David E. Sanger

There's a page where it says we're going to readjust our global military presence to address these urgent threats in our own hemisphere because we live here.

Well, that may not sound like a big decision, but we've had a succession of American presidents, Democrats, Republicans alike, who have said, we are going to go focus on the Indo-Pacific because that's where our future is, that's where our trade is, that's where China and India are, right?

So this would basically put a halt to that kind of expansion and

in a world of limited resources and bring those forces back home.

It says that we're going to design a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes.

It says we're going to defeat cartels and put people at the border to do that.

and where necessary, the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades.

That's right.

It's giving a strategic rationale for things he has wanted to do and is doing anyway.

But it even goes beyond that, Natalie, because there are sections of it that explicitly say that to make this work, we're going to kick other powers out of our region.

And that's code word for China.

Because in the past, Natalie, when the U.S.

turned its attention away from the Western Hemisphere—

when his focus was on China and the Indo-Pacific.

The irony is that the Chinese were moving into Latin America and really made huge inroads there economically.

And that makes it all the stranger that the document doesn't really name China specifically.

as the big player in the region.

And there's been some debate about why that is.

Some people think it was the work of Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, who's trying to negotiate trade deals with China.

He doesn't want to particularly anger them before President Trump's scheduled visit to Beijing in April.