The Revolutionary New Dynamics of the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States

A blunt assertion of political intent that rides roughshod over the sensibilities of friend and foe alike the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States marks a sea change in U.S. foreign policy. The most controversial foreign policy statement in decades, the NSS has produced an extraordinary reaction across the diplomatic world. Reaction has been particularly pointed in Europe. The European Council President Antonio Costa has condemned as unacceptable what he describes as a threat of American interference in European affairs. The German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz has also stressed that elements of the new American strategy are unacceptable and has concluded that its lesson for Europe is the need for greater independence in security policy. Alice Rufo, the French director general of international relations and strategy, echoed Merz’s position, describing the National Security Strategy as ‘an extremely brutal clarification’ of the Trump administration’s ideology. The American born Pope, Leo XIV, has described the changed attitude towards the alliance with Europe as unfortunate and the exclusion of Europe from attempts to bring about peace as ‘not realistic.’ By contrast, the Russian Ministry of Affairs gave the NSS a guarded welcome, with Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova finding particularly significant the Trump administration’s ‘revision of Washington’s previous commitment to hegemony.’

An American security strategy that renounces hegemony certainly marks a significant moment in U.S. foreign policy and global politics. The refusal of hegemony should not, however, be read as a rejection of American primacy. The NSS is clear throughout that although the U.S. no longer intends to exert its influence and authority everywhere it has no intention of relinquishing its status as the world’s most powerful state and in fact insists on its determination to remain the dominant military and economic power on Earth. Donald Trump personally avows that the NSS is ‘a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history’ and that ‘[i]n the years ahead, we will make America safer, richer, freer, greater, and more powerful than ever before.’

Exploring the difference between hegemony and primacy goes some way to understanding the strategic logic of the NSS and why the Trump administration is excoriating its existing allies and attempting to woo Russia. In short, the NSS reveals that the USA is preparing for superpower competition with China and it is shedding what it regards as political and conceptual dead weight of hegemony to ensure that it prevails over its rival and remains the primary power on Earth.

The Partial Shrug of the American Atlas

The authors of the NSS lay great emphasis on the rejection of the strategic aim of permanent American hegemony as one of their doctrine’s most significant innovations. Democrat and Republican “elites” alike are criticized for having ‘badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens’ and for expanding ‘the definition of America’s “national interest” such that almost no issues or endeavor is considered outside its scope.’ The U.S. now ‘rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination,’ the NSS authors insist, and instead proposes a focus on a more narrowly defined protection of core security interests. ‘The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas’ the NSS assures us ‘are over.’

The benefit of Atlas putting aside the weight of the world is the decoupling from onerous responsibilities and commitments for an America anxious to downsize its involvements with regions that are no longer considered a priority. Now that America is ‘once again a net energy exporter,’ for example, it does not need to prioritize a Middle East that is ‘no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was.’ Africa, also, will have to adjust to a transition from ‘an aid-focused relationship … to a trade- and investment-focused relationship,’ based on states ‘opening their markets to U.S. goods and services’ and access to natural resources. In place of exporting and/or imposing liberal ideology to Africa, the Trump administration envisages a relationship ‘with prospects for a good return on investment’ for the U.S. with ‘capable, reliable states’ to generate ‘profits for U.S. businesses’ who will in turn assist the US ‘in the competition for critical minerals and other resources.’

“Our” Hemisphere(s): Strengthening Atlas’ Grip in the Americas, Asia, and Europe

While the aim of global hegemony is shelved, the NSS makes clear that in certain regions the US has no intention of ceding pre-eminence; the Western Hemisphere especially is identified as “Our” Hemisphere, from which Atlas will expel the influence of foreign adversaries. The NSS identifies two varieties of foreign adversary at work in America’s backyard. The first category is native: traffickers of drugs and humans and other criminal networks.  The second, unnamed adversary is presented as an insidious force from outside the Western Hemisphere seeking to supplant US influence.

The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is directed towards denying these shadowy ‘non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.’ These outsiders ‘have made major inroads into our Hemisphere’ to the disadvantage of America economically and potentially militarily; not resisting these competitors earlier is presented as ‘another great American strategic mistake of recent decades.’

The NSS is remarkably coy about identifying the mysterious interlopers but its authors do provide clues to their identity. The clearest of these clues is the claim that this competitor uses ‘debt-traps’ and other economic devices to ensnare unwary Western Hemisphere states into neo-colonial compliance. As China is routinely accused by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others in the Trump administration of using debt trap diplomacy and similar practices in the Caribbean and beyond, it is safe to conclude that the administration believes that the rising superpower of the East is the phantom power infiltrating the Western Hemisphere.

