Media Briefing: Understanding President Trump’s National Security Strategy

CFR experts discuss the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy released on December 4 and what it means for the future of U.S. security.

Read CFR experts’ breakdown of the document.

CHANG: Welcome to today’s media briefing on the administration’s National Security Strategy.
The contents of this discussion and the Q&A will be on the record, and a recording of this will be posted online at the conclusion of the discussion along with the transcript. Our hope is today’s discussion will help illuminate both the what the NSS is and the why we need to take this document seriously.
This briefing is part of the Council’s ongoing mission to inform U.S. engagement with the world, work that also includes the analysis and resources posted across our channels from ForeignAffairs.com to CFR.org where you will find an experts brief posted soon after the NSS was released late on Thursday.
We have a robust lineup of Council experts for you today including some of those who contributed to that experts brief. So, with that, we’ll start off with today’s moderator, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy Rebecca Lissner.
LISSNER: Thanks so much, Ben, and thank you all for joining us this morning to discuss President Trump’s recently released National Security Strategy. 
As Ben mentioned, I’m Rebecca Lissner, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at CFR, and I’m particularly delighted to be with you today because I’ve spent the first year-plus of the last administration writing President Biden’s National Security Strategy. So this is a document that is near and dear to my heart, and I’m thrilled to be here today discussing it with all of you and with a number of my stellar colleagues.
So as many of you will have seen, last Thursday night the White House released an updated National Security Strategy. So I’ll just kick off the conversation here by highlighting three brief framing points and then turn it over to Mike, Will, Liana, David, and Paul to provide their own takes.
So the first thing that I think is important to recognize about this new National Security Strategy is that it is a radical departure from President Trump’s first National Security Strategy in 2017 in both substance and tone.
So many of you will recall that the 2017 NSS was actually an important moment in the strategic evolution of American foreign policy because it for the first time really emphasized great power competition with China and Russia as the guiding principle for American foreign policy, and in doing so it also ushered in a new bipartisan consensus that persisted in large part through the Biden administration.
But this National Security Strategy is entirely missing that strategic clarity and this national security, frankly, often veers more into the domain of polemic than policy. 
So gone is great power competition and instead—and David, I’m sure, will speak more to this—we see the goal of a mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing as the paramount objective of U.S.-China policy.
The Russia discussion is mealy mouthed at best, with strategic stability with Russia being the overriding concern and any discussion of Russia as a threat is refracted through the perception of Europe, which itself sees Russia as a threat. But the NSS does not itself take a stand on that question.
Meanwhile, Iran is dramatically downplayed, especially as compared with 2017. This NSS makes the case that in the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer the Iran threat is significantly diminished, and North Korea is entirely absent from the document in another contrast with 2017 which emphasized the DPRK threat.
Instead, as Will will speak to, the Western Hemisphere is elevated as America’s highest priority. Migration, so-called narco-terrorists, and U.S. dominance through a so-called Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine are all really the highlight principles for this National Security Strategy, as well as a strong signal of what’s to come, I think, in the National Defense Strategy which is forthcoming.
The second big point that is worth emphasizing is, in my view, this is the first MAGA National Security Strategy. So rather than Xi or Putin, this document actually reserves its greatest vitriol for globalist elites in the U.S. and especially in Europe, and I know Liana will speak to this as well.
But in doing so it really echoes Vice President Vance’s fairly shocking remarks at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year and makes the case that the greatest threat to Europe is civilizational erasure. The NSS calls for the U.S. to correct Europe’s political trajectory including, it says, by cultivating resistance within European nations themselves.
And it’s hard to overstate how significant it is to elevate these views that were not so long ago really at the fringes of American foreign policy discourse into America’s most authoritative statement of strategic intent, and this is really a stunning victory, I think, for the MAGA wing of the Republican Party that is represented most prominently by Vice President Vance. 
It’s a sea change in U.S. foreign policy. If you think about the trajectory especially since the end of the Cold War where the United States has often been working to make the world safe for democracy to spread liberalism and liberal universalism, this is actually foreshadowing a very different turn in American foreign policy and one that should cause us to think about what it would mean to have the United States promoting an illiberal international order rather than a liberal international order.
And the last thing I’ll say about this is that this MAGA turn is unlikely to end with Trump. I think it presages what a Vance foreign policy might look like and what a future Republican president might do in order to use U.S. power to make the world safer for illiberalism.
And then just a last note on process. I would say that notwithstanding everything I just said this was a decidedly quiet rollout. So in 2017 President Trump made a speech announcing the National Security Strategy. In 2022, when the Biden administration released ours, Jake Sullivan did a speech. In this case, we have seen no prominent voices on that scale. We had Secretary Hegseth at the Reagan Forum this weekend but that was more of an NDS preview rather than an NSS rollout. 
The NSS was released late on a Thursday night. The document was dated November even though it came out in December. And so this isn’t a document that I think the administration or the White House is working to call a lot of attention to and, furthermore, just given how policy is made in this administration, I wouldn’t expect anything written down in this document to either discipline or predict the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
But at the same time, it is consequential because it’s going to be a lodestar for the administration’s messaging. People throughout the government will be framing their memos, writing their speeches, using the language that is drawn from the National Security Strategy, and we’ve already seen that it creates a certain permission structure for those in the administration who agree with some of the more controversial elements of these views to echo them.
And so over the weekend there was a chorus of statements that were using similar messaging on Europe that we saw in this document, which was fairly antagonistic towards our European allies and particularly towards the EU. 
So with all of that said, I’m very interested to hear from my other colleagues today so I’ll start off with our fearless leader Mike Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mike, over to you.
