President Trump’s National Security Strategy can be summarized by the following bullet points:
- Enforce the Monroe Doctrine to ensure U.S. predominance in the Western Hemisphere.
- Establish and maintain a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.
- Cede primary responsibility for the defense of Europe to European powers.
- Maintain a favorable balance of power in the Middle East through support of key regional allies.
- Ensure that the United States leads the world in technology, AI, biotech, and quantum computing.
To pursue, protect and preserve those vital interests, the United States requires unmatched economic and military power, a revived defense industrial base, a revitalized nuclear deterrent, energy independence and dominance, balanced trade, strong alliances in strategic regions of the globe, global cultural superiority, and a whole of government approach to achieve these goals.
Only a strong America will be able to avoid unnecessary wars and successfully negotiate peace among regional rivals.
Trump’s National Security Strategy emphasizes pragmatism, realism, muscularity, restraint, and eschews any tradition or ideology. Its sole motivation is “America First.” All domestic and foreign policies must meet the test of “what works for America,” what is best for America. Unlike previous presidential administrations since the 1930s, the Trump administration seeks to narrow, not expand, the definition of the “national interest.” As the National Security Strategy states: “America’s core national security interests shall be our focus.”
Focusing on core national security interests means treating peripheral interests as “peripheral.” Not every conflict on the globe, not every crisis on every continent, not every humanitarian problem is America’s conflict, crisis, or problem. In fact, the National Security Strategy expressly invokes a presumption against interventionism abroad — a return, in essence, to a foreign policy modeled on Washington’s Farewell Address and John Quincy Adams’ counsel to avoid going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. This is not isolationism, but rather a return to a pre-World War I and II, and pre-Cold War American foreign policy — in a phrase, a policy of “flexible realism.”
Indeed, the segment of the National Security Strategy titled “Flexible Realism” is little more than a re-wording of Washington’s Farewell Address, which counseled the nation to seek peaceful commercial relations with all countries, even those whose governing systems differ from ours. It recognizes that the sovereign nation-state, not some globalized world, is international reality. “The world works best,” the National Security Strategy states, “when nations prioritize their interests.” Trump’s Strategy renounces globalism: “We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations” and “The United States will chart our own course in the world and determine our own destiny, free of outside interference.”
The Trump National Security Strategy eschews global hegemony by the United States, seeking instead a stable global balance of power and a stable regional balance of power in areas vital to U.S. interests, but insists that the U.S. will not waste “blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers.” It is a “timeless truth of international relations” that great powers and stronger nations will invariably exercise greater global and regional influence.
The National Security Strategy recognizes the challenge posed by China in the western Pacific and globally. It recognizes that we have a vital interest in preventing China from dominating the western Pacific, including the South China Sea. But Trump seeks to avoid war with China by improving our military posture in the Indo-Pacific and persuading our Indo-Pacific allies to do the same in order to deter potential Chinese aggression.
The president believes that what works best for America is a policy of “peace through strength.” Only a strong America will be able to avoid unnecessary wars and successfully negotiate peace among regional rivals. There will be no crusades based on ideology or abstract principles. America will not attempt to shape other nations in our own image. Nation-building is a thing of the past. Refreshingly, there is no mention of the United Nations, no genuflection at the altar of climate change, no apologies to the nations of the Third World, no professed commitment to “arms control.”
This National Security Strategy may be the most important U.S. strategy document since NSC-68 set the framework for U.S. policy in the Cold War.
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