. Is it a naïve or cynical retreat? Or is it a coherent strategic recalibration founded on durable insights about how security and power actually work?
One finds, in fact, a strong theory of the case within international relations scholarship that prioritizes proximity, networks, and enduring patterns of exchange over abstract notions of global hierarchy. These approaches emphasize that security is often rooted less in distant contests among great powers than in the shorter-range dynamics of geography, history, culture, and institutions. Rather than offering a grand, universal theory of interstate behavior, they illuminate the tangible structures—economic circuits, security interdependencies, and relational ties—that travel across short distances and define the lived experience of states and societies. It is within this body of thought that a coherent rationale for a hemisphere-first defense strategy emerges.
Security is not simply a matter of military balances or abstract global rivalries. It is, at its core, a human endeavor rooted in geography and place. What counts as a threat, and what becomes securitized, are judgments made by individuals and communities about dangers that press most immediately where they live. In practice, people recognize that the most acute threats are those closest at hand—those carried across borders through commerce, finance, or organized crime rather than emanating from distant geopolitical contests. A regional reprioritization in U.S. defense strategy reflects this intuition, and it can be grounded in three complementary bodies of theory that all share a concern with proximity, density, and the geo-cultural foundations of security.15Arta Moeini, “The Resumption of History and the Coming Post-Modern Order,” AGON, November 1, 2023, https://www.agonmag.com/p/the-resumption-of-history-and-the
From a relational perspective, power and security emerge from the density and quality of ties between actors. These ties deepen through repeated interaction—whether via trade, migration, education, or shared institutions—and tend to be thickest and most consequential across shorter distances.
From a world-systems perspective, those ties crystallize into durable structures of core and periphery. Economic circuits of goods, capital, and labor both sustain prosperity and expose regions to exploitation, making the stability of regional cores critical to broader systemic resilience.
From a regional-security-complex perspective, threats interdependently cluster within regions. Security dynamics diffuse most rapidly across short distances, meaning that nearby instability is often more immediate and tractable than challenges arising from distant geopolitical contests.
Taken together, these theories suggest a layered logic: human ties and institutions bind societies across proximate geographies; these ties crystallize into durable economic structures linking cores and peripheries; and the density of these ties generates security externalities that make regional insecurity both the most pressing and the most manageable.
Relationalism provides the first layer. Relationalism starts from the premise that power and security emerge not from abstract global positions but from the density and quality of ties between actors.16Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Daniel H. Nexon, “Reclaiming the Social: Relationalism in Anglophone International Studies,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 32, no. 5 (2019): 582–600. These ties thicken over time as individuals and institutions interact—through trade, remittances, professional associations, university exchanges, and shared media ecosystems. The more frequent and proximate the interactions, the more consequential the ties become.17Julian Go and Daniel H. Nexon, “What Is Relationalism?,” in The Oxford Handbook of International Political Sociology, ed. Stacie E. Goddard, George Lawson, and Ole Jacob Sending (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), 31–63.
In the Western Hemisphere, such ties are unusually dense. Millions of U.S. residents maintain family networks across Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Financial channels such as remittances, cross-border banking, and commercial investment reinforce these human connections. These relational ties are productive and stabilizing: they generate resilience, foster innovation, and embed communities across borders. At the same time, the very density of these networks makes them attractive to exploitation. Illicit goods—fentanyl, firearms, laundered money—move through the same channels as legitimate commerce.
Relationalism underscores that security cannot be understood solely through state-centric abstractions. It begins with human interaction and the institutional webs that surround it.18David M. McCourt, “Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New Constructivism,” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 3 (September 2016): 475–485. A hemisphere-first NDS reflects this logic: the United States cannot sever these ties; it must manage them. A strategy that invests in customs modernization, forensic financial tools, and interoperable data systems is not disengagement but an acknowledgment that America’s most immediate vulnerabilities emerge from the relational density of its neighborhood.19Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Daniel H. Nexon, “Relations Before States: Substance, Process and the Study of World Politics,” European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 3 (September 1999): 291–332.
