A sailor fires a .50-caliber machine gun aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Gridley during live-fire training in the South China Sea, Nov. 2, 2025. (Timothy Meyer/U.S. Navy)
The latest U.S. defense policy signals that Congress expects deeper cooperation with America’s friends and allies across the Indo-Pacific to counter an increasingly assertive China, according to defense experts.
The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which funds the Defense Department at $901 billion, includes a five-year Strategy to Strengthen Multilateral Defense in the Indo-Pacific. The amendment was co-sponsored by Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. The NDAA was signed into law last month.
“Amid China’s escalating aggressive and coercive tactics, we must bolster security cooperation with our allies and partners to enhance multilateral deterrence,” Bennet said in a Sept. 9 news release announcing the amendment.
The Indo-Pacific strategy directs the defense secretary, in coordination with the secretary of state, to expand bilateral engagements into multilateral forums focused on defense planning and military exercises. It prioritizes acquiring and fielding long-range precision fires and integrated air defenses among U.S. allies and partners.
This emphasis “shows a strong desire to bring allies into the effort (and ideally, a future fight),” said Grant Newsham, a retired Marine colonel and senior researcher with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo.
“This recognizes what has been clear for at least a decade, i.e. that the United States (and U.S. forces) cannot by themselves ensure defense and stability in the region, owing to the rapid and impressive growth in (China’s) military capabilities,” he told Stars and Stripes in an email Thursday.
The plan aligns with the 2025 National Security Strategy released in November, which calls on the U.S. to “build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain,” the Pentagon said in an unsigned statement emailed Friday by a spokesperson who handles Indo-Pacific affairs.
“In line with our priority of preserving peace through strength, we continue to strengthen our presence in the Western Pacific to ensure we are postured to maintain a favorable balance of power,” the statement said. “This will include efforts to deepen integration with allies — including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia — through training and exercises focused on realistically addressing the security environment in the Indo-Pacific region.”
The strategy identifies Australia, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea as key allies for expanding regional access, including by “enhancing interoperability, prepositioning munitions stockpiles” and increasing use of shared facilities.
Interoperability is a military term referring to allied forces’ ability to operate together using compatible training, equipment and procedures.
With the strategy, Congress is “reasserting its constitutional role in foreign policy” by keeping a focus on the power dynamics of the Indo-Pacific, said Mark Davidson, a former director of the U.S. Global Counterterrorism Communications Center.
“It is at the same time a signal to China and other potential adversaries that they should not mistake the current U.S. Administration’s penchant for unilateralism as a lessening of our national resolve in the Indo-Pacific,” Davidson, now a professor of international politics at Temple University’s Japan Campus, said in an email Thursday.
The Pentagon is also directed to improve command-and-control structures and expand information sharing and maritime domain awareness among allies and other regional partners.
The NDAA calls for expanding the scope, scale and frequency of multilateral military exercise, particularly in and around the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to unify self-governing Taiwan with the mainland, by force if necessary. China last month conducted another military exercise encircling the island that included missile launches.
The law also requires the defense secretary to submit any funding or policy changes by June 16 to congressional defense committees, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. An interim report is due by March 15, 2027.