FROMAN: Well, thanks very much, Rebecca. Thanks, everybody, for joining us, and I’ll try not to repeat some of Rebecca’s, I think, excellent framing comments.
I guess the first thing I would say is two observations. One is I thought it was noteworthy that it actually defined what its—what strategy is and made the linkage between ends and means and between national interests and capabilities and the need to prioritize, you know, what can be done within our capabilities.
And I just say that because I know these documents. Without being critical of any previous administration, but previous administrations these have tended to be produced by a process that might lead to more of a Christmas tree kind of document with every department or every region wanting to make sure they had their piece in there on their issue and sometimes—as this document suggests, sometimes more aspirational than actually a hard-edge look at what our core national security interests versus other national aspirations.
So this is very much sort of lays out what it intends to do and, in fact, does it in terms of prioritizing certain areas like the Western Hemisphere, not mentioning other things entirely like terrorism. Terrorism is mentioned only very briefly in the context of Africa and not mentioned anywhere else in the document.
But when it comes to matching interests and capabilities I found there were some inconsistencies here. It says the U.S. should have unrivaled soft power, which, of course, at the same time the administration has shut down USAID and the Voice of America and other key tools of soft power.
Interesting whether this will be a hook on which some of those capabilities might be rebuilt or reformed, going forward. Similarly, it calls for the most scientifically and technologically advanced country investing on emerging technology and basic science at the same time that the administration has cut back on R&D, NIH, and other basic science funding.
On the positive side, it stands for a broad network of alliances. It calls for Ukraine as a viable state without, of course, mentioning what the borders of that state might be and what kind of security guarantees are undergirding it. It calls for Taiwan’s defense termed mostly in terms of both not just semiconductors but its strategic position among the sea lanes of communication and trade.
I don’t know whether—I’ll leave this to David to comment on whether the language about do not support changes in the Taiwan Straits is a change from the historical language around oppose or not. No mention of democracy with regard to Taiwan. Indeed, no mention of the promotion of democracy anywhere in the document except, as Rebecca said, when it comes to Europe.
And in Europe, as Rebecca noted, on one hand it noted both its cultural and strategic importance as a partner to the United States for transatlantic trade and on security. Again, some inconsistency between, on one hand, noting that the United States will oppose any foreign intervention or influence in U.S. politics but at the same time noting that the administration seeks to cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.
China, as Rebecca said, plays a very different role in this document than in the previous couple NSS documents. The first mention of China by name doesn’t come until actually page twenty out of a thirty-three-page document. 
On the other hand, many of the issues around the China challenge including the economic issues on subsidization and IPR theft and other things like that they are referred to earlier in the document, just without mention to China. So it becomes a much less China-focused document, more on the broader economic issues.
Again, a little bit—very much a gap between the issues that are cited—unfair trade practices, subsidization, IPR theft, and the actual dialogue that we’re having with China. None of those issues are really on the table at the moment in our U.S.-China economic dialogue. We’ve been talking about soybeans, fentanyl, and TikTok.
Finally, just on trade, it does talk about using economic tools to align incentives, giving countries favorable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, defense procurement as key elements of our overall economic strategy. It highlights the importance of doing things for American workers and American industry and reindustrialization.
No mention, of course, of consumers and the benefit that consumers or the vast majority of Americans get from being part of a global economy. That has been deemphasized by the administration from the start.
Finally, the last point I would make is just Rebecca’s point of a really important document as an expression of a sentiment of the White House at this moment in time. Whether or not—and this is true of other administrations as well—whether or not the document actually proves to be a roadmap, a disciplining function, guardrails on policies, I think remains to be seen. A lot happens beyond the paper in reality that the administration will necessarily need to respond to. 
LISSNER: Terrific. Thanks so much, Mike.
And I know you have to leave a little bit early but so glad that we all got the benefit of your insights here. 
I should have said at the top, just a reminder this is all on the record, and I will moderate the first forty minutes or so and then turn to the audience for Q&A. So if at any point you have a question you can use the raise hand function in Zoom and we will get to you towards the latter part of this hour.
With that, why don’t I turn next to Will Freeman, fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations? 
While, obviously, the Western Hemisphere is very much front and center in this document so looking forward to your thoughts and reactions. 
FREEMAN: Thanks so much, and thanks, everyone, for being here with us to discuss the NSS this morning.
You know, of course, it bucks traditional CFR order to have the Western Hemisphere go first but so does this document. It’s the first to put Western Hemisphere first among the other regions since 2006. Other examples were in 1990 and 1987. But especially with the rise of China as a near-peer competitor you’ve seen Asia typically occupy that place. So this is quite the change. It’s quite the shift.
If you ask me, it’s a long overdue correction. I think there’s a debate to be had about whether or not it’s an overcorrection to put the Western Hemisphere first over Asia, but no doubt the Western Hemisphere section is important. 
It lays out some very bold aims that the administration has not only stated but I would say has been pursuing since day one. I will have my questions about the methods behind achieving those aims but, overall, I think, again, I see this as a long overdue correction.
I think that the Western Hemisphere has been neglected too long. I think other administrations have paid a price both domestically and internationally for neglecting it, and I do hope and actually expect that this focus, at least greater focus, on the Western Hemisphere will outlive just this administration.
So let me break it down. I mean, first of all, I think just to put this in context—and some of these numbers are familiar, some of them are not—250,000 Americans died from drug overdose deaths, mostly related to fentanyl, between 2018 and 2022. A quarter of a million. Roughly, 300(,000) to 400,000 Mexicans have been killed by organized crime violence or forcibly disappeared since 2007.