If relationalism captures how security emerges from dense, proximate human and institutional ties, world-systems theory shifts the lens upward—showing how these ties crystallize into larger regional economic structures of core and periphery. Immanuel Wallerstein argued that capitalism generates core-periphery hierarchies in which a dominant core organizes the flows of goods, labor, and capital from its surrounding periphery.20Immanuel Wallerstein, “World-Systems Analysis,” in Social Theory Today, eds. Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Turner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 309–324. These relations are thickest regionally, where shared geography enables denser supply chains, cultural affinity, and shared standards.21Roland Robertson and Frank Lechner, “Modernization, Globalization and the Problem of Culture in World-Systems Theory,” Theory, Culture & Society 2, no. 3 (1985): 103–117.
Applied to U.S. strategy, this view highlights the Western Hemisphere as the American core system. North America and Latin America are bound together through trade corridors, energy pipelines, digital backbones, and financial clearances. These same circuits sustain illicit economies: narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, and money laundering. The hemisphere-first focus is thus less about withdrawal from global leadership than about shoring up the regional circuits that underpin America’s prosperity and resilience. Neglecting these circuits leaves the U.S. core vulnerable to shocks—drug epidemics, financial disruptions, or corruption that erodes governance in nearby states.
World-systems logic reframes debates about “isolationism”. Influence projected beyond the hemisphere is downstream from control of the core. By fortifying its regional circuits—ports, pipelines, financial institutions, and digital infrastructure—the United States builds the foundation from which it can draw power and maintain its competitiveness globally.
Where world-systems theory explains the economic circuits that bind cores and peripheries, regional security complex theory adds the security overlay—demonstrating how threats, like goods and capital, diffuse most rapidly within regions.22David A. Lake, “Regional Security Complexes: A Systems Approach,” in Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World, ed. David A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2010), 91–118. RSCT argues that threats travel more easily over short distances and that security interdependence therefore clusters regionally.23Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers. Within each complex, core states both stabilize the system and are most exposed to its disruptions.
For the United States, this paradox is acute. It is the hemisphere’s security guarantor, yet also the actor most affected by instability in its periphery. Violence in Central and South America, cartel activity in Mexico, and corruption in Caribbean banking hubs reverberate directly inside the United States in the form of overdoses, illicit firearms flows, cyber-enabled financial crime, and the empowerment of transnational criminal organizations. By contrast, while tensions in the South China Sea or Eastern Europe may shape global balances, they do not penetrate American daily life with the same immediacy.
RSCT thus justifies a concentric-circles logic: secure the near complex first, where insecurities diffuse fastest and matter most, and then sequence outward.24Patrick M. Morgan, “Regional Security Complexes and Regional Orders,” in Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World, ed. David A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 20–44. The point is not to trivialize extra-regional threats, but to order them according to where they intersect most directly with the lived security of American society.
Comprehensively, these perspectives reinforce a simple insight: the insecurities that matter most are those closest at hand, which makes a hemisphere-first strategy both the most practical and the most sustainable foundation for U.S. defense.
This insight finds resonance in the America Sphere Doctrine articulated by the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy. As Carlos Roa has argued in line with IPD’s broader outlook, the United States’ core security and prosperity are inseparable from the stability of its own hemisphere and the cultural dimensions of power.25Carlos Roa, “Welcome to Imperial America,” Institute for Peace & Diplomacy (Peace & Diplomacy), March 7, 2025, https://peacediplomacy.org/2025/03/07/welcome-to-imperial-america/ Like relationalism, world-systems theory, and RSCT, the America Sphere Doctrine underscores that durable security begins with proximate circuits of exchange and interdependence before radiating outward.
The United States organizes its global posture through geographic combatant commands, each responsible for distinct theaters of responsibility. In recent decades, the Indo-Pacific Command has dominated attention, reflecting the emphasis on great-power competition with China. European Command has likewise been foregrounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while Central Command carried the weight of America’s long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its ongoing military presence in the Middle East. By contrast, U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) have consistently been relegated to second-tier priorities. This is a striking oddity: if one takes seriously the premise that security’s ultimate referent object is the individual and society, then it follows naturally that the threats closest to home are the most salient, even if they lack the drama of high-level strategic narratives.
