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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today led a hearing on the Department of Defense’s 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS). Chairman Wicker questioned Elbridge Colby, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, on how the NDS will shape U.S. defense policy.  

Read Chairman Wicker’s hearing opening statement as delivered. 

The committee meets this morning to discuss the 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS). 

This NDS comes at a time of upheaval as the Axis of Aggressors seeks to undermine an American-led 21^st century.  Last month marked the beginning of the fifth year of Vladimir Putin’s ruthless war of choice in Europe.  Then, over the weekend, President Trump rightfully struck Iran to end forever the Ayatollahs’ quest to use both conventional and nuclear weapons to threaten America and our allies.  And of course, China’s massive military buildup casts a pall across the Indo-Pacific.  Beijing looks to dominate Asia and supplant U.S. leadership around the world.   

Given such threats, the importance of this NDS cannot be overstated.  These uncertain times call for strong U.S. leadership, a crystal-clear articulation of the threats we face, and a prioritized set of achievable objectives for how we will defend our interests. This was the approach we saw in President Trump’s first defense strategy – a consequential document that focused on homeland defense, acknowledged the return of great power competition, and correctly identified China as the pacing threat.   

Our witness this morning, Mr. Elbridge Colby, the department’s Undersecretary for Policy, helped lead that first process, and for that, he deserves considerable credit. Thank you, sir. The first Trump administration’s realistic approach to China policy enabled a long overdue departure from the wishful hope of previous administrations, who sought to view China as a strategic partner rather than the enemy it clearly is.  There are certainly parallels between the 2018 and 2026 versions of the NDS: for example, the prioritization of homeland defense, the identification of China as the pacing threat, and the importance of equitable burden sharing with our allies.  I welcome the consistency in these themes, as the underlying concerns have only worsened in the intervening years.   

Unfortunately, these common themes also highlight some flaws in the new 2026 NDS.  Principally, I believe this strategy document fails to acknowledge the global nature of the threat posed by the Axis of Aggressors working together. The 2026 NDS rightly makes clear that our adversary’s best strategy is to act in “a coordinated or opportunistic fashion across multiple theaters.”  However, it nonetheless draws the wrong conclusion about what to do about this.  It is no secret that we are currently unprepared to compete against the Axis of Aggressors. We need to do more and the administration proposes to do more. But right now, we lack the industrial capacity to alter this condition in the near term.  This committee has spent considerable time working with Secretary Feinberg and Secretary Duffey.  Together, we are supercharging our defense industrial base to meet the production demands for this type of competition and to build a more resilient American economy in the process.  We have much work to do.  Particularly, we must continue incorporating new weapons and new companies with advanced manufacturing capabilities that can contribute rapidly.  

Until we fix our industrial base, we need to get more creative in how we support our allies and partners, particularly when they represent the front line of our adversaries’ aggression.  The president issued a call to arms to our allies and partners, urging them to spend 5% of their GDP on defense.  That call has been remarkably successful, congratulations Mr. President, but any clear-eyed assessment of the military situation in Europe makes it clear we cannot fully delegate the Russia problem to our European allies.  In my view, the NDS essentially ignores the implications of the war in Ukraine to U.S. security.  The document downplays both America’s interest in denying Putin the benefits of his criminal aggression and the threat his success would pose to U.S interests in Europe, should he be successful. Currently, Europeans are paying for every weapon that America is supplying.  I do not see a concerted strategy to get new types of weapons to Ukraine, particularly those weapons that are not in high demand for U.S. military forces at the present time.  I think, for example, of programs like the low-cost ERAM cruise missile. We have got to do better there. 

The NDS also says little about our vital interests in the Middle East.  This seems out of step with repeated military actions to deal with the ongoing threat of Iran.  President Trump is demonstrating that we can and will do more than just one thing.  He is exercising limited but decisive force in order to ensure that the region, and the world, will not be threatened by a nuclear Iran or its terrorist proxies.  And of course, the president’s National Security Strategy proclaims that the U.S. will reassert its preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.  But the 2026 NDS does not describe how the department will achieve this objective. It does not describe what this enhanced focus means in terms of force posture or investment priorities. The reality is that President Trump’s actions in the Western Hemisphere, the Middle East, and Europe are inextricably linked to our overall struggle against the Chinese Communist Party.  Tailored use of military force and support in Venezuela, Iran, and Ukraine has thwarted Chinese and Russian objectives and denied their access to resources and technology.  

The 2026 NDS articulates the president’s vision for our allies and partners to step up and get far more serious about their defense.  And they are doing just that and I applaud that.  But we cannot ask our allies to do more for us while we do less for them.  In that regard, this NDS signals a diminished intent to deter existential threats posed by Russia and North Korea.  So, we need more clarity on how America’s military will continue to support our allies in new and different ways in deterring these threats.   

Another specific critique of the strategy is that it, in effect, obfuscates the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party, and they are our pacing threat. Granted, Beijing remains the focal point.  The strategy is clear in its focus on what it describes as the “First Island Chain,” this seems to be a way of talking about Taiwan without mentioning Taiwan.  But the unclassified NDS does not mention Taiwan at all, even though the National Security Strategy directly identifies it.  This seems to be an example of what the NDS calls a “strong but not unnecessarily confrontational” posture toward Beijing.  This equivocation has real consequences as it risks misinterpretation of U.S. support for this island’s democracy. This perception is furthered by our failure to execute previously authorized and appropriated assistance to Taiwan. Authorized and appropriated by the Congress and signed into law. 

Finally, and perhaps most troubling of all, the NDS is nearly silent on the role of nuclear weapons.  The U.S. faces an unprecedented set of strategic threats.  They are worsening every day as we move toward a world with Russia and now China as nuclear peers.  The lack of any significant statement on these developments raises the question are we ignoring the existential dangers that China, Russia, and North Korea pose to our way of life.    

On the other hand, there is much to like in this strategy—particularly its priorities and emphasis.  But I still believe we have much work to do.  I believe we must be clear-eyed about the long-term threats of the Chinese Communist Party.  And I think we need to take the president’s successful peace-through-strength approach used in the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere and apply it to Europe and Asia.  We should do that as we give our allies and partners better clarity on the appropriate role of U.S. forces in the future.   

It is my hope that, moving forward, we can work together to build and implement a living strategy.  It must meet the demands of the moment, particularly as we seek to execute a $1.5 trillion budget that will rebuild our military for a generation.