While the identity of America’s opponent in the Western Hemisphere is not directly revealed, China is openly identified as America’s competitor in Asia. The world’s largest continent will ‘be among the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds’ and a region in which the USA ‘must successfully compete’ to ensure ‘a free and open Indo-Pacific.’ The competition with China will be both economic and military. Economically, the US (and its regional allies) will aim to ‘rebalance’ its relationship with China by countering its “predatory” industrial strategies, “unfair” trading practices, intellectual property theft, and industrial espionage. Militarily, the USA identifies maintaining the Taiwanese status quo and securing control of the South China Sea as the primary objectives of itself and its allies in the region.

Europe is the final global region in which the USA retains a special interest. Unlike Asia and the Western Hemisphere, Europe is not viewed as a geopolitical or economic battlefield in which the USA must compete for influence with China. The issue with Europe is presented as more akin to a medical intervention designed to revive a continent subsumed by crises and accelerating decline. The NSS authors insist that Europe’s alarming condition, poised as it is on the edge of ‘civilizational erasure,’ is attributable to the policies of unrepresentative elites who govern Europe’s states and to the actions of the excessively regulatory and innovation stifling European Union. America’s goal, the NSS makes clear, ‘should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory’ by standing up ‘for genuine democracy’ against these unrepresentative elites. America’s means to this end lies in encouraging ‘its political allies in Europe [who are clearly not the elites that compose its current governments] to promote’ a revival of spirit across the individual states of Europe. The NSS notes with satisfaction and hope that ‘the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism’ and it is these parties who are the preferred partners for America in the future envisaged by the authors of the NSS.

America’s tough love strategy for ‘[r]establishing conditions of stability within Europe’ encompasses making Europe take ‘primary responsibility for its own defense’ while also ‘[c]ultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,’ i.e., working against the elected but unacceptable governments of Europe in favour of the ‘patriotic’ parties who are more amenable to the worldview of the NSS. Europe’s cultural revival will also benefit from ‘[o]pening European markets to U.S. goods and services.’ The Strategy makes no mention of reciprocal opening of U.S. markets to European goods and services but given the criticism of the negative effects of ‘so-called free trade’ on America’s economy and society expressed in the first part of the document, such access seems unlikely. The Strategy also implies a critical distinction between the ‘healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe’ who will be the beneficiaries of American ‘commercial ties, weapon sales, political collaboration,’ etc., and the unhealthy nations of Northern and Western Europe who might not profit from association with the U.S. to the same extent as their healthy neighbours.

The dissatisfaction of the Trump administration with existing European elites lies in their frustration of American attempts to bring about an expeditious end to the war in Ukraine. The details of its conclusion are relatively unimportant from an American perspective; the war must be concluded as quickly as possible in order to prevent the risk of escalation and to ‘reestablish strategic stability with Russia.’ The Europeans must disabuse themselves of the idea that the Russians represent an ‘existential risk’ to their security and put aside their ‘unrealistic expectations’ for the war. Furthermore, the Europeans are to be encouraged to end ‘the perception’ and prevent ‘the reality’ of NATO as ‘a perpetually expanding alliance’ – a clarification of NATO’s limits welcomed in Moscow if not within the non-American states of the alliance or Ukraine.

The Underlying Logic of National Security Strategy 2025

The NSS lays bare the distance between the USA and the EU in relation to the war in Ukraine and the wider role of Russia in world affairs. The Europeans regard the Russian Federation as responsible for a war of naked aggression against Ukraine and call attention to Vladimir Putin’s various revanchist claims as a supreme threat to European security. The Americans, however, regard the Russians as potentially useful in its forthcoming struggle with China and view the Ukraine War as a minor issue in the context of its overall strategy of remaining the globe’s most powerful nation. The Americans, gearing up for an existential struggle of their own, cannot afford a regional war in Europe to jeopardise their wider goals. Bringing the Europeans to heel is a necessary response for the Trump administration to a situation that cannot be allowed to persist: to paraphrase Lord Ismay’s description of the strategic purpose of NATO, the new American strategy is ‘Keep the Chinese out. Bring the Russians in. Cow the Europeans and other existing allies.’