A regional war in Europe or a crisis in the Taiwan Strait may command the strategist’s imagination, but the day-to-day insecurities felt by Americans—opioid overdoses, firearms trafficking, cyber-enabled financial crime, and irregular migration pressures—emerge from within the Western Hemisphere. These dynamics are precisely those highlighted by regional security complex theory: insecurities diffuse fastest and matter most at short distances. Elevating NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM in the NDS, then, is less a downgrading of Europe or Asia than a recalibration of where risks are most directly experienced by the American public.
This shift is also consonant with broader economic and political trends. Just as debates over reshoring supply chains, nearshoring production, and securing critical value chains reflect a desire to build resilience at home, so too does a hemisphere-first defense strategy. It centers security where it is lived: in the networks, circuits, and institutions that tie the United States to its immediate neighborhood. By rebalancing toward NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM, the draft NDS effectively moves the security referent away from abstract nation-state balances and toward the lived experience of individuals and communities and reconnects it with the needs of the American culture. This adjustment resonates with the American public’s demand for a defense strategy that prioritizes the homeland and the pragmatic security requirements of the nation.
Here, too, a refocus on hemispheric security reflects a changing threat environment. The Arctic’s growing strategic and economic importance collides with longstanding U.S. capacity gaps: despite new strategies and investments, the United States still faces shortfalls in icebreaking capability and Arctic infrastructure, with continued delays to the Polar Security Cutter program and broader Arctic security needs highlighted by oversight bodies.26U.S. Department of Defense. Department of Defense Arctic Strategy (July 22, 2024). https://media.defense.gov/2024/Jul/22/2003507411/-1/-1/0/DOD-ARCTIC-STRATEGY-2024.PDF; U.S. Government Accountability Office. Further Cost and Affordability Analysis of Polar Fleet Needed, GAO-25-106822 (December 19, 2024). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106822; U.S. Government Accountability Office. Arctic Risks Assessed, but Information Gaps and Numerous Challenges Threaten Operations, (November 14, 2024). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107910 Meanwhile, Russia has regenerated aspects of its Arctic military posture and commercial activity, and China continues to cast itself as a “near-Arctic state” pursuing a Polar Silk Road—developments that reinforce the case for more attention (and resources) closer to home.
At the same time, hemispheric criminal ecosystems are evolving in ways that directly touch U.S. communities. U.S. threat assessments in 2024 and 2025 identify Mexican transnational criminal organizations as the primary drivers of illicit synthetic drugs—especially fentanyl—flowing into the United States, and emphasize their use of increasingly sophisticated tactics.27U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. National Drug Threat Assessment 2024 (May 24, 2024). https://www.dea.gov/documents/2024/2024-05/2024-05-24/national-drug-threat-assessment-2024; U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Threat Assessment 2025 (September 30, 2024). https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/24_0930_ia_24-320-ia-publication-2025-hta-final-30sep24-508.pdf; U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment (May 13, 2025). https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/2025NationalDrugThreatAssessment.pdf We have witnessed the spread of weaponized drones, armored convoys, and other “paramilitary-like” adaptations among major cartels, underscoring that these groups are learning quickly and innovating on readily available technology.28Henry Ziemer, “Illicit Innovation: Latin America Is Not Prepared to Fight Criminal Drones,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (June 11, 2025), https://www.csis.org/analysis/illicit-innovation-latin-america-not-prepared-fight-criminal-drones; New Lines Institute. “The Rise of Militarized Cartels in Mexico” (September 2025). https://newlinesinstitute.org/state-resilience-fragility/the-rise-of-militarized-cartels-in-mexico/
Finally, a hemisphere-first NDS would treat great-power competition through a regional lens. In Latin America and the Caribbean, China’s footprint is expanding across critical infrastructure and logistics—illustrated by the Chancay megaport in Peru coming online and a broader portfolio of PRC-linked port projects around key sea lanes, including near the Panama Canal.29Henry Ziemer, Jaehyun Han, and Aidan Powers-Riggs, No Safe Harbor: Evaluating the Risk of China’s Port Projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, CSIS (June 26, 2025). https://features.csis.org/no-safe-harbor-china-ports/ Authoritative surveys in 2025 also track Beijing’s widening diplomatic, trade, and technology ties across the region.30Diana Roy, “China’s Growing Influence in Latin America,” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder (June 6, 2025). https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-influence-latin-america-argentina-brazil-venezuela-security-energy-bri This is not merely a distant naval problem; it is a near-abroad contest over the physical and digital nodes that shape U.S. resilience and influence.
