Pentagon’s Homeland First Shift Risks China’s World Order

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As Trump eyes internal deployments, defence debates expose a US strategy drifting away from allies and toward Beijing’s preferred world order.

By TRH Global Affairs Desk

NEW DELHI, September 8, 2025 — What if Washington’s grand pivot is no longer to Asia, but inwards? The prospect, raised by Finnish geopolitics commentator Sari Arho Havrén, is more than hypothetical.

She warns that if the Pentagon’s plan to prioritise homeland security over the China challenge is approved, it would mark nothing less than a “tectonic geopolitical shift.”

Havrén’s remarks cut against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s preoccupation with the homeland—deploying federal police to Democrat-held states under the banner of “restoring order.” If Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth endorses this inward-looking posture, it could set US strategy on a collision course not just with Beijing, but with Trump’s own long-declared China-critical stance.

Yet Havrén underscores the irony: the Pentagon’s persistence, particularly under strategist Elbridge Colby, in framing China as the “sole hegemon,” now risks creating the very order Beijing desires. By disentangling the US from foreign commitments, Washington may be offering the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) its greatest geopolitical prize.

The consequences, as Havrén sketches them, are staggering.

The First Island Chain would bend under China’s clout, opening Pacific passageways long checked by US presence.
Taiwan’s fate would tilt toward inevitable unification, absent credible US deterrence.
NATO, stripped of guarantees, would slide into paralysis—“a coma if not outright dismantlement.”
Europe, left exposed, would arm up short-term before drifting into Russia’s and China’s new Eurasian security framework.

In this scenario, the transatlantic alliance dies and the UN legitimises a China-led order where human rights recede and rule-making shifts east. US tech companies, once global standard-setters, would either conform to Beijing’s benchmarks or retreat to a shrinking homeland market.

For Havrén, the dominoes fall quickly: Russia redrawing European borders with Chinese backing; India standing aloof in self-styled neutrality; and a world where dissent finds no international forum.

The Pentagon’s “homeland first” strategy, then, is not merely a bureaucratic reshuffle. It signals the unravelling of the post-1945 order. While Trump readies federal deployments against domestic opponents, Havrén suggests Beijing is poised to rewrite the global rules. The danger, she warns, is not just America’s retreat—it is America’s unwitting hand in cementing China’s rise.

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