The incompatibility of the NDAA and the National Security Strategy.
The Trump Administration recently released an extremely promising National Security Strategy (NSS)—but the same cannot be said about the proposed FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The House and Senate’s compromise NDAA, which was published on Sunday night, appears to be in tension with the goals of the NSS. While the National Security Strategy prioritizes a hemispheric defense of the American homeland, the NDAA locks decision makers into maintaining unnecessary overseas troop levels. Despite the stated aims of the NSS, Congress seems to be looking to safeguard the national security priorities and infrastructure of previous eras.
Restricting the drawdown of troops stationed overseas, increasingly murky foreign entrenchment through legally binding efforts to sell arms, and dubious clauses requiring congressional approval at every turn all serve to bind the commander in chief’s hands. All of this reeks of a shadowy order desperately trying to maintain the status quo at the expense of the will of the people who elected Donald Trump in 2024.
This cannot stand.
Section 1249 of the NDAA asserts that U.S. forces in Europe cannot drop below 76,000 for more than 45 days without presidential certifications to Congress. This is supposed to ensure that troop reductions present no threat to NATO partners or U.S. national security. (Absurdly, the bill requires the U.S. to consult with every NATO ally, and even “relevant non-NATO partners.”) But stripping the president of essential discretion through ludicrous legislative roadblocks categorically subverts his authority under the Constitution.
Section 1255 states that troop levels cannot dip below 28,500 in the Korean Peninsula, nor can wartime operational control be transferred, without an identical trial by fire of congressional approvals and national-security certifications. Shifting our military focus to our own backyard was a stated goal of the NSS. If this vision is to be implemented, Congress cannot serve as a bureaucratic middleman that hinders deployment flexibility through pedantic checklists.
Americans need to understand that the NDAA would obstruct the execution of President Trump’s agenda. As written, it functions as a deliberate statutory barrier to presidential decision-making. This denotes a redistribution of war powers from the elected executive to a sprawling and unaccountable institutional structure.
The NDAA represents what Americans refer to as the “Deep State,” a combination of entrenched interests, committees, lobbies, and bureaucracies that value continuity over strategy and reform.
This continuity is evident when one analyzes the policies that the House and Senate did not include in the compromise version of the NDAA. The Senate’s initial NDAA included a section prohibiting the use of DEI in service academy admissions decisions, which Congress later removed. That section would have codified into law the exclusive use of merit when admitting applicants, eliminating the possibility of exploitation via racial profiling. Although flaccid anti-DEI policies exist in the final bill, they stop short of fulfilling President Trump’s vision for a military that wholly eschews considerations of race and sex.
As written, the NDAA gives a future Democratic president the opportunity to reintroduce woke indoctrination in the military with the stroke of a pen. And laws favoring DEI at our nation’s most vital institutions could resurface on a whim, using typical “diversity is our strength” platitudes.
Despite being a defense bill, the NDAA is more aptly characterized as the legal cornerstone of America’s global initiative. No matter how reassuring the National Security Strategy sounds, its intended effects will not materialize given the subversive nature of the current version of the NDAA. Strategy should mold institutions, not vice versa.
Washington, D.C., parlance would tell you the NDAA is “must-pass” legislation. This is, of course, not a description of a legal or constitutional reality. But even if the NDAA is “must pass,” no one says it is “must sign.”
The National Security Strategy seeks to implement the demands of voters, whereas the National Defense Authorization Act pursues bureaucratic inertia. This is why the Trump Administration cannot, in good conscience, approve this bill. Our nation’s liberation from stagnation, mediocrity, and foreign quagmires is at stake—and time is running out.
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