WASHINGTON (TNND) — The Pentagon is shifting its tone toward China in its new defense strategy after years of heightening tensions with Beijing over its military and economic build-up as the Trump administration swings focus closer to home and the Western Hemisphere.

The 34-page document released on Friday reflects the administration’s changing defense priorities to the homeland and Western Hemisphere, while pushing allies to take more of the burden for fending off bad actors like Russia and North Korea. It criticized allies in Europe and Asia for relying on the U.S. for their defense and formalized a goal of reducing the role American troops play in Europe, the Korean peninsula and Middle East.

“Although Europe remains important, it has a smaller and decreasing share of global economic power,” the document says. “Although we are and will remain engaged in Europe, we must — and will — prioritize defending the U.S. Homeland and deterring China.”

The strategy has already been signaled through administration officials’ comments and the national security strategy released in December, where the document also had sharp criticisms of European allies and moved focus closer to America’s borders. It was a dramatic shift since the document first started being published during the Reagan administration when foreign threats were the top priority.

“This is the first one that has prioritized national security in the Western Hemisphere as the No. 1 issue. That's what makes the document so different.” said Javed Ali, a former counterterrorism official in the federal government and associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan.

It is a reversal from the first Trump administration’s defense strategy from 2018 that described China as a “revisionist” power trying to obtain “veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.” In the 2022 report released during the Biden administration, China was described as the most significant competitor to the U.S. over its claims to territory in the South China Sea and aggressive behavior toward other allies.

Now, the U.S. views China as a settled power that needs to be deterred from dominating the U.S. and its allies.

“This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle,” the document says. “Rather, a decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under, is possible.”

The strategy document does not mention Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its own and has threatened to take by force if necessary. America has given military support to Taiwan for years and previous administrations have been more direct about coming to its aid if China were to attack.

Trump has not said whether he would step in to defend Taiwan if it was invaded by China, but the administration recently approved a record $11 billion weapons package for the island nation. The strategy also emphasizes a directive for the military to “erect a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain,” a band of islands including Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.

“Not for purposes of dominating, humiliating, or strangling China. To the contrary, our goal is far more scoped and reasonable than that: It is simply to ensure that neither China nor anyone else can dominate us or our allies,” it says.

The Chinese military recently conducted drills near Taiwan rehearsing a quarantine of the island that prompted warnings from Japan about “highly provocative” operations. Recent dustups over China’s training drills near the region have also prompted Japan to step up cooperation with South Korea.

Included in the Pentagon’s strategy is to “open a wider range of military-to-military communications with the People’s Liberation Army” to avoid more confrontations and cool tensions.

“The speed, scale, and quality of China’s historic military buildup speak for themselves, including forces designed for operations in the Western Pacific as well as those capable of reaching targets much farther away.”

The strategy highlights a less confrontational approach to China as the U.S. tries to engage Beijing through diplomacy and trade deals while concerns about a future of invasion of Taiwan lurk.

“It's not about preparing for war. It's more about building up a defensive capability and engaging with China through economic ties and diplomacy,” Ali said.

Whether Beijing is willing to engage on discussions to de-escalate those strains remains to be seen.

Tensions were high at the start of Trump’s second term with a trade war after he rolled out high tariffs on all Chinese imports that resulted in an escalatory tit-for-tat that brought levies into triple digits and effectively halted trade between the world’s two largest economies. Tariffs have been reduced amid a series of trade discussions, though there are still delicate issues left to resolve like U.S. access to critical minerals and export bans on advanced chips to power artificial intelligence.

Trump is expected to meet with Xi in April where the two leaders are expected to discuss a variety of issues from fentanyl to trade and the future of Taiwan. Trump also thanked Xi last week for signing off on a deal to keep TikTok operational in the U.S. through a sale to American investors.