Over the last decade we had a human smuggling industry take root in our hemisphere that made our border effectively uncontrollable for a number of years. And so I think if we’re prioritizing, as this document insists we must, in a post-unilateral moment, if the United States will not be an uncontested global superpower forever the Western Hemisphere, there’s a strong case to be made, should occupy a place near the top of our priorities just for those reasons I just mentioned, because we’ve seen this immense dysfunction and chaos that often has not been met with the same kind of focus I think that some in this administration would argue we must now meet it with.
So in terms of how the Trump administration looks at Latin America and what we can tell from this document, look, it’s very clear that for the Trump administration Latin America is a region of risks first and opportunities second, and I say Latin America because although, of course, Canada is part of the Western Hemisphere, much of the language in this section is clearly about our southern neighbors.
And so in terms of those risks, the priorities for the administration will be countering three. Mass migration is put first and I think that’s significant; second, organized crime; third, hostile foreign incursions, defined rather broadly. Again, not mentioning China but clearly hinting in that direction.
And then finally, there are some opportunities discussed: the ability to partner on nearshoring, on tapping into natural resources in Latin America, on securing critical supply chains.
So one by one—I mean, first, to me it was no surprise that the administration puts migration first. What is interesting is that migration is not defined as legal or illegal, right? So it says this is the end to an era of mass migration, period. The justification, the administration claims migration has strained social cohesion, increased crime, distorted labor markets, and, of course, there’s a lot of empirical evidence to dispute those claims or debate them.
However, I do think that on this area we’re already seeing the administration have quite a bit of success. So, obviously, encounters with irregular migrants at the border are at a multi-decade low. Many governments in the region are cooperating and without too much resistance, and so I think we’ll see them continue to pursue this as a number-one priority.
Now, that may mean that the other priorities I’m about to discuss are treated as a bit more flexible. Governments that cooperate on migration will maybe get less pressure to cooperate on other issues. 
Second is, clearly, cartels and organized crime. Now, here I’m more critical of the methods. The Trump administration argues that a, quote/unquote, “law enforcement only approach” has failed, and although I think we’d all agree there are many reasons to criticize the war on drugs as it’s existed until now, the alternative put forward is a military strategy. So it’s using the United States military and repositioning of assets and unconstrained lethal force to try to deter drug trafficking organizations. For instance, you know, this is the context for the boat strikes in the Caribbean that we’ve been seeing. 
However, there’s no discussion of organized crime as a business that, obviously, operates based on demand and supply—supply, of course, of guns from the United States not discussed—and there’s no mention of corruption which is, of course, the factor that makes Latin America such a favorable business environment for organized crime.
This may be purposeful. It may be omitted on purpose to allow a greater flexibility when it comes to regional policy. We’ve just seen Juan Orlando Hernández, the convicted ex-narco president of Honduras, return to the region, right, and if you were to mention corruption it might be difficult to justify how you could do that.
Finally, hostile foreign incursions. Now, I think it’s quite significant this comes last. That fits with this overall less hawkish vision towards China that I think we see laced throughout the document. However, it’s still mentioned.
Now, again, here in terms of methods or a theory of the case, the Trump administration seems to be arguing that the main barrier to the United States retaining or even increasing its economic weight in the region is simply foreign governments’ choice to be partnering with China; it’s not an incentive structure.
So there’s relatively limited discussion of what the United States could do in terms of incentivizing its own businesses to invest more in the region. There’s a discussion of embassies doing more to—(audio break)—discussion about licensing changes at home. But there’s not really a comprehensive new view that explains to me why United States businesses are going to suddenly flood Latin America with foreign investment and really make nearshoring more robust.
In fact, you know, from my own conversations many private sector actors what they fear is a weak rule of law in Latin America. Again, not discussed in this document.
So finally, how is the Trump administration arguing it can do this? It’s saying that it will enlist and expand its ranks of partners within the region through a mix of unspecified rewards and foreign aid conditionality. We’ve already seen, of course, a lot of foreign assistance aid cut away or frozen so I’m wondering where will they get that leverage if much of it is already off the table.
But that’s essentially the idea, that you’re going to grow this pool of partners in the Western Hemisphere. Interestingly—I found this one of the most interesting parts of the document—Latin America is not discussed in ideological terms, unlike Europe. So here it’s not about ostensibly picking friends and enemies. It’s about working with any country that’s reasonably stable and well governed. That’s the language they use. Not necessarily democratic, not necessarily right or left, but reasonably stable and well governed, to advance on these priorities of stemming migration, fighting cartels, and pushing back hostile foreign incursions.
One question for me is if you don’t enlist as a country in Latin America can you be obliged to enlist. We have seen recent efforts to tip the scales in elections in Argentina, Honduras, in some extent a very forward-looking attempt at that in Brazil. Some have worked. Some have not. 
But I see whether or not it’s written down here the Trump administration pursuing, as it says it will in Europe, a fairly, you know, robust program of trying to steer Latin Americans’ politics in a direction where it’ll be easier to enlist partners for their aims rather than harder.
So, finally, just to sum up, I think, again, this is a welcome long-overdue correction in the direction of elevating the Western Hemisphere to the place it really should occupy. I think the methods are questionable. I hope that the focus outlasts this administration. 
And, finally, you know, I’d agree with everyone else who’s spoken already here that while this seems to be the broad statement of aims, and we’ve definitely seen the Trump administration actually make progress towards achieving several of their stated objectives here. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to see inconsistencies, right? So this is a statement of direction. I don’t think it’s going to be a perfect policy blueprint for every Western Hemisphere-related policy we see come next.
