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This Fox News opinion piece is largely centered around the following quote:

"it had been over a decade since we’ve had an official National Security Strategy to guide policy and spending priorities. But President Trump got it done in his first year in office."

The hyperlink in the above quote block was the actual hyperlink included in the article, which links a National Security Strategy Archive that features the Obama administration's 2015 National Security Strategy two lines below the most recent strategy from the Trump administration.

Is there some technicality I'm missing here? Otherwise this seems like blatant lying.

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    Technically, it appears to be correct. But realistically it's nonsense. National security is often a bilateral endeavor. Russia, Iran, North Korea and China all pose different security challenges to the US. So a blanket policy is bound to be deficient. The fact that Trump got the official policy done and Obama didn't doesn't seem like a good measure of national security strategy, even for budgeting purposes.
    – Michael Benjamin
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 2:24
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    Like the national security archive link you posted says (paraphrasing): The National Security Strategy Report is required by law, but the White House often submits it late or not at all.
    – Michael Benjamin
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 2:26
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    Nitpick: this is not a "Fox News Article". It's an opinion page (as you can see if you hover over URL)
    – user4012
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 13:17
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    Yes, most of Fox News is opinion.
    – user1530
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 15:01
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    As much fun as it is to make fun of fox news, I think @Michael_B nailed it. It's a technicality that should be submitted, that Fox news is calling a definitive policy. Similar to when the democrats didn't submit a budget during Obama's first few years of the presidency. It didn't really change anything, not submitting a budget. The budget just continued from the previous year, but people who didn't like democrats were able to say "we don't have a budget, how irresponsible".
    – userLTK
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 18:00

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Yes, it seems that the author of the article is just completely incorrect, as the Obama administration produced a national security strategy in 2010 and 2015.

However, we can't say whether or not they're lying, because it's possible they didn't do any basic research and thus aren't intentionally making a false statement.

National Security Strategies: The 2015 one was already mentioned in the question, and here is the one from 2010. So, even if we ignore the 2015 strategy, it had still been less than a decade since this version was made.

However, if we ignore both of the Obama administration's security strategies, then I suppose it had been more than a decade since the Bush administration's last one in 2006.

National Military Strategies: I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and assumed they meant National Military Strategy, rather than security, but it turns out that's 1 year more wrong. Here's the one from 2015, which includes the line "Since the last National Military Strategy was published in 2011...". The 2011 document can be found here.

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  • in the Fox News opinion section it seems possible that "we" might mean only Republicans.
    – user9389
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 16:04
  • @notstoreboughtdirt: I thought about that, which is why I included the one from 2006, but nothing in the article made me think the author's talking about anything except the government as a whole, or at least the executive branch of it.
    – Giter
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 16:58

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