Press reporting points to reduced U.S. security assistance in parts of Eastern Europe, potential cuts to the Baltic Security Initiative, and a broader push for European allies to assume more of the conventional defense burden. In theoretical terms, this is not abandonment but sequencing: concentric-circles logic requires that the United States first secure the complex where threats diffuse most rapidly and where economic circuits are most critical. Only once those gaps are closed can resources be projected outward.
At the same time, it would be misleading to downplay the implications. A hemispheric refocus necessarily signals that the United States will be more selective about where and how it commits its resources abroad. The Trump administration has made clear that its organizing principle is U.S. national interest first, and that all global engagements will be subject to explicit cost-benefit analysis. For partners in Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific, this means that some of the assurances they have long taken for granted are no longer automatic. The days of blanket security guarantees and permanent alliances extended to preserve the postwar status quo and Blob interests—irrespective of direct relevance to American security—are over.31Arta Moeini, Coleman Hopkins, and David Polansky, “Toward a Phenomenology of the U.S. Alliance System: Boon or a Scourge on America’s National Interest?”, Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, September 22, 2022, https://peacediplomacy.org/2022/09/16/toward-a-phenomenology-of-the-u-s-alliance-system-boon-or-a-scourge-on-americas-national-interest/
This does not mean abandonment. The United States will remain globally engaged, but on different terms. The shift injects realism into security relationships that for decades have rested on a convenient fiction: that Washington would always underwrite distant commitments simply to uphold its reputation as a global security provider. A hemispheric posture signals instead that U.S. red lines will be defined with greater precision, and that interventions will be judged by whether they materially protect the American core. The question is no longer abstract credibility but concrete national interest.
For allies, this is a jarring adjustment. It forces recognition that U.S. willingness to incur major costs—potentially even war—over issues such as Philippine sovereignty at the Second Thomas Shoal, or incremental escalations in Eastern Europe, is not open-ended. For many years, American strategists spoke as if such commitments were ironclad; in truth, they always relied on assumptions about political will that were shakier than policymakers admitted. By recentering on the hemisphere, the United States clarifies those limits rather than obscuring them.
Ideally, this recalibration should serve a moderating function. Allies and partners, no longer cushioned by the illusion of unconditional U.S. backing, may be more cautious in their security choices. For Washington, the upside is that finite resources are applied where they matter most: safeguarding the homeland and securing the hemisphere. For the international system, the result may be fewer unchecked escalations born of miscalculated expectations about American willingness to fight everywhere at once.
Great-power rivalry does not vanish under a hemisphere-first model; it is reinterpreted. Rival activities within the Western Hemisphere—port concessions, dual-use digital infrastructure, coerced commodity deals, arms transfers, or intelligence collection—become higher-salience indicators than distant force posture shifts. The key is not abandonment of global competition but its redefinition in more concrete, measurable, and sustainable terms.
In this reframing, the United States allocates resources more effectively to ensure that competition with China and Russia is managed first and foremost along its own periphery. By prioritizing the hemisphere, Washington adopts a more realistic and durable approach: one that minimizes overstretch, avoids costly interventions in distant theaters, and preserves national power for the long run. A hemisphere-first strategy thus transforms great-power competition from a boundless, global contest into a manageable sequencing of priorities, anchored in the regional spaces where U.S. interests are most immediately at stake.
Diplomacy is central to this recalibration. China’s challenge in Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, is not primarily military but relational: cultivating influence through infrastructure finance, digital networks, and commodity agreements that threaten to erode longstanding U.S. partnerships. In many respects, Beijing’s capacity to shift political and economic alignments in Latin America poses a more proximate security concern than its maneuvers in the Asia-Pacific. By re-centering the NDS on the hemisphere, the United States signals that the real contest for influence begins in its own neighborhood—where relational density, economic circuits, and security interdependencies give rivals an opening if neglected.