LISSNER: Excellent. Thanks, Will.
And to that last point, you know, one perhaps contradiction is the document’s stated preference for nonintervention as juxtaposed with the drumbeats of war in the Caribbean and prospect of some kind of military action in Venezuela, or at minimum already the stated preference for regime change there.
FREEMAN: Right.
LISSNER: So next why don’t we turn to Liana Fix? Liana, senior fellow for Europe here at CFR. And obviously, the Europe section and language has been perhaps the most surprising part of the document and one that has certainly made waves across the Atlantic. So, Liana, please, over to you. Looking forward to your thoughts.
FIX: Thanks so much, Rebecca.
Let me make three quick points on the Europe part here: First, the European reaction; secondly, how successful can actually the Trump strategy be, how much impact can it actually have on Europe; and then, thirdly, what are the consequences for Europe, what are going to be the takeaways that they take from this strategy.
So the reaction, obviously—I mean, Rebecca, you mentioned it—has been multiple times as shocked as the J.D. Vance speech in Munich. The reason for that from a European perspective is obviously that at the Munich Security Conference the speech of the vice president could still be seen as one point, one view within the administration. Now these views are mainstreamed from the perspective of Europeans. And the two points that have been particularly outrageous from a European perspective is the lack of criticism of Russia, instead the lack of—the criticism towards Europeans, that they are undermining Ukraine negotiation efforts, obviously the attempt to meddle in internal affairs in Europe. That is all discussed up and down in policy circles and in the European media landscape.
What is interesting is that we do have a contradiction in official reaction. So on the one side we have very strong media and public reaction that sort of goes in line with past attempts of feeling of humiliation by Donald Trump, of alignment of an almost adversarial relationship with the United States, but European officials being much quieter about the strategy. The European Commission has not commented on any of the outrageous part of the strategy. Obviously, the strategy also coincides with the fines on X by the European Commission, which sort of gives a real-life element to all these discussions about free speech. But that tells me that we do have a legitimacy problem from a European perspective and from a European policymaking perspective there. So on the one side the public’s upset about this change in the transatlantic relationship, but the leaders know very well that they can’t just stand up to Trump and tell him courageously that, you know, this is not how you treat Europe, because the existential dependence that is still there between Europe and the United States, is still there also on Ukraine, is dominating and is a priority for European leaders. And that is why they will continue to engage this administration despite the strategy.
Then the second question I think which is important is: How much impact can such a strategy actually have? Of course there’s a question of, you know, will the president actually follow up on the strategy. But what we’ve seen so far in the Trump administration is that actors—European populists, for example, like Viktor Orbán have not really been able to benefit from the Trump administration. So what we’ve seen at the beginning of the Trump term, this idea that this—Trump will strengthen European right-wing populists, has not actually been the case. And I wonder how impactful such a strategy of interference in European countries can actually be if there is such a broad backlash, opinion polls and opinion ratings of the United States and of the president at an all-time low in many European countries. And at the same time this idea of strengthening populists—right-wing populists in Europe perhaps, you know, leading to an alliance of illiberals, turning NATO into an alliance of illiberals instead of an alliance of Western values, that is not an easy task to achieve with right-wing populist-nationalist parties that are fundamentally nationalist, and therefore have tended in Europe to work against each other. In the European Parliament we have seen many instances of right-wing populists not being able to agree with each other to form whatever alliance, not even a European alliance not to speak of a globalist alliance. So that will make it actually much more difficult to achieve any of—any of these aims, as shocking as they are.
And the third and I think the most important question from a European perspective is: So what’s going to be the takeaway of that outrage over this document? After the J.D. Vance speech at the Munich Security Conference we had a significant takeaway, and that takeaway was that Germany has lifted its ban on defense spending through debt. So Germany, as the leading military power by now in Europe, has changed its constitution to allow debt-financed defense spending in reaction to that speech out of fear of U.S. abandonment. So the next step for the Europeans really is to ask if that—if they have to accept that this is a U.S. strategy that will stay here perhaps not only for this administration, as you said, Rebecca, but also beyond this administration, then what is going to be our actual reaction to that? What is going to be the next step? And there, in a—in a perfect world, one would for example see Europeans coming together and agreeing on joint debt not only for Ukraine but also for Europe for defense, not to speak of the frozen assets where Belgium is still resisting to use the frozen assets for a loan for Ukraine. So the best reaction from a European perspective would be strong actions that show that Europe can move towards less dependence on the United States, Russian frozen assets the most immediate ones but also European joint debt on defense spending is something which will remain on the agenda. That’s what we need to look out for. Otherwise, any outrage over the strategy from a European perspective will only remain rhetoric and not translate into actually—actual policy of strengthening Europe.
LISSNER: Great. Thank you, Liana.
And just, you know, one reaction to one thing you said about how Trump’s support has not yet helped European right-wing populists like Orbán, I think it’s worth considering, you know, whether Trump has really tried yet. And if anything, I think the political interference playbook is more advanced in the Western Hemisphere than we’ve yet seen in Europe when you look at the Argentina bailout on the eve of their elections and how that seemed to help Milei, his right-wing ally in Argentina; when you look at the attempt to use tariffs in order to influence Brazil not to imprison Bolsonaro—that, of course, didn’t work; and then, most recently, the pretty dramatic intervention in the Honduran elections which, you know, a very close race seemed to have potentially helped Trump’s preferred candidate. I think, you know, now that there’s an official policy of interference in Europe, if I were sitting in a European capital, especially one with significant elections coming up like France or Germany, I would be very worried about what it could look like for the United States to sort of act more coercively or use these sort of conditional threats in order to interfere in my election or—and/or to do something in concert with, you know, someone like Elon Musk, who’s been very open in terms of the use of his platform in support of these European right-wing populists.
