Overview
- The CRS says the 2025 National Security Strategy elevates Western Hemisphere priorities and economic competition with China, directing a readjusted global military presence and encouraging Europe to assume primary defense responsibility.
- CRS outlines potential DOD shifts that include reducing forces and prepositioned stocks in Europe and the Middle East, increasing presence in the Americas and Indo‑Pacific, and expanding homeland defense programs such as the Golden Dome for America.
- Procurement and infrastructure could tilt toward long‑range air and maritime capabilities, Western Pacific logistics, and new or reopened facilities in U.S. territories and the Caribbean, subject to congressional funding and oversight.
- Forbes reports U.S. coercive actions linked to the strategy, including seizure of the sanctioned tanker Skipper and a presidential declaration of a complete blockade on sanctioned oil tankers tied to Venezuela.
- The same reporting describes more than 20 U.S. strikes on suspected trafficking boats and an authorized CIA covert program inside Venezuela, while the strategy pledges to deny outside powers threatening footholds in the region and the Pentagon’s NDS remains unpublished.