Far from signaling retrenchment, this reconceptualization of great-power competition ensures the sustainability of American power and the credibility of its commitments. It reframes rivalry with China and Russia around the domains where U.S. leverage is strongest and where adversary encroachment would have the most direct impact on American security and prosperity. In short, the NDS under this model does not represent the end of competition—it represents its smarter, more durable organization.32Becca Wasser and Ryan Dukeman, “The National Defense Strategy still matters. Let’s get it right,” Defense One, September 5, 2025.
Sustaining legitimacy requires anchoring hemispheric defense firmly within U.S. and international legal frameworks, with special attention paid to the rising spheres of interest and influence tethered to great powers and regional hegemons. These guardrails protect servicemembers from being placed in ambiguous positions and signal to the American people that security is pursued in accordance with U.S. laws as well as necessity. Durable strategies rely not only on operational effectiveness but also on adherence to institutional norms that ensure military power remains subject to civilian authority.
Recent practice illustrates this point. The September 2025 War Powers Resolution Report on U.S. operations in the Caribbean explicitly set out the legal basis for action and notified Congress in accordance with statutory requirements.[1] Situating deployments within this framework underscores that hemispheric initiatives can be consistent with established law and oversight. By grounding new strategies in such procedures, policymakers reinforce public trust at home and project credibility abroad, ensuring that a hemisphere-first approach is sustainable over the long term.33U.S. President, Report—48-Hour Notification to Congress on the Introduction of U.S. Armed Forces into Hostilities (Caribbean Operation), September 4, 2025, Reiss Center on Law and Security / Lawfare Institute, https://assets.ctfassets.net/6hn51hpulw83/iOdLcVg6XVHorL4Rv5rWr/9a116b4c89cb06efee02dcd6df96bba1/20250904-Trump.pdf
The reported features of the draft NDS should not be misread as a retreat from America’s role as a security actor. Rather, they represent a redefinition of what security priorities mean in practice—anchored in the issues that most directly affect Americans’ lives. For decades, the United States has projected power overseas in ways that often proved difficult to justify to the public once the costs were tallied. Both the political left and right have grown skeptical of open-ended military commitments untethered from immediate national interests. A strategy that reorients defense around the hemisphere offers a corrective: it places first-order emphasis on safeguarding Americans where they live, while still leaving space for calibrated engagement abroad.
This fresh thinking is particularly welcome at a time when the industrialization of U.S. overseas military engagement has strained resources and legitimacy. By focusing on the Western Hemisphere, the United States accepts the reality that security travels most effectively over shorter distances, across networks of trade, finance, manufacturing, and information that both sustain prosperity and can be exploited by illicit actors. Addressing these vulnerabilities is not parochialism; it is prudence. It ensures that America’s domestic foundations remain strong enough to support global engagement when necessary.
Critics will argue that such an approach cedes ground to China in Asia or Russia in Europe. The proper response is straightforward: a state’s first responsibility is to its citizens. America cannot sustainably devote resources to distant territorial disputes while neglecting the challenges that reverberate daily within its own borders. Strengthening domestic and hemispheric security is not only more sustainable and more moral as an act of governance, but it reaffirms America’s national sovereignty. It also better aligns with the foreign policy vision of America’s founders and the practice of Washingtonian realism.34Arta Moeini and Christopher Mott, “George Washington and the Founding of American Realism”, Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, March 11, 2024: https://peacediplomacy.org/2024/03/11/george-washington-and-the-birth-of-american-realism/
Of course, a hemisphere-first strategy carries global implications. Allies in Europe, Asia, and Africa will need to adapt to a security environment in which the United States is less enmeshed in preserving the postwar, liberal internationalist status quo. But this does not amount to abandonment. The United States will continue to work with partners wherever its interests align, as all states do. What changes is not the existence of American commitments, but the framework that organizes them: concentric circles radiating outward from the homeland, sequenced in a way that ensures resilience at the core.
This is not isolationism. It is realism. It is not America doing less. It is America doing first things first—so that it remains strong enough, sovereign enough, and credible enough to act globally when the moment demands.
The Western powers have failed to effectively manage the increasing threat of proliferation in the Middle East. While the international community is concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, Saudi Arabia has moved forward with developing its own nuclear program, and independent studies show that Israel has longed possessed dozens of nuclear warheads. The former is a member of the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), while the latter has refused to sign the international agreement.