So only to say, you know, I think there’s a lot of headroom for more escalation, and it could trigger backlash. It could maybe in some cases work, in some cases not. So just more to see there, and I think it’s interesting to think about the Western Hemisphere sort of as a test case for these tactics that we might see in other regions over time as well.
With that, David Sacks, fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, over to you to talk, please, about the China-Indo-Pacific elements of the strategy.
SACKS: Great. Thank you, Rebecca.
I mean, I think that the headline here as it pertains to China is clearly that there is no mention of great-power competition or the sense that China is a global rival that poses a systemic challenge to U.S. interests. And so to unpack that maybe a little bit more, I think it’s useful to go back to Trump’s 2017 NSS and see how China was discussed then versus how it’s discussed in this latest NSS.
And so in 2017 China was explicitly described with Russia as a revisionist power attempting to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests, and it also assessed that China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific. As Rebecca said in her opening remarks, I think there was a through line there from the 2017 NSS to President Biden’s NSS that she wrote. That NSS described China as the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly the power to do so, and it also assessed that Beijing has ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power. So those are clear assessments of what China seeks to do and what that means for the United States.
In this NSS, we don’t get any assessment of what China aims to do in the Indo-Pacific or globally and whether or not that’s compatible with U.S. interests. Instead, again as Rebecca noted, China is seen primarily as an economic competitor. In the section on China, economics are described as, quote, “the ultimate stakes,” and actually are discussed ahead of the discussion on military deterrence. And so I think China’s primarily seen as an economic competitor and that does pose certain challenges to the United States. The administration wants to win that competition, you know, in realms like AI, and biotech, and the list goes on and on. But I think that’s a fairly founded and narrow view of the—of the challenge that China poses to the United States. And so that is—I think as Rebecca said and just to underscore that, that is a major shift in the U.S. view.
I think what’s driving that is clearly President Trump looking ahead to his April visit to Beijing and his meeting with Xi Jinping. I think he likely wants to have maximum negotiating space in that meeting, and perhaps more pointed language on China he might view as constraining that space. And so I think clearly the administration didn’t want to necessarily get ahead of the president on that. If we see the Chinese reaction that came in overnight with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, you know, the Chinese are never going to endorse a U.S. NSS. They’re never going to say we love it. But it was quite a mild reaction from the Chinese, noting that they want mutually beneficial economic relations, they want win-win cooperation. There was one—there was one pointed element of the statement, though, and of course that pertained to Taiwan, which I will shift to briefly.
China did—the spokesperson did again state that that is the core of China’s core interest and the red line that cannot be crossed. And you know, this NSS was notable because it devoted two entire paragraphs to Taiwan, whereas Trump’s 2017 NSS only had one sentence on Taiwan, which did mention the U.S. one China policy and its commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act. This NSS did not mention the one China policy at all—Biden’s, of course, did mention the one China policy—and so that will raise some eyebrows in Beijing. You know, the focus on hard deterrence in the Taiwan Strait, on the need to prevail anywhere in the first island chain, I think that will be welcomed in Taipei. And actually Taiwan’s president, William Lai, did come out and say that they appreciated that emphasis on the need to deter Chinese aggression.
The curious line to me, though, as it pertained to Taiwan is one that Mike drew attention to, which is a seeming shift in U.S. policy from opposing unilateral changes to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait to not supporting unilateral changes to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. Now there’s, of course, been a lot of speculation in recent months about whether President Trump would change U.S. declaratory policy on Taiwan independence from not supporting Taiwan independence to opposing Taiwan independence. And actually now, in another realm of U.S. declaratory policy with respect to Taiwan, this is now weakened, actually, I would argue, from opposing unilateral changes to not supporting unilateral changes.
And so I think that this still remains an issue area to watch as President Trump heads into his meetings with Xi Jinping in April. You know, I think Taiwan is clearly going to be at the center of those conversations, and we have to watch what comes of that.
You know, I’ll just say two of things before turning it over to everybody else. You know, North Korea was not mentioned at all in this document. If you go back to 2017, North Korea was described as a regime determined to destabilize the region. And its pursuit of nuclear weapons were described as posing a global threat that requires a global response. But now North Korea doesn’t even get a mention.
A U.S. treaty ally in the Indo-Pacific, the Philippines, which is—you know, has to deal now with an immense degree of Chinese coercion in the South China Sea, is not mentioned at all. And actually, if you look at the South China Sea language and, again, compare it, Trump’s first NSS called out China by name for its militarization of South China Sea, which it said threatens the sovereignty of other nations and undermines regional stability. Now the South China Sea is mentioned in this NSS, but it is described as, quote, “a related security challenge,” and that’s the potential for any competitor to control the South China Sea—so, again, not singling out China by name. So I think that’s a significant shift that is part of what Rebecca spoke of at the—at the top of this conversation, which is that you know, great-power competition is seemingly a thing of the past, and China’s seen as a(n) economic competitor and potential partner but not a geostrategic rival in the sense that we’ve been discussing China for the last eight years.
And I’ll leave it at that.
LISSNER: Excellent. Thanks so much David.
