With the release of the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the Trump administration has produced a document that, for the first time, fully and unapologetically expresses the president’s America-First strategic worldview. It prioritizes American national interests while rejecting the liberal globalist agenda, which has dominated American foreign policy and international trade policies during the post-Cold War era, often to the economic detriment of American businesses and working-class Americans.
President Trump’s new national strategy is no longer driven by the globalist ideology that allowed American foreign policy to remain trapped in the alliances and patterns of behavior developed during the Cold War era, and which are now largely obsolete. It announced that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.”
The U.S. will abandon the dominant global superpower role that it adopted after the end of World War II. Instead, the new strategy strives for a more realistic approach to foreign policy that puts America’s national interests ahead of those of other countries, including its longtime allies, but also recognizes that America can no longer act as the self-appointed policeman for the rest of the world.
According to Joshua Keating, writing for the Vox liberal news website, thanks to the new strategy, “America is out of the business of giving patronizing lectures to other governments about how to run their countries and trying to mold other societies in its own image.”
FINDING A MIDDLE GROUND BETWEEN GLOBALISM AND ISOLATIONISM
Instead, the new strategy calls for America to find a new middle ground that abandons the self-righteous, liberal globalist attitudes that guided its foreign policy during the post-Cold War era, while avoiding the retreat into isolationism that characterized its foreign policy between the end of World War I and the start of World War II. Hopefully, the result will be a unified foreign economic, military, and strategic policy that reinforces America’s strengths, enhances the wealth and the prosperity of all of its people, while taking an unsentimental view of how the rest of the world actually works, as well as the practical limitations on American power and influence.
As an initial move, the new strategy calls for the restoration of “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” to “protect our homeland,” to “control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea.” By so doing, it re-establishes America’s historic “sphere of influence” over Central and South America and Canada in what the strategy calls the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. That policy, proclaimed by President James Monroe in 1823, warned the European powers of that era against any military intervention in the Western Hemisphere, where the United States was prepared to defend its exclusive status as the dominant military power. The new Trump Corollary adds to the original Doctrine by seeking to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
The Trump administration has put teeth into that declaration by dispatching a powerful flotilla of American warships to the Caribbean Sea, including its newest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. The ships are there to support the lethal American air strikes against speedboats from criminal organizations in Venezuela trying to bring shipments of illegal drugs into the United States, and to intimidate Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his rogue regime, which is in league with the most notorious international drug cartels.
Trump’s new strategy treats America’s critical but extremely sensitive relationship with China with great sensitivity. While calling on America’s allies in the Asian-Pacific region to spend more on their mutual defense in response to China’s ongoing military buildup, the strategy is also careful to maintain the cautious ambiguity of America’s commitment to preserving the freedom of Taiwan, in the face of the constant threat of invasion from mainland communist China. It reiterates America’s “longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.” However, it also says that deterring China from invading Taiwan is a job that the U.S. military “cannot and should not have to do alone,” and urges America’s allies in the region to give the U.S. military more access to their ports and other military facilities.
THE CHALLENGE OF KEEPING PACE WITH CHINA’S GROWTH
To its credit, the new strategy does not hesitate to declare that keeping pace with China is the foremost economic and military challenge facing America today, and that it must make rebuilding its power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region, in close cooperation with its allies, India and Japan, its foremost priority. At the same time, the new American strategy calls for “maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship” with its main global competitor, China, because it remains an essential and still irreplaceable supplier for many sectors of the U.S. economy.
The new strategy also takes a far tougher attitude towards America’s traditional NATO allies than under previous American presidents. During his first term, Trump demanded that NATO partners start paying their fair share of the cost for their common defense. During his second term, Trump has persuaded the Europeans not only to further increase their own defense spending, but also to pay for the American weapons that it is buying for Ukraine to enable it to continue defending itself against the Russian invasion.
But the most startling declaration in the NSS was its warning that, “within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European” because of their overly permissive immigration policies, and that as a result, Europe now faces a real danger of “civilizational erasure.”
WARNING EUROPE ABOUT THE RESULTS OF MASS MIGRATION
The warning that the national identities and democratic governing principles of European Union (EU) member countries are at risk due to the sheer number of unassimilated immigrants in their midst was first sounded by American Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference this past February. Vance told the European leaders attending the conference that mass migration poses a greater internal threat to Western Europe’s stability than Russia, China, or any other external actor.
Vance urged Europe’s leaders to heed their people’s concerns about “uncontrolled” immigration and the subsequent rise in criminal incidents. He also warned against “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental [democratic] values shared with the United States of America.” Vance called for the end of European censorship of “the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people,” in support of conservative political parties that are demanding stricter immigration controls and more secure borders.
Vance conceded that, “Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now… is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.”
