WASHINGTON — In the evolving landscape of Republican foreign policy, a new approach known as "prioritization" is gaining traction as a pragmatic middle ground between aggressive global primacy and outright restraint, according to analysts and recent strategic documents from the Trump administration.
The concept has become central to the 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS), which emphasizes organizing U.S. interests from most critical to least, aiming to address decades of overextension in global commitments. As Katherine Thompson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former senior official in the U.S. Defense Department, writes in a recent Foreign Policy analysis, the NDS marks a departure from past strategies that, despite acknowledging varying threat levels, often succumbed to the pitfalls of trying to do too much everywhere.
Thompson, who previously performed the duties of assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and served as national security advisor to Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on Capitol Hill, describes prioritization as a "third way" emerging within the GOP's national security factions. For the past two decades, she notes, Republican thinking was dominated by primacists who sought U.S. dominance in every region and institution. "Primacy sounds strong," Thompson writes. "No one likes the idea of the United States being second-rate. But by trying to do everything, the United States ultimately achieved little."
This overreach, according to the analysis, has left the U.S. facing resource constraints and diminished military readiness. The 2026 NDS captures this sentiment starkly:
"America emerged from the Cold War as the world’s most powerful nation by a wide margin. … But rather than husband and cultivate these hard-earned advantages, our nation’s post-Cold War leadership and foreign policy establishment squandered them."Thompson argues that such admissions highlight the need for a more focused strategy.
In contrast, the restrainer camp has long advocated for pulling back due to resource scarcity, inadequate burden-sharing in alliances, and the failures of interventionism. However, restrainers remained on the margins of power in the Republican Party until the rise of President Donald Trump's "America First" movement. Even then, Thompson points out, restraint alone proved insufficient as a full alternative to the established bipartisan foreign policy consensus.
Prioritization, as coined by Majda Ruge and Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations in a 2022 analysis, arose amid growing concerns over potential military conflict with China and the U.S.'s lack of preparedness to deter it. These worries intensified after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when the Biden administration and a bipartisan coalition, including Republican primacists, rapidly drew down U.S. arms inventories to aid Kyiv. Proponents of the approach argued that arming Ukraine would shift battlefield dynamics and end the war swiftly, rejecting the possibility of successful peace talks.
Prioritizers, however, introduced a note of caution. They warned that U.S. resources are finite, with a neglected defense industrial base unable to replenish stocks quickly enough amid the unprecedented aid volumes. Moreover, the U.S. is no longer adequately resourced or planned for simultaneous conflicts, leaving it vulnerable if tensions escalate with China in the Indo-Pacific. Thompson notes that while prioritization is sometimes simplistically labeled an "Asia First" policy, it encompasses broader strategic and political elements.
At its core, the approach embraces a flexible realism that avoids designating every region, alliance, or conflict as a vital U.S. interest. Unlike primacists, who resist downgrading any priority, prioritizers are willing to reassess and adjust engagements. For instance, the 2026 NDS describes Russia as "a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members," and a specific danger to U.S. homeland defense in domains like nuclear, undersea, space, and cyber capabilities. This represents a shift from the 2018 NDS under Trump, which treated long-term competition with China and Russia as roughly equal priorities.
Under this framework, Russia is not ignored, but the focus narrows to direct threats against the U.S., with European NATO allies taking greater responsibility for conventional deterrence on the continent. Thompson explains that such recalibration allows for more measured responses to the political environment, shielding policymakers from rigid ideological constraints.
Prioritizers also adopt a tough stance on alliance management, recognizing that shedding alliances entirely—as restrainers might advocate—or expanding them indiscriminately—as primacists prefer—is impractical. Instead, they push for enhanced burden-sharing to address free-riding. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth articulated this at the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, stating, "The United States wants ‘partners, not dependents,’" while emphasizing burden-sharing as a strategic imperative across alliances.
The NDS positions burden-sharing as essential to making prioritization workable in practice. Thompson highlights that prioritizers focus high-level engagement on key bilateral relationships with wealthy, influential allies in each region, such as Germany in Europe, Japan and South Korea in Asia, Israel in the Middle East, and Gulf states in the Persian Gulf. This means devoting less attention to secondary partners like Italy, the Baltic states, Thailand, or Iraq. If major allies increase their defense spending and develop credible capabilities, the U.S. can redirect its limited resources toward core interests.
Implementing this would require significant diplomatic effort—what Thompson calls "a huge task requiring a lot of tough love"—but could correct decades of alliance imbalances. The approach's political strength lies in its appeal across GOP factions, allowing collaboration with both primacists and restrainers on issue-specific bases. This flexibility is a key advantage in shaping the post-Trump national security framework, as internal Republican debates continue to evolve.
Elements of prioritization are already evident in Trump administration policies. These include advancing new defense spending standards for allies, limiting U.S. involvement in Iran during Operation Midnight Hammer—a 2025 military operation targeting Iranian nuclear sites—pursuing a swift, peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war, and reforming the defense industrial base. Both primacists and restrainers have found aspects to endorse in these initiatives, according to Thompson.
Yet challenges persist. Recent statements from Trump on Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland have introduced inconsistencies that could undermine the coherence of the prioritizer strategy. For example, Trump's off-the-cuff remarks about potential U.S. intervention in Venezuela have alarmed restrainers, while his renewed interest in acquiring Greenland has puzzled primacists focused on Asia. Officials in the White House have not immediately clarified these positions, leaving analysts to speculate on their alignment with the NDS.
Over the next three years of Trump's second term, which began in January 2025, Republican foreign policy experts will closely watch how the administration implements the NDS and the accompanying National Security Strategy. Success in executing prioritization could strengthen U.S. global posture by concentrating efforts on high-stakes areas like deterring China, while fostering more equitable alliances. Failure, however, risks reverting to the overextension that has plagued past strategies, potentially weakening America's position amid rising geopolitical tensions.
As the debate unfolds, figures like Thompson urge attention to this emerging consensus. "The country will certainly be stronger if it does" successfully prioritize, she concludes, underscoring the high stakes for U.S. security in an era of constrained resources and multiple threats.