And I’ll go to Paul Stares, General John W. Vessey senior fellow for conflict prevention and director of the Center for Preventive Action at CFR. And, Paul, before I turn to you, let me just put the other speakers on notice because I want to do a round. You know, Mike talked about how strategy requires hard choices, and there’s quite a bit of hortatory language to that effect at the beginning of this NSS. And there is a lot that is left out, and the Christmas-tree critique of past strategies is certainly a fair one. But I’m curious for this group’s take after Paul speaks about the most important elements that are missing. David just talked about a few, but I’m curious what in particular you all would highlight. But first, let’s go to Paul for you to talk a bit about the president or peace or not and the global conflict picture.
STARES: (Laughs.) Well, thanks. Thanks very much, Rebecca. I know we don’t have a lot of time before we want to open it up for Q&A, so I’ll be quite brief.
The NSS reiterates this sort of core assertion by the president that he is deserving of being called the president of peace, as you say. And in fact, the NSS says that his record over the last nine months has more or less already cemented his legacy. That’s the term they use. And they particularly draw attention to eight conflicts that he settled. There weren’t just conflicts; these were raging conflicts, and that’s the term used in the NSS. And while I think it’s fair to credit the president and his senior advisors in the effort they’ve made to try to resolve and address various ongoing conflicts around the world, and I think that’s only fair that that be acknowledged, the actual reality of what they have achieved is far less than what the president either believes or would have us believe. And I can just quickly go through these eight conflicts, these eight raging conflicts that have apparently been settled over the last eight or nine months, and it becomes immediately clear that this is a very tendentious assertion and some would say bombastic assertion, frankly.
So two of them, between Kosovo and Serbia, Egypt and Ethiopia, there was no raging conflict to—ongoing at the time President Trump interceded. One of them, the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, had more or less ended—in fact, had ended—and more or less (the) president just hosted a peace-signing agreement between those two.
Three interstate conflicts that occurred over this last year I think there is evidence that President Trump did play a positive role in bringing about ceasefires, but the actual results today are, frankly, highly questionable. Between India and Pakistan, no one believes that that conflict is essentially settled. Between Iran and Israel, there’s strong expectation amongst experts in the Middle East that this conflict could be reignited at any time. Between Thailand and Cambodia, we just learnt today that Thailand is again striking Cambodia and that war has effectively restarted, so you can strike that one off.
Finally, the two other conflicts in the eight, between Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, as well as in Gaza, again, no one seriously looks at those conflicts and thinks that the fighting is ended. In fact, they are ongoing as we speak.
It is also, I think, important to acknowledge that President Trump, you know, promised he would end the Ukraine conflict within twenty-four hours after assuming office. That is still ranging at great cost to everyone concerned and we’re no closer to a peace agreement there than we were eight, nine months ago. And the war in Sudan is probably one of the most horrific outbreaks of violence in recent memory, and as far as I can tell this administration has done next to nothing to try to bring that conflict to an end. And we can speculate why that isn’t a high priority in the Trump administration.
In terms of sort of broad macro trends, again, the president asserts in the NSS that, you know, the sort of tide has turned, that peace and stability is returning to the world as a result of his efforts. Again, the reality couldn’t be farther from this assertion. All the—all the lights, all the indicators of growing instability and conflict around the world are blinking red. It’s worth pointing out that just this year alone, in 2025, nine capital cities were struck by other states, an extraordinary development, extraordinary break from the normative conventions of previous years. And to suggest that the world is becoming more peaceful and stable is—just isn’t the case.
And finally—finally—we can’t ignore the fact that this administration, in claiming itself as being a promoter of peace and stability, has on numerous occasions coerced and threatened other countries, including threatening the use of force. Here I’m referring, obviously, to Venezuela at the moment. But Nigeria has been on that, Canada to some extent, Greenland, Panama—you know, the list goes on. And so to portray himself as the great peacemaker is just—you know, it beggars belief.
So let me—(laughs)—let me end there, and happy to discuss these—this reality with our audience further.
LISSNER: That’s great. Thanks, Paul. And I think your comments really underscore an important point, which is, you know, some of the discourse around the National Security Strategy has been to criticize this administration as isolationist. I don’t think that that is an appropriate description or an accurate description of what this administration is doing. But it is nevertheless the case that they have effectively declared war on the sort of postwar or post-Cold War international order that did do things like reinforce the norms of nonaggression, suppress violence. And so we’re entering into this more disorderly period where the U.S. is still throwing its weight around—
STARES: Absolutely.
LISSNER: —around the world, but nevertheless we just see a much higher incidence of violent conflict. And I expect that will continue for quite some time.
So, with that, let me just do a quick lightning round since I put the question on the table of what was missing. So I’ll do, I guess, reverse order: David, Liana, Will. And then I see we have some questions from the audience and I want to make sure we get to those.
SACKS: Yeah. I don’t want to take too long. So I just think that, you know, North Korea’s omission is quite striking. I mean, this is a country, of course, that continues to modernize and build out its nuclear weapons arsenal. It’s also aiding Russia in its war against Ukraine and is receiving significant technological help from the Russians in return. You know, that has not been resolved at all, and you know, I thought that the fact that it’s not even mentioned is quite significant.
LISSNER: Thank you.
Liana?
FIX: Yeah. I mean, apart from Russia not being identified as an adversary, I think the other crucial element that is missing is the Russia-China link in Ukraine. I mean, that has been something that the Biden administration has pushed Europeans on to recognize, that the only reason that Russia can continue the war the way it does and doesn’t have to wrap it up is China’s massive support that toes the line of direct military support. And this has disappeared not only in direct talks between Europe and the United States, but it has also disappeared in this National Security Strategy and in the overall thinking of how to—how to end the war against Ukraine.
LISSNER: Great. Thank you.
Will?