The newly released U.S. strategy reaffirmed Vance’s prior criticism of European policies. It warns that the pro-migration and other policies of the European Union and other related transnational organizations are undermining the national sovereignty and unique identity of its member states, and the political liberties of its citizens. They are creating civil and political strife, censoring free speech, suppressing political opposition, and destroying the allegiance of the people to the European Union itself, as indicated by the decision of a majority of British voters in 2016 to approve the Brexit resolution to withdraw the United Kingdom from the EU. As a result, the strategy document predicts that Europe will be “unrecognizable in 20 years” if present policies and trends continue.
It states that, “America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote [a] revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.” It also calls for “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”
CALLING FOR MORE REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS FOR THE WAR IN UKRAINE
The strategy also suggests that, “a large European majority wants peace [in Ukraine], yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because those governments subvert democratic processes. . . [through the] censorship of speech and suppression of political opposition.” The new American strategy also says that “European officials hold unrealistic expectations” that Ukraine can emerge victorious in its war with Russia and drive Russian troops from its territory.
Paula Pinho, a spokeswoman for the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, initially declined an invitation from reporters to comment on the new American strategy, but when pressed, she said that she “absolutely” disagrees with the strategy’s accusation that the EU is undermining the liberty and hindering the free speech of its citizens.
However independent journalist Michael Shellenberger, who accuses progressive social policies of ruining American cities such as San Francisco, and is an outspoken critic of what he calls “environmental alarmism,” argues that the recent $185 million fine imposed by the European Union on Elon Musk’s X social media platform for refusing to hand over data on its users is another example of state censorship-by-proxy under the innocent guise of “content moderation.”
Shellenberger notes the irony of the fact that the EU fine was announced on the same day that the new American national strategy was announced, including a declaration that, “We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies.”
THE THREAT FROM SPREADING EU CENSORSHIP
Shellenberger argues that we should care about social media censorship by the European Commission because one of its declared goals, “along with the governments of Britain, Brazil, and Australia, is to censor the American people” as well. In addition, he says that the European Union is “engaged in a deception campaign aimed at confusing the people of Europe and the United States about what it is doing.” He cites as an example the launching by the European Commission last month of a “Democracy Shield” program whose declared goal is to provide more funding for NGOs and other “fact checkers” to “ensure swift reactions [read: censorship] to large-scale and potentially transnational information operations.”
Shellenberger argues that the EU’s censorship activities put it in direct violation of the NATO Treaty, which “requires member states to have free speech and free and fair elections.” He says that France and Germany are also in violation of the same NATO requirement by actively preventing political candidates who publicly oppose their mass migration policies from running for elective office.
TRUMP’S PRAGMATIC RESPONSE TO PUTIN’S THREAT TO THE REST OF EUROPE
The previous National Security Strategy published by the Biden administration in 2022 was dedicated largely to the threats to the United States from Russia and China. It condemned “Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war” on Ukraine and cited “constraining Russia” as a high American national security priority.
But American foreign policy under President Trump has been much more pragmatic, as reflected by his willingness to engage in face-to-face dialogue and to search for common ground with the leaders of America’s major international opponents, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
When Putin launched a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, seeking to eliminate its existence as an independent country, as part of his ongoing efforts to restore the Cold War-era Russian empire, he started the largest war in Europe since World War II. There are also realistic fears that if Putin succeeds in taking over Ukraine, he will then invade other former Soviet republics or former communist Iron Curtain countries which are now members of the NATO alliance, such as the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and Poland.
The new American strategy does recognize that “many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat,” and criticizes those European states, especially Germany, which continue to rely for their energy on the import of Russian natural gas. It also declares that the U.S. will prioritize “managing European relations with Russia … to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states [other than Ukraine].”
However, the strategy declares that “the Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations” for a successful outcome for the war with Russia, from Ukraine’s point of view. Instead, the NSS argues that it is a “core interest” for the U.S. to “negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine” in order to “establish strategic stability with Russia,” meaning the prevention of the spread of the Russian invasion to other neighboring Eastern European countries.
WAS NATO’S POST-COLD WAR EASTWARD EXPANSION A MISTAKE?
The first draft of Trump’s latest peace proposal was widely criticized for demanding too many territorial and military concessions from Ukraine, including Putin’s demand that Ukraine never be allowed to become a member of the NATO alliance.
Many foreign policy analysts blame U.S. support for NATO’s post-Cold War eastward expansion towards the Russian border for Putin’s determination to prevent Ukraine from joining the alliance, because it would pose a potential invasion threat to Russia’s national security. With those longstanding Russian objections, the new U.S. strategy calls for “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”
Subsequent negotiations between the White House and Ukraine’s European allies yielded what has been described as a much more balanced peace proposal. However, when that modified peace plan was presented to Russia last week by Trump’s chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, during a five-hour meeting in Moscow, Putin rejected it and declared his intention to continue the war in Ukraine for as long as it takes to achieve a Russian victory.
