Although there are any number of sentences to be found in the National Security Strategy that point toward policy continuities with past administrations, the document’s emphasis on the utility of soft power, on domestic renewal, and on issues unrelated to traditional national security concerns suggests a turning away from what have been the essential elements of America’s longstanding approach to security matters. No one in the administration will admit as much, but the body language of how the administration is treating the likes of Iran, its lack of attention to our allies, and its unwillingness to even mention the word “China” as being of possible security concern all point toward a policy of strategic retrenchment. The administration’s plans for defense spending give credence to this shift.
That's it, really. You can read continuity in the document. But you should not be comforted by that. By throwing in tradionally non-defense issues, the new national security strategy document dilutes the traditional defense issues that are continued, thus weakening the traditional defense issues that go into national security.
And this approach allows the administration to address those non-defense issues and ignore or downplay the traditional defense issues while claiming they are focused on national security.
Ultimately, this is just part of the effective adoption by the Obama administration of a Medium Term Rule just as the British in 1919 first adopted (and then continued for far too long) a Ten Year Rule that based defesne spending on the assumption that no real threat would arise for a decade.
