How to Read the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy
Hi friends,
Last week, the Trump administration issued its National Security Strategy (NSS), a document presidents typically issue once in their terms, outlining their national security and foreign policy priorities. I don’t want to duplicate any of the great summaries of the NSS that are already out there—Politico’s Nahal Toosi has a good one, as do Foreign Policy’s Rishi Iyengar and Christina Lu. Instead, what I want to do with you all in this month’s issue of Foundations is to think critically about how to read the National Security Strategy, including by parsing the questions that underpin its contents: questions of values, fears, audience, and allies.
Who is the intended audience?
This may seem like an odd question for a public-facing document: in a broad sense, of course, the audience is everyone. But as you go through, it’s worth taking a look at the way the messaging targets different readers, whether subtly or overtly. For example, there are sections where the American people are addressed directly, sometimes accompanied by explicitly political messaging, such as when the strategy proclaims that “all Americans need to know what, exactly, we are trying to do and why,” or when it lauds President Trump and his team for “successfully [marshaling] America’s great strengths to correct course and begin ushering in a new golden age for our country.”
Other parts are aimed at the governments of other countries, either in support or in warning. A central theme of the document is that the Trump administration wants other countries to pay what it feels is their fair share of defense and aid costs, and it shows up in language stating, “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.”
Some sections, in contrast, seem intended to reflect, and guide, the work of the executive branch itself, such as language explaining that “All our embassies must be aware of major business opportunities in their country, especially major business contracts. Every U.S. government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.”
And at times, the NSS also reads like a press release: “President Trump has cemented his legacy as the President of Peace,” begins one paragraph. “President Trump has leveraged his dealmaking ability to secure unprecedented peace in eight conflicts throughout the world over the course of just eight months of his second term.”
In other words, it’s possible to parse the audience of the NSS into component pieces based on the contents of a given section, or even a given sentence. The U.S. has had, to date, a powerful bully pulpit to make itself heard, and this strategy assumes that people will be listening.
Who are our allies?
I should state at the outset that I’m using “allies” in the broadest possible sense here, to mean not just countries with which the U.S. has a military alliance, but also countries with which it has partnered or intends to partner with reliably on matters of mutual concern. While that can and does vary, depending on the issue, there are usually some mainstays: the European Union and the United Kingdom. Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand—countries in the Quad, or members of Five Eyes. You can see the prominence of those alliances coming through in President Biden’s 2022 National Security Strategy, for example, when it refers to “deepening core alliances in Europe and the Indo-Pacific,” as well as to NATO, AUKUS, and the Quad, among others—all on the very first page.
The 2025 NSS turns those core alliances on their heads—or, more accurately, turns them upside down and shakes them to see if any coins will fall out of their pockets. It has especially harsh language for Europe, stating that “it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.” Later on in the same section, the strategy claims that “within a few decades at the latest, 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.”
Other regions of the world receive even less space in the strategy, which devotes only three paragraphs to the entire continent of Africa, and states elsewhere that terrorist activity might be necessary to draw U.S. attention to “less consequential” areas.
Nor does this strategy spare international organizations. Instead, it describes unnamed prior generations of “foreign policy elites” who “lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty.”
These changing relationships are reflected in public reactions to the NSS. Russia, for example, has welcomed the NSS, and stated that its contents “correspond in many ways to [Russia’s] vision” and that they consider it “a positive step.” In contrast, European Council President Antonio Costa stated in a speech that Europe should understand that “post-World War II alliances have changed,” and that Europe should get ready “to protect [itself] not only against our adversaries, but also against the allies who challenge us.”
Who or what are we trying to counteract?
At the heart of this question is the idea that a country’s values can reveal themselves in what that country pushes back on—not just what it is trying, affirmatively, to achieve, but what it is trying to prevent.
As touched on above, one of the most drastic differences between the 2022 and 2025 strategies comes in their approach to Russia. This is evident even just by looking at the numbers: a search of President Biden’s NSS reveals that it refers to “Russia” 71 times; President Trump’s strategy a mere 10. While the 2022 NSS discusses Russia’s “immediate threat to the free and open international system,” and its “brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,” the 2025 NSS states that U.S. policy for Europe should “reestablish[]…strategic stability with Russia.” References to the People’s Republic of China are also down, though not as much, and the 2025 NSS continues to emphasize how to “rebalance” the U.S. economic relationship with China.
By far the most detailed descriptions of what the U.S. opposes come in the sections on the Western Hemisphere and on Europe. The 2025 NSS lists as a key priority ending mass migration, and states, “Border security is the primary element of national security…A border controlled by the American people as implemented by their government is fundamental to the survival of the United States as a sovereign republic.”
It also insists that the U.S. will “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.” (The Monroe Doctrine, which dates back to 1823, essentially sought to oppose European intervention or re-colonization in the Western Hemisphere; in what the NSS calls the “Trump Corollary,” the U.S. appears to be opposing “competitors” and “foreign influence” without being very clear about what implementing this Corollary will look like in practice.) In sum, the Western Hemisphere section focuses on what the U.S. wants to keep out—in this case, people, drugs, and any foreign influence other than its own.
The section on Europe is strikingly similar: it is concerned, in no small part, with migration to Europe, decrying the “real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure” and “migration policies that are transforming the continent.” It states that the U.S. wants Europe to “remain European” and to “regain its civilizational self-confidence.”
I would call this language a dog whistle, but that is far too subtle for what this language actually is, which is a clear endorsement of the White nationalist Great Replacement Theory. That (conspiracy) theory stokes fears that White Western people are being “replaced” by immigrants, and should respond by closing their borders and raising (White) birth rates, language the NSS also echoes in its language calling for “growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.”
This language echoing the Great Replacement Theory is almost certainly what has driven support for the strategy among far-right groups, including the extremist Alternative for Germany, which called it “a foreign policy reality check for Germany.”
What do we think keeps us safe?
This final question is, in many respects, one that encompasses the others. If the entire document is about national security, then what, according to that strategy, makes us secure?
For the 2025 NSS, the answer is, in a word, control. The strategy makes clear that the Trump administration wants the U.S. to control its borders, control the economy, control the future of technology, control the terms of its trade deals, even to control how allies like Europe govern themselves, and what they value. Above all, the 2025 NSS seems to operate from the presumption that achieving U.S. goals and promoting U.S. values is something that can happen without compromise and without investing in reciprocal relationships. “The United States will chart our own course in the world and determine our own destiny, free of outside interference,” it reads. And even more boldly, “the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”
Under this worldview, isolation is a corollary to control: one of the key beliefs underpinning the 2025 NSS is the conviction that America First means America alone gets to set the terms of its relationships. But that is not how healthy relationships work, and the repeated statements in the NSS celebrating America’s heretofore “unrivaled” soft power will come up hard against this reality. Disagreement that is never tempered by understanding, and avarice that is never counteracted by care, doesn’t result in successful diplomacy. It only results, even at its best, in transactions.
And that is not a world I want to live in.
ICYMI
Recent editions of The Brief include coverage of:
- Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s speech at the U.N. Human Rights Council;
- The 30th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the U.S. decision not to send a government delegation;
- The contents of the U.S. peace proposal for Ukraine, as well as the absolutely bananas controversy about its origins;
- Building pressure against U.S. military strikes in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean Sea, including the revelation that survivors of the strikes were deliberately targeted; and
- What’s happening in Hong Kong, including its special status, the recent fire, crackdowns from Beijing, and last weekend’s Legislative Council elections.
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Thank you again for reading, and I'll see you back here soon!
Alexis
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