Australia’s 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS) marks a quiet but consequential shift from its predecessor, fundamentally redefining the political objective underpinning the Australian Defence Force’s five key tasks. While the 2024 strategy focused on maintaining a rules-based order, the 2026 NDS prioritises active contribution to a favourable regional balance of power.
Defence of Australia’s interests remains centred on protecting its economic connection to the world but is now framed in terms of shaping regional power dynamics. To that end, the strategy elevates three interlocking drivers: the Australia–US alliance, the role and presence of the United States in the region, and Australia’s strategy of denial. These changes signal a shift in how the government defines the role of Defence – not as a supporter of an abstract rules-based order but as an active participant in shaping the balance of power. This change will have implications well beyond force structure, raising fundamental questions about how Defence contributes to that balance and Australia’s China strategy.
Australia’s elevation of the balance of power over the rules-based order in the NDS should be understood in the context of US national security policy, which has more explicitly shifted toward a realist view of the world layered on top of the existing liberal framework. The rules-based order rests on the assumption that institutions, norms and cooperation can shape state behaviour and deliver stability. In contrast, realism is built on the idea that in an anarchic system, power, not rules, underwrites the order.
The return to a focus on balance of power, first in US strategy and now in Australia’s, does not signal an abandonment of rules and norms. Protecting them remains an ADF task, and institutions and norms still matter. Rather, it’s a recognition that the rules alone cannot shape China’s behaviour as regional power dynamics shift. As the balance tilts, so too does the authority and strength of the rules that once sustained it. In the same regard, future cooperation will shift away from shared values to common interests.
The US’s recent national security and defence strategies make explicit that a balance of power is now the organising principle for managing competition with Xi Jinping’s China. The US National Security Strategy (NSS), released in November 2025, identifies this as a central objective, outlining that ‘the United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests’. It commits Washington to working with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries to thwart ambitions that threaten joint interests.
This is particularly important in the Indo-Pacific, the epicentre of economic and geopolitical competition and a region accounting for nearly half of global GDP on a purchasing-power parity basis. The stakes are explicitly economic: one-third of global shipping transits the South China Sea, making open sea lines of communication central to US prosperity and, by extension, its security. In this framing, maintaining US economic and technological pre-eminence, alongside a favourable conventional military balance, is the surest way to deter and prevent large-scale conflict.
To be clear, this US NSS is not simply a call for greater burden-sharing; it’s also a reconfiguration of how the US generates a deterrence posture against China. It begins with a military capable of deterring conflict over Taiwan by preserving overmatch and denying aggression along the First Island Chain. This challenge is not solely for the US. It expects regional allies to invest in capabilities that support their own and collective defence, to deter aggression, and to provide greater military access to ports and facilities.
Together, this underwrites a denial-based posture, makes it harder for China to seize Taiwan and provides greater options to deter attempts to control the South China Sea in ways that could threaten a vital global artery of commerce. Further to this, the US seeks to prevent conflict through enhanced posture in the Indo-Pacific, a revitalised defence industrial base and greater allied military investment to achieve long-term advantage in economic and technological competition.
The 2026 US National Defense Strategy operationalises the NSS. It prioritises the deterrence of China and defines success as preventing any state from achieving regional dominance by setting the military conditions for a balance of power that enables a ‘decent peace’. It’s explicit about the challenge posed by the speed, scale and quality of China’s historic and opaque military buildup, and Beijing’s persistent behaviour that is antithetical to US and allied interests.
To do so, the US will ‘build, posture, and sustain a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain,’ reinforcing deterrence by denial so that any attempt at aggression is judged likely to fail. It will also ‘urge and enable key regional allies and partners to do more for our collective defense,’ contributing in ways directly relevant to that mission and strengthening the balance of power through a shared, denial-based approach.
Australia’s 2026 NDS reveals that it has absorbed US strategic logic, reflecting a shift in the international system and corresponding evolution in Australia’s strategic direction. Beginning with the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, Australia has continually sharpened its focus on a region marked by large-scale military build-up and rising tensions. In the 2023 review, it introduced a strategy of denial to prevent coercive use of force to achieve dominance. This development was key to strengthening the ADF’s ability to deny an adversary the freedom to act militarily to coerce Australia without being held at risk. The US alliance remained central, with Australia seeking to shape the region through coordinated use of national power and increased defence capability. This was Australia’s contribution to the strategic balance of power.
The 2024 NDS elevated deterrence but narrowed Australia’s role in shaping the region and reduced the centrality of the US alliance. It instead emphasised links between denial and deterrence, and closer international partnerships – not the US alliance – to ensure a regional balance.
Australia’s 2026 NDS puts a finer point on the central role of the US in the region, and on the alliance’s contribution to Australia’s security. It minces no words, saying ‘any effective balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific will require the presence and role of the United States.’ The strategy of denial is refined to support regional security and prosperity by contributing to a favourable regional strategic balance, guiding Defence’s contribution within a broader national defence effort. The NDS sharpens the objective: to deter threats to Australia’s interests and regional stability through credible capability, capacity and resolve to hold adversary forces at risk. This is to be achieved in concert with the US and key partners, with Defence making a direct contribution to the regional balance through collective effort.
The addition of the new concept of Australia’s ‘self-reliance’ and signalled responsibility for its own security to its key ally further reflects the significant shift in the security environment, requiring credible military power to ensure defence in crisis or conflict even when ally or partner support is limited. Australia’s role in shaping its environment is to be reinforced through investment in sovereign defence industrial capability. In practice, the 2026 NDS aligns Australia with the US approach: a denial-based posture that contributes to collective defence, strengthening of regional deterrence, and support of a balance of power in which no state can dominate or coerce others without unacceptable cost.
In relation to China, what does Australia seek to achieve through the 2026 NDS? The nature of the threat is more evident: Beijing’s strategy is shifting the regional balance of power in ways that threaten Australia’s freedom and prosperity, that of its neighbours, and the US’s position as a Pacific great power. As a middle power, Australia is positioning itself within a US-led network of allies and partners to collectively balance China. This approach accepts that Beijing’s power and influence will continue to grow as it competes with Washington and other countries for regional primacy.
This is competition – a persistent and long-term struggle between nations pursing incompatible interests without necessarily engaging in conflict. Tilting the balance requires sustained effort to shape where and how that competition plays out, in areas that favour US and allied interests or undermine an adversary’s ability to coerce in pursuit of its own interests.
The theory of victory for the 2026 NDS is clear: contribute to a US-led counter-balancing coalition, build capability, and deepen partnerships to support Australian and regional deterrence, defence and security.