Reflections on Trump’s National Security Strategy

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Last week, the Trump administration rolled out its long-awaited National Security Strategy (NSS). I read it, and you should, too. It’s safe to say we now have President Donald Trump’s clearest assessment to date on the United States’ international interests, the hierarchy of those interests, and the changing world order at large.

Stylistically, the document is concise, written in lay terms, and imbued with Trump and his teams’ distinct rhetorical flourishes. It marks a notable departure from the more anodyne manifestos of past administrations. But the real break with the status quo is substantive, not stylistic, and acutely so.

This strategy is not an aspirational wish list, or as I put it earlier this week at a CFR media briefing, “a Christmas tree document”—that is, an interagency document where every department and regional expert ensures that their issue or area is mentioned, leading to a document that can read as more aspirational than strategic. Indeed, Trump’s finger points squarely at “laundry lists of wishes or desired end states” and “vague platitudes” of the post-Cold War era, which, in the administration’s telling, lacked any semblance of pragmatism and prioritization, not to mention a sense of “what we should want.”

From the outset, the document defines what strategy actually means—underscoring the importance of clear linkages between ends and means, national interests and capabilities, and stark tradeoffs inherent to policymaking. The mark of the restrainer camp—those concerned with the consequences of a United States stretched too thin—is clearly evident (although theirs is not the school of thought represented in the narrative). The strategy lays bare the president’s own deep skepticism of American hegemony, questioning if, “permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country.” In place of hegemony, the administration proposes a strategic design that is equal parts muscular and restrained, pragmatic yet ideological.

A few elements stood out and bear closer scrutiny.

The first is our own backyard—the Western Hemisphere—now subject, for the first time in writing, to the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” The strategy demands pliant and aligned governments in Central and South America to stem the flow of migrants and drugs, the exclusion and expulsion of hostile powers from the political sphere and strategic assets (think, ports and minerals). This doctrine is already having a direct impact on the continent, as illustrated by Venezuela. Yet it will have a global impact too, as enforcing the Trump Corollary will require the reallocation of resources, both political and military, from other regions—the Indo-Pacific, European, and Middle Eastern theaters—to this one. Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile defense project will likewise impose additional demands on the United States’ defense budget and defense industrial base in the name of homeland defense, not power projection.

The second is the lack of focus on great power competition. China is mentioned by name for the first time about two-thirds of the way through the document. In President Biden’s NSS, China was front and center. In Trump’s new strategy, there is no direct mention of China’s push to upend the current balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, only indirect warnings about the risk of losing assured access to Taiwanese semiconductors and the first island chain. In fairness, issues of predatory state-directed subsidies and industrial strategies, unfair trading practices, grand-scale intellectual property theft and industrial espionage—and even threats against our supply chains that risk U.S. access to critical resources, including minerals and rare earth elements—are highlighted. But they’re often mentioned without China’s name attached to them, despite the fact that China is far and away the biggest offender. These are the fundamental issues at the heart of the U.S.-China economic relationship, and yet, for now, these have largely been left off the table. Perhaps they have been deemed intractable. And Russia is seen less as a revisionist power than as an issue the Europeans have an existential concern about, which could lead to war. The United States is not a party to such a conflict, but rather a mediator charged with preventing it.

Third is the administration’s call for a reset in Transatlantic relations. Europe is discussed in explicitly ideological terms, unlike any other region, with the strategy urging a restoration of “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity” as a critical element of any continued partnership. The document frames Europe’s internal politics as the key variable: it indicts European Union migration policies for “transforming the continent,” denounces transnational regulations that “undermine political liberty and sovereignty,” and warns of censorship regimes that “suppress political opposition” and erode free speech. Trump charges that the future of the alliance hinges on a sea change in Europe’s domestic trajectory, one that brings its governing practices into closer alignment with the priorities of the American right. At the same time, the administration demands a structural shift in Europe’s role within the alliance system, insisting that European states take “primary responsibility for [their] own defense,” abandon the expectation of an ever-expanding NATO, and meet the new standard of dramatically higher defense spending. While there are elements of truth to Trump’s critique of our European friends (i.e., regulatory overreach), such overt meddling in their domestic politics may prove to be counterproductive.

Fourth, the strategy represents the ultimate triumph of economic—or commercial—interests and tools. Openly transactional economic dealmaking is a key organizing principle for U.S. foreign policy under Trump 2.0. The administration remains keen to leverage market access and economic power in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe to achieve its strategic goals, be they economic or otherwise. In this regard, however, the strategy pays short shrift to the tradeoffs of a global trade war and its impact both on our partners’ willingness to work with us on other issues and on American consumers and workers dependent on U.S. imports and exports.

Fifth, it’s worth taking stock of how the strategy contradicts some administration actions taken over the past year. Consider the stated need for the United States to have “unrivaled soft power.” Yet, the administration has dramatically reduced foreign development assistance and shuttered the operations of the long-time broadcaster Voice of America without really standing up alternative means of exercising soft power. It also calls for the country to invest in “emerging technologies and basic science, to ensure our continued prosperity, competitive advantage, and military dominance for future generations.” At the same time, it has cut funding for R&D at government supported research labs and universities. This contradiction at the center of his goal for a new golden age of innovation isn’t a new one; perhaps, this broader articulation of the administration’s strategy will make it possible to see some course correction.

Finally, the strategy reveals an administration preference for stability, notwithstanding actions that have disrupted many of the drivers of that stability over the last eighty years. Having rejected “the ill-fated concept of global domination,” it embraces a world in which stability is maintained by a “balance of power” and the logic of “flexible realism,” which accepts the need to work with states whose systems differ “widely from our traditions and histories.” This framework extends to technology, where the administration invokes a kind of strategic interdependence—pairing its call for American innovation that “drives the world forward” with policies aimed at proliferating advanced capabilities not only to allies but increasingly to geopolitical swing states and even countries of concern, such as China, to which Trump has just approved the export of previously restricted artificial intelligence chips. The strategy is pragmatic, but it risks encouraging revisionist powers to carve out spheres of influence under the banner of balance, and it carries an ironic deference to the value of interdependence—the very paradigm Trump sought to denounce and made moves to partially dismantle in his first term with a slew of export controls and sanctions designed to decouple the U.S. and Chinese technology ecosystems.

Taking a step back, National Security Strategy documents do not always turn out to dictate policy. As the great strategist Mike Tyson once opined, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” There is much to take issue with regarding this strategy, but I appreciate its clarity and candor in acknowledging that foreign policy is inherently bound by limited means and structural changes in world order which cannot be ignored. Only time will tell if Trump’s diagnoses are correct, so too his priorities and means of pursuing them. But nobody will be able to say his designs were opaque. The quiet part has been said out loud and is being acted upon with great haste.

Let me know what you think about the NSS and what this column should cover next by replying to [email protected].