Top Brass Raise Concerns on Possible Change in Strategy

Top military leaders—including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—have registered serious concerns with the Trump administration's planned change in defense strategy ahead of the meeting involving hundreds of generals and admirals, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and President Trump scheduled for Tuesday in Virginia. Current and former officials described the criticism to the Washington Post of the changes that would make the Pentagon's priority possible threats at home, reduce the focus on China, and diminish US activities in Europe and Africa.

A Pentagon spokesman would not say whether internal objections have been raised but said Hegseth has ordered up a strategy "that is laser focused on advancing President Trump's commonsense America First, Peace Through Strength agenda," adding, "This process is still ongoing." The objections reflect frustration with a new strategy that officers consider "myopic and potentially irrelevant, given the president's highly personal and sometimes contradictory approach to foreign policy," per the Post. After drafts of the plan were circulated, Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chairman who disagrees with deemphasizing the potential threat from China, gave Hegseth what one insider called "very frank feedback."