On the other hand, the Trump administration’s new strategy is silent concerning the threat from the rogue states of North Korea and Venezuela, despite President Trump’s public threats to attack Venezuela, which he has declared to be a narco-terrorist-run criminal state.
“REBALANCING” AMERICA’S COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP WITH CHINA
The new strategy also refrains from openly condemning Russia and China for acting as America’s chief geopolitical rivals. But it does endorse Trump’s calls to “rebalance” the economic relationship between the U.S. and China, by working with America’s allies to counter China’s use of state subsidies, intellectual property theft, and social media influence operations in an effort to gain an unfair advantage in economic and military competition with the United States and to undermine American democracy.
On the other hand, the strategy does concede that Chinese state-backed companies have done an excellent job of building physical and digital infrastructures in many Third World countries, and that “America and its allies have not yet formulated, much less executed, a joint plan” to counter China’s growing influence and domination of those countries.
According to Greg R. Lawson writing for the bimonthly National Interest magazine on international relations, the new U.S. strategy needs to avoid the further consolidation of the anti-American Russia-China alliance by finding a way to “replicate the triangular diplomacy that [President Richard] Nixon and [Henry] Kissinger [his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor], employed so effectively in the 1970s to divide them.”
Lawson also argues that the implementation of the new strategy’s Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine by launching air strikes to sink the Venezuelan drug smuggling boats while they are at sea is the most effective way to counter “the fentanyl-based ‘reverse Opium War’ [currently being] waged [against the United States] by China.”
THE NECESSITY FOR REVITALIZING THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
The new NSS also recognizes that America’s national security and its pre-eminent position in today’s global competition are as dependent upon the growth and self-sufficiency of its economy as its military preparedness. That is why it puts a high priority on ending the decades-long erosion and atrophy of America’s industrial base.
The strategy declares that the vitality of the American economy is “the bedrock of our global position and the necessary foundation of our military.” That vitality is measured by the strength of America’s supply chains, the superiority of its leading-edge technology platforms, and the depth, versatility, resilience, and capacity of its industrial and manufacturing infrastructure.
The Trump administration’s strategic course correction also rejects the failed nation-building efforts to replicate Western-style democracy in Third World countries, which were responsible for American troops getting bogged down for years by fighting losing wars against domestic insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
U.S. ENERGY INDEPENDENCE REDUCES THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MIDDLE EAST
The new strategy reduces the historic importance of the Middle East to American foreign policy, because of the progress which the United States has made in diversifying its energy sources, going beyond energy independence to become “a net energy exporter.”
The strategy also disapproves of “America’s misguided experiment with hectoring these nations, especially the Gulf monarchies, into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government,” in a reference to the accusation by the Biden administration that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) was complicit in the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Instead, the strategy recommends that the U.S. continue Trump’s efforts to make the region “a place of partnership, friendship, and investment,” in an apparent reference to the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Sunni Muslim, pro-Western states in the region.
The new U.S. strategy also criticizes the unrealistic former American foreign policy goal of “spreading liberal ideology” in African countries, which often failed because they had no prior experience with, understanding of, or respect for Western democratic values.
In his National Interest essay, Lawson observes that, “The NSS also takes a remarkably pragmatic approach to alliances. For years, alliances have been treated [by American foreign policy] more as sacred relics than as strategic instruments. But alliances are tools, not ends in themselves. Allies should contribute materially to shared strategic objectives, rather than simply offering moral support or rhetorical solidarity. This is especially true of [U.S.] allies in Europe that the NSS rightly critiques for their history of free-riding on U.S. defense spending while often lecturing U.S. leaders on morality.”
MOVING TOWARD A MORE REALISTIC U.S. FOREIGN POLICY STRATEGY
“The NSS … calls for real burden-sharing, for alliances tailored to functional missions, and for a sober reassessment of what partners can realistically deliver in a world where American resources are not limitless. This is not abandonment of the United States’ global role,” Lawson argues. Rather, it is the kind of reform “necessary to ensure [that America’s] alliances remain sustainable and strategically coherent. . .
“For many years, America First foreign policy and defense analysts have rightly worried that the United States was drifting without a strategic compass, pulled by habit, ideology, and institutional inertia. The 2025 NSS is a sign that this drift may finally be coming to an end.”
Lawson concedes that the new strategy “is not perfect, and how it is implemented will be far more important than how it is written. But for the first time in a generation,” he writes, “American grand strategy rests upon a foundation that is intellectually coherent, strategically realistic, and aligned with the geopolitical world as it actually exists, not in the imagination of naïve idealists.”
