It’s easy to open a spreadsheet, move numbers around, and call it a decision. That’s not strategy—that’s arithmetic. Strategy must ultimately be transformed into an operational plan—one that guides priorities, trade-offs, and execution. Without it, the numbers don’t mean much.

How Defense Strategy Has Shifted

The Two-War Standard

For decades, U.S. defense planning was anchored in the “two-war strategy”: the ability to fight in the Middle East while simultaneously managing another contingency in Asia. That construct drove massive budgets, even when both wars were unlikely to happen at once.

The Obama Pivot

President Obama deliberately moved away from the two-war standard toward selective engagement. What’s notable is the lack of resistance: Congress didn’t demand restoration, and when Republicans won back the White House in 2016, they accepted the new model.

Indo-Pacom and the Pacific Rebalance

Soon after, the “pivot to the Pacific” gained prominence. Renaming Pacific Command to Indo-Pacific Command reflected the centrality of China and the broader geography of competition. This “pacing threat” proved a suitable bogeyman against which budgets could be sustained. Never mind that U.S. tech companies were notably showing China how to build essential electronic components at favorable prices for U.S. customers.

Trump’s First vs. Second Terms

In his first term, President Trump did not reverse Obama’s strategic shift. In his second term, however, the emphasis has swung inward: scaling back expansive foreign aid, directing focus on the homeland and border, and asserting more presence in the Caribbean.

Recent events illustrate the shift. Navy ships and aircraft, operating under Title 10 military authorities, have been tasked with drug interdiction missions in the Caribbean—tasks traditionally performed by the Coast Guard under Title 14 law enforcement authority. This isn’t just a bureaucratic change. Rules of engagement have loosened, with a different threshold for what qualifies as a “threat.” Military force is being applied where policing once sufficed.

Budget Maneuvers & Emerging Strategy

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the development of a new National Defense Strategy, led by Under Secretary for Policy Elbridge Colby. Its release is near. A classified interim guidance memo, signed in March 2025, lays out early priorities: homeland defense, pacing threats in the Indo-Pacific, and burden-sharing with allies.

But here’s the key: no final, public strategy has been signed out. Multiple reports noted an August 31 deadline, but as of today, the new NDS remains under review. In the meantime, the administration is moving money first. Through the Office of Management and Budget, the White House is using rescissions of previously approved appropriations to claw back funds and realign budgets with emerging priorities—even before the strategy is publicly released.

The President is already using budget maneuvers—rescissions and reprogramming—to move money before a public strategy even exists. That’s the clearest sign that budgets follow strategy, even if strategy is only implied.

What This Means for Business

The same problem shows up in companies. Moving dollars on a spreadsheet doesn’t equal strategy—it’s just educated guesswork. And a strategy that never becomes an operational plan is little more than a slide deck.

Prospects often come to me saying, ‘We need lobbying help.’ More often, what they really need first is strategic clarity.

Alan Weiss’s Sentient Strategy makes the same point. Old-school SWOT analysis—fixating on external threats you can’t control—comes from post-industrial, military-style planning. The best companies instead focus on the environment they operate in and the consciousness of their actions.

That’s how I work with clients. I bring the discipline of military strategy and apply it through Weiss’s framework:

• Stop wasting energy on what you can’t control.
• Make decisions within your actual environment. No bogeymen or black swans.
• Translate strategy into operations—not just budget tables.

Capital is finite. Time is limited. Risk is inescapable. You can’t fund everything or pursue every idea. But you can make the smartest possible choices within the circumstances you face. That is strategy.

But are you making those choices with intent?

Strategy in Action

Across administrations and across industries, the lesson is the same: budget pruning, shaping and trimming cannot substitute for strategy. It can constrain, distort, or enable—but it cannot lead.

The leaders who succeed are the ones who define strategy first and then align their budgets accordingly. That’s why I begin engagements by gaining strategic clarity. When the spreadsheet finally comes out, the numbers don’t just add up—they tell a story.