If Donald Trump did not personally write (or dictate) the preface to his new National Security Strategy, whoever did certainly captures his voice. The President claims that “over the past nine months, we have brought our nation—and the world—back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster.” He castigates his predecessor: “after four years of weakness, extremism and deadly failures, my administration moved with…historic speed to restore American strength at home and abroad, and bring peace and stability to our world.” And he promises that “what follows is a National Security Strategy (NSS) to describe and build upon the extraordinary strides we have made.”
In two major areas – the Western Hemisphere and Europe – the new strategy certainly marks a shift in America’s priorities. But in others, it is rather a conventional document.
The most obvious change is the priority assigned to the defense of the Western Hemisphere, the longest section in the NSS. American objectives there include a “Trump Corollary” to the early nineteenth century Monroe Doctrine, which has concerned many observers, analysts and pundits
Nevertheless, the administration’s policy – 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” – is no different from that of all previous administrations since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Certainly, the American force buildup in the Caribbean, which currently includes roughly a fourth of the Navy’s deployed fleet, appears to underscore the language in the NSS. So too does the both the sinking of allegedly drug smuggling merchant ships and the seizure of a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil to embargoed states like Cuba.
Both actions, however, have not been triggered by “non-Hemispheric forces.” Instead, they are part of an effort to depose Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro. Nevertheless, it appears that Maduro will not voluntarily relinquish power unless American forces actually attack Venezuela. He might not do so even in that case, while American forces could get dragged into a long war, something Trump has boasted that he has successfully avoided.
If Trump’s efforts to resuscitate the Monroe Doctrine have yet to be tested, the strategy’s pronouncements regarding European politics could well backfire. The NSS speaks of “restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.” It accuses “the European Union and other transnational bodies” of “undermin[ing] political liberty and sovereignty.” It identifies “Europe’s lack of self-confidence” as the cause of its “deeply attenuated” relationship with Russia.
European politicians and political leaders have concluded than not only is Trump prepared to abandon Europe to face Russia alone, but that he is promoting parties of the extreme right who have tended to support of Vladimir Putin’s justification for his invasion of Ukraine.
A close reading of the document, however, offers no indication that Trump is prepared to abandon Europe, or for that matter, Ukraine. There is no denying that perhaps the first time in a national security strategy, the document appears to involve America in European politics; it does call for a sharp rightward shift on the continent. In practice, however, the more Washington advocates for European parties of the extreme right, the more a backlash against those parties is inevitable, simply because Trump is highly unpopular among European publics.
Moreover, there is nothing in the document to indicate that Trump is ready to pull America out of NATO, or withdraw from the Alliance’s integrated military command, as France and Spain once did. The document does ask more of the NATO allies. But as Secretary of War Hegseth stressed in his address to the Reagan National Defense Forum on December 6, America will stand by those allies who meet their defense commitments. Hegseth praised “model allies that step up… Poland, increasingly Germany, the Baltics and others.” Indeed, in September Trump had personally committed his Polish counterpart that Washington would add more troops to the roughly 8200 already stationed in Poland.
Despite seemingly accepting Putin’s territorial demands for Ukrainian territory as a condition for his accepting a ceasefire, the NSS does explicitly seek “reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.” With the EU’s likely employment of now-frozen Russian assets to underwrite massive loans that would allow Ukraine to bolster its defense for at least two years, Kyiv will now be in a position to negotiate from greater strength, in order to realize the very words of the NSS.
Regarding China, the NSS breaks no new ground. It calls for strengthening America’s deterrence against China while at the same time seeking a balanced trade relationship with Beijing. Indeed, whereas Joe Biden’s off-the-cuff comments about defending Taiwan were a departure from past policies, the NSS reverts to them. On the one hand, the document states that “deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” On the other hand, it adds that American policy is to “maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
The NSS does call upon Japan and South Korea to increase their military spending; in fact, both countries are already doing so. Moreover, when the document calls upon Taiwan to do the same, it is again echoing the remonstrations of previous US administrations.
On the Middle East, the NSS also reflects a continuation of past policies. It offers strong support for Israel. It seeks to expand the Abraham Accords. It looks to a close relationship with the Arab Gulf states. It promotes Israeli-Palestinian peace, though it does not explicitly call for the creation of a Palestinian state. Even its language cautioning against “hectoring…the Gulf monarchies into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government” reflects no change from the actual practice of previous administrations, including the Biden administration.
The administration’s decision to downgrade the Middle East’s priority in the NSS has been an objective of each of its predecessors since George H.W. Bush. Yet as demonstrated in the Israeli-American attack on Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities, Operation Midnight Hammer, the region will continue to preoccupy the White House, NSS language notwithstanding.
The NSS certainly appears to mark a sea-change in American policy towards the Western Hemisphere and Europe. But it does not call for a division of the world into spheres of influence. Nor is it a statement of American isolationism or withdrawal from the international arena. Most important of all, reality will creep in to refocus White House attention and perhaps to reorder NSS priorities. That has been the fate of previous National Security Strategies, and the future of this one promises to be no different.