FREEMAN: Just briefly, I think the key word missing here is “impunity” or “corruption,” because, again, that is what makes the Western Hemisphere an ideal business environment for organized crime. That’s what has enabled those shocking statistics that I mentioned at the beginning, the 250,000 deaths in the United States or more, you know, almost double that figure in Mexico just over the past couple decades.
And unfortunately, I think we’ve seen the Trump administration move in a negative direction on this. I mean, early on they seemed very focused on this issue. They put out a shocking but I would argue largely correct statement that there is an intolerable alliance between drug cartels and the government of Mexico. They suspended visas of Mexican politicians believed to be colluding with cartels. But really over the last four to six months we’ve seen the focus shift. We’ve seen it shift substantively away from that approach and towards the military forward approach of really killing the lowest-level traffickers or alleged traffickers, but doing seemingly very little about the narco-investors, the narco-politicians, et cetera. And we’ve also seen the geographic shift focus from Mexico—which is the key country for our interests in the Western Hemisphere, especially regarding these issues—to Venezuela.
LISSNER: Thanks.
Paul, any omissions you want to add?
STARES: Yeah. So, as I say, you know, they should be credited for trying to mediate and resolve ongoing conflicts. What’s missing from the NSS is what I would call kind of upstream strategy to try to reduce the risk of conflict occurring around the world. It’s all very much focused on the downstream. It’s like someone who has a leaky roof just putting pails of water around, you know, the lower basement to collect the water without fixing the roof. And you have to have an upstream strategy, and this administration clearly does not. In fact, it has deliberately dismantled the very elements of the U.S. government devoted to that kind of over-the-horizon upstream diplomacy, and foreign aid, and assistance, and so on that would really make that kind of approach effective.
LISSNER: OK.
And, Mike, I’m sorry, I thought you’d left. I see you’re still here. Do you want to add to the list?
FROMAN: I would just add the one that I mentioned earlier, which is, you know, we’re coming up on the twenty-fifth anniversary year of 9/11 and there’s no mention of terrorism—almost no mention of terrorism there. And so I think that’s a fairly significant omission.
LISSNER: Great.
And I’ll just add mine on sort of nuclear issues and nuclear proliferation. I think one of the most consequential forces that could be unleashed by this administration is nuclear proliferation, particularly by allies in the absence of any clear declaratory policy about whether the U.S. supports or doesn’t support allied proliferation. And more broadly the state of our extended deterrence guarantees strikes me as an important omission.
With that, I’ll hand it back to our comms and AV team to moderate the Q&A.
OPERATOR: We’ll take our first question from Trudy Rubin.
Q: Hello. Thank you for this.
I want to get back to the issue of Russia, and I’d like to ask Liana and anyone else on this. Russian officials, as you know, have been praising the document, and it does seem like this is almost—(laughs)—a document that aligns the U.S. with Russia and to a lesser extent to China against Europe. So do you consider this document basically the crystallization of a U.S.-Russian alliance against Europe? And you mentioned that you didn’t think it would turn NATO into an illiberal alliance, but does it turn NATO into a European alliance only because effectively Trump has withdrawn? And do you think the U.S. now is committed to supporting and helping far-right parties in Europe and is committed against liberal democratic parties?
FIX: Yeah, that’s a—that’s a great question. I think, obviously, there is some kind of alignment. I would not even say it’s, like, positive alignment; it’s definitely alignment against what we perceived as being the West in the past, right? It’s an alignment against liberal values. Also, certainly the values that Russia holds dear for its own society are not the values that the United States or even the Trump administration might hold dear for its society. But it is sort of an end of the West liberal values order as we know it.
The question to what extent this really translates into policy I think is a more nuanced one. We have just seen that Congress tries to push back on troop reductions in Europe. It set sort of a lower limit on how many troops can be withdrawn from the Pentagon. We have also seen that some actors have tried to jump on that national security threat, as Rebecca suggested, to pitch the European Union versus NATO and to make the case to the Europeans: Look, if you want us to continue to defend you, you will have to rein in the EU and its censoring of speech, which is obviously not what the EU is doing with these fines. But so far this has not really translated, also not sort of in the—in the past months, into actual policy. We still stand on a NATO ground that reflects The Hague Summit, that reflects the 3.5 percent defense commitment, the 5 percent defense commitment.
I think Europeans should not calm themselves down by just thinking about how successful The Hague was. There can always be disruptive shocks. But I don’t see a turn towards Russia, an immediate abandonment of the NATO alliance. I think the greatest risk for Europeans heading into the new year will actually be what if we have an escalation on, let’s say, the Ukraine-Polish border—the Ukraine-Polish border where not only Russian drones come over, but they actually hurt or attack people and people die, right? What is—what is going to be the reaction from the United States to that? How do we define this in terms of Article 5 or not? I think that’s going to be a big part that Russia is going to try to undermine the alliance. But I would say at the moment what can reassure Europeans is that we still have enough U.S. troops in Europe to deter and that at least Congress seems to be very, very determined to keep it that way.
LISSNER: Great. We have a long list, so I’ll suggest we go to the next question.
OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Anton La Guardia.
Q: Thank you.
I wanted to ask the panel what does this tell us about who makes policy in the United States and what it tells us about the balance of the various factions within.
LISSNER: Mike, can I throw that one to you?