On Middle East policy, the Biden campaign had staunchly criticized the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal and it has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier since assuming office in January 2021. However, serious obstacles remain for responsible actors in expanding non-proliferation efforts toward a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
This panel will discuss how Western powers and multilateral institutions, such as the IAEA, can play a more effective role in managing non-proliferation efforts in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Peggy Mason: Canada’s former Ambassador to the UN for Disarmament
– Mark Fitzpatrick: Associate Fellow & Former Executive Director, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
– Ali Vaez: Iran Project Director, International Crisis Group
– Negar Mortazavi: Journalist and Political Analyst, Host of Iran Podcast
– David Albright: Founder and President of the Institute for Science and International Security
Closing (5:45 PM – 6:00 PM ET)
What is the current economic landscape in the Middle East? While global foreign direct investment is expected to fall drastically in the post-COVID era, the World Bank reported a 5% contraction in the economic output of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries in 2020 due to the pandemic. While oil prices are expected to rebound with normalization in demand, political instability, regional and geopolitical tensions, domestic corruption, and a volatile regulatory and legal environment all threaten economic recovery in the Middle East. What is the prospect for economic growth and development in the region post-pandemic, and how could MENA nations promote sustainable growth and regional trade moving forward?
At the same time, Middle Eastern diaspora communities have become financially successful and can help promote trade between North America and the region. In this respect, the diaspora can become vital intermediaries for advancing U.S. and Canada’s business interests abroad. Promoting business diplomacy can both benefit the MENA region and be an effective and positive way to advance engagement and achieve foreign policy goals of the North Atlantic.
This panel will investigate the trade and investment opportunities in the Middle East, discuss how facilitating economic engagement with the region can benefit Canadian and American national interests, and explore relevant policy prescriptions.
Panelists:
– Hon. Sergio Marchi: Canada’s Former Minister of International Trade
– Scott Jolliffe: Chairperson, Canada Arab Business Council
– Esfandyar Batmanghelidj: Founder and Publisher of Bourse & Bazaar
– Nizar Ghanem: Director of Research and Co-founder at Triangle
– Nicki Siamaki: Researcher at Control Risks
The Middle East continues to grapple with violence and instability, particularly in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Fueled by government incompetence and foreign interventions, terrorist insurgencies have imposed severe humanitarian and economic costs on the region. Meanwhile, regional actors have engaged in an unprecedented pursuit of arms accumulation. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have imported billions of both Western and Russian-made weapons and funded militant groups across the region, intending to contain their regional adversaries, particularly Iran. Tehran has also provided sophisticated weaponry to various militia groups across the region to strengthen its geopolitical position against Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel.
On the other hand, with international terrorist networks and intense regional rivalry in the Middle East, it is impractical to discuss peace and security without addressing terrorism and the arms race in the region. This panel will primarily discuss the implications of the ongoing arms race in the region and the role of Western powers and multilateral organizations in facilitating trust-building security arrangements among regional stakeholders to limit the proliferation of arms across the Middle East.
Panelists:
Luciano Zaccara: Assistant Professor, Qatar University
Dania Thafer: Executive Director, Gulf International Forum
Kayhan Barzegar: Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Science and Research Branch of Azad University
Barbara Slavin: Director of Iran Initiative, Atlantic Council
Sanam Shantyaei: Senior Journalist at France24 & host of Middle East Matters
The emerging regional order in West Asia will have wide-ranging implications for global security. The Biden administration has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier, an initiative staunchly opposed by Israel, while also taking a harder line on Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen. Meanwhile, key regional actors, including Qatar, Iraq, and Oman, have engaged in backchannel efforts to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia to the negotiating table. From a broader geopolitical perspective, with the need to secure its energy imports, China is also expected to increase its footprint in the region and influence the mentioned challenges.
In this evolving landscape, Western powers will be compelled to redefine their strategic priorities and adjust their policies with the new realities in the region. In this panel, we will discuss how the West, including the United States and its allies, can utilize multilateral diplomacy with its adversaries to prevent military escalation in the region. Most importantly, the panel will discuss if a multilateral security dialogue in the Persian Gulf region, proposed by some regional actors, can help reduce tensions among regional foes and produce sustainable peace and development for the region.
