Stranger things in US National Security Strategy

The release of Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) has raised eyebrows across the world for the dramatic break from previous NSS documents, including the one in his first term. The current NSS almost calls out all previous attempts as lacking any understanding of what strategy is, and as such, lacking any focus on the United States’ priorities in engaging the world. As the NSS 2025 categorically claims, “American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short—they have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes; and have often misjudged what we should want.” In many ways, the new NSS stands MAGA-fied, with a curious mix of “Make America Great Again” bravado and restraining forces that wish to pull the plug on the tools that have propped up American hegemony. For instance, American bets on “globalism” and “free trade” have been called “misguided” and as having led to the demise of American economic and military pre-eminence.

The new American zeitgeist on immigration is imprinted all over the NSS, with the Trump administration desiring “full control” over borders and the “immigration system” and dismantling any ecosystem that enables unchecked migration. The reference to “soft power” stands quite starkly apart, from how the world has viewed Trump’s second administration, largely due to scuttling of the role of foreign aid and assistance in US foreign policy plus skyrocketing tariffs on allies, adversaries and partners. The Trump administration, as the NSS contends, wants “to maintain the United States’ unrivalled ‘soft power’ through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests.”

To many who periodically study US strategic documents, the conservative spin on American demography would be eye opening. In a direct rebuke to “woke” ideology on family and Planned Parenthood, the NSS contends that the key to a proud, happy and optimistic American people ultimately “cannot be accomplished without growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.”

Compared to previous NSS documents whose premise largely remained America’s comprehensive preparedness or the lack of it, to manage the strategic ramifications of new great power rivalries, and the rise of inter-state competition, this one raises some profound questions. They pertain to the deep political polarization in American society, and a churn in American social contract, cutting across economic, ethnic, religious, and geographic lines. How much the United States needs to engage with the outside world, and what it means for the welfare of the American citizenry has been an enduring dynamic of the American polity, starting from its founding fathers. It was America’s first President George Washington, who first warned against “foreign entanglements” in his farewell address in 1796.

America undergoes bouts of isolationist upsurge between periods of high intervention, such as during the inter-war period, before the United States eventually entered World War II and scripted the post-war security and economic order. More recently, the call to end its “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, amidst the financial recession striking at America’s industrial heartland, has seeped into America’s political narrative, cutting across the Democratic and Republican parties. Trump’s second administration and the MAGA base have made it a core premise of their foreign policy DNA.

Trump’s campaign to rename “Gulf of Mexico”, retake the Gulf of Panama, make Canada the 51st state of the U.S. and the standoff with Venezuela did portend a “new neighbourhood policy” in the Trump administration, but the NSS has thrown a new bombshell. Almost two centuries after the first call of the Monroe Doctrine for hemispheric control in 1823, followed by the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904, NSS 2025 invokes a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. This will invite recurring interpretations and reinterpretations in times to come, redefine America’s regional priorities after having put premium capital into the Indo-Pacific region as the primary theatre of US-China great power competition. In fact, the NSS contends that the US should enlist its “European and Asian allies and partners, including India” to cement and improve their “joint positions in the Western Hemisphere.”

In the midst of the Ukraine war and the trade war with China, Trump’s meeting with his Russian and Chinese counterparts in Alaska and Busan respectively infused new dynamics in how Washington viewed ties with its primary adversaries. Unlike the Biden era’s NSS that had pitted the US-China competition as one between “democracies” and “autocracies”, the current document reflects a period of uncertain transition in these relationships. Rather, much inked has been spilled on spelling out conceptual notions of the Trump administration’s security worldview. It says, “President Trump’s foreign policy is pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist’, realistic without being ‘realist’, principled without being ‘idealistic’, muscular without being ‘hawkish’, and restrained without being ‘dovish’.” These loaded phrases will take some time to be deciphered for its real world implications on Trump’s foreign policy, as would US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth comparing America’s ties with allies, as “being tough love, but love nonetheless”.

Talking about “tough love”, the NSS starkly reflects the growing fractures and fissures in the transatlantic alliance, between the US and its European partners, going beyond dissonance over NATO burden sharing. Reflected in Vice President J.D. Vance’s earlier speech at the Munich Security Conference, and Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, the deepening rifts over values and interests in the West is something that requires more intense introspection for its global implications. The NSS, among other things, contends that the economic decline in Europe is “eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” Commenting on the demographic trends and immigration patterns in the continent, it says, “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less.”

Reframing past strategies and doubling down Trump’s “peacemaker” role, the NSS positions the US as a mediator between Russia and Europe with the aim to “re-establish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.” The document goes on to contend that “certain NATO members will become majority non-European.” “As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter,” the NSS says.

The economic framing of alliances and partnerships in the Trump era is stark, as the document propounds, “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over. We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense.” In a statement that will carry significant import, in how it pans out, in the remainder of the Trump administration, the NSS says, “America and its allies have not yet formulated, much less executed, a joint plan for the so-called ‘Global South’, but together possess tremendous resources.”

Monish Tourangbam is a Senior Research Consultant at the Chintan Research Foundation (CRF), New Delhi.