Excavating the strategic logic of U.S. policy from an occasionally oblique text reveals a plan centering around preparation for a bipolar world. The USA is girding itself for a struggle with China for global dominance and managing its existing allies and attracting new ones will be central to its success. The core of ‘flexible realism’ is to recognize that Russia – possessed of enormous natural and military resources – is too valuable a potential asset not to court, or worse, to risk falling permanently into the orbit of the Chinese. The sacrifice of some, or perhaps even the whole, of Ukraine would be a small price to pay from their perspective to gain Russian support or at least to prevent it from adopting a position inimical to American interests.

Conclusion

The logic of the NSS may be coherent but it remains to be seen if it will be successful. Two issues in particular call this strategy into doubt. The first – and potentially fatal – flaw is that it betrays a lack of understanding of how to maintain an alliance. Alliances are marriages of convenience: they are based on the mutuality of interests.  NATO’s success as an alliance was rooted in the fundamental calculation of all parties that it was in their shared interests to prevent Soviet domination of Europe. Post-Cold War NATO persisted because instability in Europe posed a serious threat to an American led world order. The 2025 NSS completely rewrites the basis of the relationship between the U.S., the EU, and its member states, reducing the status of the Europeans from valued allies to lackeys. The European states are asked to support America in its coming struggle with the Chinese but are not only not offered anything in return, instead they are instructed to come to terms with a Russia they fear has ambitions beyond the acquisition of Ukrainian territory outlined in the recent American peace plan. The threat to support more ideologically acceptable parties if existing governments do not fall in line is a blunt instrument to enforce compliance. In the short term, the EU and European states might adopt supine poses in the face of American demands, but they are unlikely to accept for long an imperial system in which their interests are sacrificed on the altar of America’s global ambitions or ideological preferences. A Europe that no longer takes the good will of the United States as a given is a Europe more likely to leave America’s orbit by becoming an independent military and economic actor or through forging new alliances of its own. A more confident and militarily assertive Europe is likely to be a much less biddable bloc than in its current form and a potentially difficult new variable in the operation of the balance of power. The Trump administration may – like other great powers before it – soon discover that to treat one’s allies well is a necessary component of successful statecraft. 

The second difficulty lies with the assumption that the Russian Federation might be persuaded to move closer to the USA. Even before the outbreak of full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine further strained relations between the United States and the Russian Federation, the former rivals of China and Russia had begun to deepen relations, culminating shortly before the war began with the signing of an agreement for a “limitless” partnership between the two states. The war in Ukraine has only deepened Russian-Chinese ties, with Putin recently declaring that these ‘relations have reached the highest level in history.’ There is little reason to assume that Putin, having forged a strategically important relationship with China, could be enticed to jeopardise this relationship for rapprochement with a state of which he is at the best of times suspicious. Trump and his team may be attracted to Russia but as long as China remains a credible option it is unlikely that Russia will reciprocate to a degree that the Americans would like. China offers the Russians a market for gas and oil and a stability the U.S. – which might change tack depending on who holds the presidency – cannot match. The USA might be more powerful than China in some respects for the moment but China is a more predictable and hence a more reliable partner.

Ultimately, it is difficult to determine how seriously to take the latest National Security Strategy of the United States: it is not clear whether its primary audience is America’s international peers, if it is designed primarily for domestic consumption, or if it is just a foreign policy placeholder of no real lasting value that might be reversed in part or in whole. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the document is the insight it gives into the mentality of its authors, who pride themselves on it being a genuine strategy with clear ends and means as opposed to the overblown ambitions for global hegemony of its predecessors. The NSS 2025 shares with its antecedents, however, an unrealistic belief that simply being the world’s predominant in power will inevitably deliver positive outcomes for the United States.

Despite rejecting hegemony and embracing ‘flexible’ realism in foreign policy, America remains wedded to a romantic idea of its manifest destiny that tempts it to act as if there should be no brake on its ambition and that other states should and will simply accept its will. The Trump administration runs the risk of discovering, like the Bush administration before it, that it cannot create or mould reality to its will and that there is in fact no substitute for the ‘judicious study of discernible reality’ when thinking about the about politics, especially international politics, in which unpredictable reality does not always bend in the direction of the actor with the greatest power. As the world moves to another phase of great power competition it is to be hoped that in the struggle for global primacy America rediscovers a prudential statecraft that respects its adversaries, cultivates its existing allies while attempting to gain new ones, and cleaves to a more moderate and balanced strategy for defining and achieving the national interest.

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