Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where we have just learned that Chinese President Xi Jinping is a Manchester United supporter, and Rishi (also a fan of the club) isn’t sure how he feels about that. John, a Liverpool supporter, remains confident in his choices.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: what’s in the new U.S. National Defense Strategy, U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest threats toward Iran, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s back-and-forth with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Venezuela.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where we have just learned that Chinese President Xi Jinping is a Manchester United supporter, and Rishi (also a fan of the club) isn’t sure how he feels about that. John, a Liverpool supporter, remains confident in his choices.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: what’s in the new U.S. National Defense Strategy, U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest threats toward Iran, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s back-and-forth with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Venezuela.

The Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy (NDS), which was quietly released last Friday after months of delay, is a real doozy of a document. It begins by characterizing the “rules-based international order” as a “cloud-castle” abstraction, echoing U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent assertion that he doesn’t “need international law.” The NDS offers yet another window into the Trump administration’s unorthodox approach to defense and the ways in which it’s determined to divorce the United States from long-standing policies and norms.

Breaking from the tone and content of past versions, the new NDS reiterates the president’s “America First” philosophy and could easily be confused with one of Trump’s campaign speeches. It takes numerous jabs at prior administrations, accusing them of neglecting U.S. interests, while presenting the defense of the U.S. homeland and the Western Hemisphere as bigger priorities than issues such as countering China. The NDS also showers Trump with praise and features a number of photos of the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Trump is “courageously putting Americans first to truly make America great once again,” the NDS states. Notably, the new NDS was released the same week that a U.S. citizen was fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis amid Trump’s immigration crackdown—the second such deadly incident to occur in the Minnesota city in January.

Homeland defense. In a sign of how big of a priority immigration remains for Trump, the NDS zeroes in on border security as a vital objective for the military, stating that the Pentagon will “prioritize efforts to seal our borders, repel forms of invasion, and deport illegal aliens in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.”

“The U.S. military’s foremost priority is to defend the U.S. Homeland,” the NDS states.

The NDS also mentions the Golden Dome several times as the document outlines the Pentagon’s homeland defense priorities—though little progress has been made on the ambitious missile defense initiative that Trump first announced over a year ago.

The NDS, which complements the National........

© Foreign Policy