For years, the United States has tried to put China front and center, from the rebalance to more recent calls for prioritization. Yet it has never truly reconciled the limits of a one-major-war force with the reality of a multi-theater, multi-rival world—let alone a world in which U.S. rivals across different regions have growing incentives to support one another.
In February 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the Pentagon to reexamine the 2026 budget request, which has been drafted but not sent to Congress, to ensure that it reflected the Trump administration’s priorities. Specifically, he tasked the military departments and defense agencies with identifying lower-priority activities totaling 8 percent of their projected annual budgets from 2026 to 2030. These lists of potential cuts will create a substantial pool of money available for potential reallocation.
Today, states are pursuing an array of supposedly "disruptive" or "game-changing" technologies that could alter how they organize, train, equip, and employ their forces, including their nuclear forces. The 2022 National Defense Strategy emphasized the link between some of these technologies and the risk of nuclear use, noting that "a wide range of new or fast-evolving technologies and applications are complicating escalation dynamics and creating new challenges for strategic stability."
On March 28, 2023, CSBA Senior Fellow and Director of Research and Studies, Dr. Evan B. Montgomery, testified before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services' Subcommittee on Strategic Forces regarding regional nuclear deterrence.
Following nearly two decades of counterinsurgency in the Greater Middle East, the United States Department of Defense finds itself looking to the Cold War for lessons on how to adapt to the operational challenges presented by China and Russia. To modernize its platforms, doctrine, and force structure to compete with and defeat 21st-century great power competitors, the military services and the Department of Defense as a whole are seeking to promote conceptual, organizational, and technological innovation within the U.S. armed forces.
Changing security dynamics on the Korean Peninsula are prompting the Republic of Korea (ROK) to reexamine its defense strategy and adjust its military capabilities and investment priorities. North Korea’s growing missile arsenal and asymmetric defense strategy, along with China’s rapid military modernization, present unique challenges to South Korean and American efforts to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the broader region.