Panelists:
– Abdullah Baabood: Academic Researcher and Former Director of the Centre for Gulf Studies, Qatar University
– Trita Parsi: Executive Vice-President, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
– Ebtesam Al-Ketbi: President, Emirates Policy Centre
– Jon Allen: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Israel
– Elizabeth Hagedorn: Washington correspondent for Al-Monitor
Military interventions, political and economic instabilities, and civil unrest in the Middle East have led to a global refugee crisis with an increasing wave of refugees and asylum seekers to Europe and Canada. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has, in myriad ways, exacerbated and contributed to the ongoing security threats and destabilization of the region.
While these challenges pose serious risks to Canadian security, Ottawa will also have the opportunity to limit such risks and prevent a spillover effect vis-à-vis effective humanitarian initiatives in the region. In this panel, we will primarily investigate Canada’s Middle East Strategy’s degree of success in providing humanitarian aid to the region. Secondly, the panel will discuss what programs and initiatives Canada can introduce to further build on the renewed strategy. and more specifically, how Canada can utilize its policy instruments to more effectively deal with the increasing influx of refugees from the Middle East.
Panelists:
Erica Di Ruggiero: Director of Centre for Global Health, University of Toronto
Reyhana Patel: Head of Communications & Government Relations, Islamic Relief Canada
Amir Barmaki: Former Head of UN OCHA in Iran
Catherine Gribbin: Senior Legal Advisor for International and Humanitarian Law, Canadian Red Cross
In 2016, Canada launched an ambitious five-year “Middle East Engagement Strategy” (2016-2021), committing to investing CA$3.5 billion over five years to help establish the necessary conditions for security and stability, alleviate human suffering and enable stabilization programs in the region. In the latest development, during the meeting of the Global Coalition against ISIS, Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau announced more than $43.6 million in Peace and Stabilization Operations Program funding for 11 projects in Syria and Iraq.
With Canada’s Middle East Engagement Strategy expiring this year, it is time to examine and evaluate this massive investment in the Middle East region in the past five years. More importantly, the panel will discuss a principled and strategic roadmap for the future of Canada’s short-term and long-term engagement in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Ferry de Kerckhove: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Egypt
– Dennis Horak: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
– Chris Kilford: Former Canadian Defence Attaché in Turkey, member of the national board of the Canadian International Council (CIC)
– David Dewitt: University Professor Emeritus, York University
While the United States continues to pull back from certain regional conflicts, reflected by the Biden administration’s decision to halt American backing for Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen and the expected withdrawal from Afghanistan, US troops continue to be stationed across the region. Meanwhile, Russia and China have significantly maintained and even expanded their regional activities. On one hand, the Kremlin has maintained its military presence in Syria, and on the other hand, China has signed an unprecedented 25-year strategic agreement with Iran.
As the global power structure continues to shift, it is essential to analyze the future of the US regional presence under the Biden administration, explore the emerging global rivalry with Russia and China, and at last, investigate the implications of such competition for peace and security in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Dmitri Trenin: Director of Carnegie Moscow Center
– Joost R. Hiltermann: Director of MENA Programme, International Crisis Group
– Roxane Farmanfarmaian: Affiliated Lecturer in International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa, University of Cambridge
– Andrew A. Michta: Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at Marshall Center
– Kelley Vlahos: Senior Advisor, Quincy Institute
The security architecture of the Middle East has undergone rapid transformations in an exceptionally short period. Notable developments include the United States gradual withdrawal from the region, rapprochement between Israel and some GCC states through the Abraham Accords and the rise of Chinese and Russian regional engagement.
With these new trends in the Middle East, it is timely to investigate the security implications of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy. In this respect, we will discuss the Biden team’s new approach vis-à-vis Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The panel will also discuss the role of other major powers, including China and Russia in shaping this new security environment in the region, and how the Biden administration will respond to these powers’ increasing regional presence.
Panelists:
– Sanam Vakil: Deputy Director of MENA Programme at Chatham House
– Denise Natali: Acting Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies & Director of the Center for Strategic Research, National Defense University
– Hassan Ahmadian: Professor of the Middle East and North Africa Studies, University of Tehran
– Abdulaziz Sagar: Chairman, Gulf Research Center
– Andrew Parasiliti: President, Al-Monitor