FROMAN: Well, look, I think it’s a great question. There did seem to be people in the administration who were surprised themselves by the document. So I don’t have any insight into who actually had the pen and what exactly the process was, but I think we know there’s really only one person who makes policy in the United States as the moment, and that’s President Trump, and the rest of the administration looks to him for almost daily guidance on Truth Social and takes their marching orders, you know, from that. Again, whether this document reflects all of his views—I think we need to take it seriously because it is coming from the White House. Whether it reflects his views at this moment in time and could whether reality evolves in response to other developments I think remains to be seen. But we know it’s very centralized and we know it really comes from the president himself, ultimately, if it’s being released by the White House.
LISSNER: The only thing I would add to that quickly is just if you go almost paragraph by paragraph in the document it seems like different parts were written by different people, and they probably were, right? If you look at the Indo-Pacific allies section, it sounds a lot like Trump one, a lot like Biden. If you look at the Western Hemisphere section, it sounds a lot like Stephen Miller. If you look at the Europe section, it sounds a lot like J.D. Vance. And so, you know, as with all of these things, my read is that it’s a bit of a hodgepodge because, of course, this is the result of a negotiation bureaucratically amongst a number of different parties.
Should we go on to the next?
OPERATOR: We will take the next question from Jim Zirin.
Q: (Off mic.) Sorry.
Yes, this may not be an isolationist policy, Rebecca, and unquestionably it’s not, but haven’t we reverted to the old 1914 sphere of influence policy, which has been long discredited?
LISSNER: I would say that there are certainly echoes of that in the emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, and so on. But this is not a picture of an administration that aims to withdraw from the world. I mean, David talked about a lot of the Indo-Pacific language, you know. So I guess not isolationist insofar as retreating to fortress America, but certainly a rebalancing and a prioritization of our own hemisphere, which sort of implicitly suggests a certain privilege to other powers in their own hemisphere. But I think that is not yet the policy that we’re actually seeing from the U.S.
OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Aaron Miller.
Q: Yeah. Great, great panel.
You know, the Founders believed deeply in something called moral self-governance, the capacity of a leader to control his or her own demons, self-interest. The degree of self-dealing in this administration is head-exploding. No Republican or Democratic president has ever enabled, allowed, and/or participated in a situation where the American national interest is so easily conflated with the personal business interest. I wonder if anyone can comment on the degree to which this skews and undermines the pursuit of the American national interest in any of your areas.
LISSNER: Will, you started to talk about this. Do you want to start and then I’ll see if Mike or anyone else wants to jump in, and Paul as well, because I think this intersects with some of the peace issues?
FREEMAN: Sure. So I think it’s—you know, it’s difficult to draw conclusions, right, because we’re seeing the output of the policy. We’re not always seeing exactly how it’s made, right?
But I’d raise a couple recent examples as policy areas where you might wonder if there were personal interests that were dictating things as much as the president’s convictions about what most serves the national interest.
So one is the bailout of Argentina, right? This—I mean, this was massive, and we’re talking about a country which is very far from the United States, not important to issues of migration or drug trafficking or the other—you know, to some extent quite important to the balance of power between the U.S. and China in the region.
But many people question what was the rationale for that, right, and it turns out there’s a number of powerful U.S. investors who put money into the country and would like to see Javier Milei do well. I happen to also think it is in our interest to see him do well. But you can wonder there if there were, you know, to some extent personal influence driving some of that decision.
I’d also say the return of the convicted ex-narco President Juan Orlando Hernández—a release from jail and, you know, eventual return to Honduras, there we know that Roger Stone wrote a letter to the president and said, “I think he’s innocent.” That seems to have been the pivotal moment in releasing him rather than, as far as we know, a sort of blow-by-blow review of all the accumulated evidence in that years-long trial that put him behind bars. 
It’s just to cite two examples but I think it’s a reasonable question to ask and, you know, I completely agree with the earlier diagnosis. This seems to be a document written by many different people. So you can also—it’s not only maybe the president who’s hearing different personal interests here but it’s many different factions in the administration. That, at least, seems plausible to me. 
LISSNER: Mike or Paul, do you want to jump in on this one? 
FROMAN: The only thing I would add—the only thing I would add—I’m sorry—is this document just throughout—without actually responding, Aaron, to your question, this document, in my view, really represents the triumph of economics over everything else. It’s about the U.S. economy, commercial relations.
The lens, whether it’s about China or Europe or even the Western Hemisphere, seems to be, first—at least very high on the list seems to be the commercial opportunities for the United States and feeding back into the strength of U.S. industry and the U.S. economy and, I mean, I think the president has demonstrated, you know, a lot of, shall we say, discipline around being transactional and putting commercial issues very much at the forefront of those transactions and so this document reflects that as well.
STARES: And I would underscore that in terms of the priorities for peacemaking, while it’s no secret that the president wants a Nobel Peace Prize I think economic, commercial interests are not far from the surface in terms of where he has focused a lot of the peacemaking activities.
You know, you look at DRC versus Sudan. DRC is extremely important in terms of critical minerals. His interest in Ukraine I think is, largely, driven as much by access to Ukrainian critical minerals, and similarly with various real estate and other commercial deals in the Middle East that there’s, again—you know, it’s been pretty clear where his primary interests lie there. So this is a real driver, I think, of much of this effort to be the president of peace.
LISSNER: Terrific. Well, it wouldn’t be a CFR meeting if we didn’t end precisely on time. So let me thank all of my colleagues and fellow panelists here for sharing your insights.
Thanks to all of you for joining us. And then, Lilly or Ben, do you want to make a note about any follow-up media inquiries? 
BEHBEHANI: Yes. For any further media inquiries please email communications at CFR.org or you all have my email in the media invite that you received with an invitation to this event. Thank you all.
LISSNER: Terrific. Thanks, everyone. Have a good rest of your day. 
(END)
This is an uncorrected transcript