By Andreas Kluth
It came with a relative delay and was published discreetly, without being accompanied by the long presidential speech we are used to so far. However, the United States' new National Security Strategy (NSS), the document that will theoretically guide foreign policy during Donald Trump's second term, says a lot about the president's worldview.
Latin America, already on the radar of American fighters, will not be surprised to learn that it is now officially receiving surveillance, due to the recently proclaimed "Trump Corollary" of the Monroe Doctrine. Europe will be offended by many points in the document and should pay attention. China will learn nothing new, except that America still, in a way, supports Taiwan. The Middle East, after a long time, takes up less space. Africa is a minor consideration, while North Korea is not mentioned at all. On the contrary, the warriors of the anti-woke culture cannot hide their joy.
An NSS is a document required by law, which usually marks the essence of a government's view of geopolitics. It also guides other documents, such as the National Defense Strategy (also delayed and expected to be published soon), which have long-term consequences in terms of bureaucracy and budget.
The text drafted during the first term of the Trump administration was clear, almost aggressive, as it defined great power competition with Russia and China (as opposed to the war on terror, for example) as the guiding principle of US foreign policy. It is also almost certain that it was never read by the president, who presented it in a speech that had nothing to do with its content.
The NSS of his second government is different. It is short and obviously worded to match the attention span and interests of the president. At many points, it is also well-written, especially as an engaging and populist – yet perceptive – critique of the foreign policy platitudes propagated by the Cold War by Washington's foreign policy elite, contemptuously called "the blob."
The strategic documents of the past three decades, according to the NSS, "were wish lists or desired end situations; They did not clearly define what we want, but instead described vague platitudes." Amen. Specifically, the text continues: "Our elites miscalculated America's willingness to forever shoulder global burdens that the American people did not consider to be in the national interest." This is the most comprehensive statement of the MAGA rebellion against "liberal internationalism" or the US-led "rules-based [world] order."
The NSS editors also did their best to circumvent the many contradictions that run through the president's foreign policy and, by extension, the document. His approach, they write, is "practical without being 'pragmatic', pragmatic without being 'realistic', principle-based without being 'idealistic', dynamic without being 'aggressive', and restrained without being 'moderate'. In easy translation: Strategy is whatever Trump says tomorrow on Air Force One or later in the Oval Office, even if it contradicts everything he said today on Truth Social.
All this refinement should not overshadow the change in certain priorities. Several things remain constant: It has always been clear that the president views Moscow (to which he does not refer much, and, when he does, in part as a potential partner) more favourably than any of his post-World War II predecessors, and that he views the sovereignty of Ukraine (to which he refers briefly on page 25 of 29) as a secondary issue for the United States.
China, however, was expected to play a larger, if not larger, role, given that the government has significant critics of Beijing who want to shift U.S. resources from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific. This small shift seems to be continuing, but it is now part of a much larger reorientation from the world at large towards the Western Hemisphere, which Trump seems to want to dominate. Three months after heavy military reinforcement off the coast of Venezuela, and after threats to its hemisphere neighbours, from Canada to Brazil – this should come as no surprise.
Perhaps the harshest and most unwarranted references are intended for America's oldest allies in Europe and appear to bear the signature of Vice President Jay DeVance, who used the same language in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February.
The NSS describes Europe as a continent facing not only "economic decline", but also "cultural extinction" due to migration. The document also claims that Europe practices "censorship against free speech and repression of political opposition," winking at right-wing parties such as the German Alternative for Germany (AfD), which Vance supports, but Europe marginalizes (for good reason). The NSS admits that the US cannot "afford to write off Europe" – ugh, what a relief – but ominously states that "the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less".
The rest of the text is largely predictable. The strategy disdains multilateral and international organizations (which Trump has withdrawn, boycotted or mocked), while appearing to bless a return to the spheres of influence of the 19th century: "The excessive influence of the biggest, richest and most powerful countries is a timeless truth of international relations." Probably, Trump wants a new Yalta-style agreement between the US, China and Russia.
And as always, Trump's friends, businessmen and golfing associates are doing well. After the document rebukes Europeans for their way of life, he politely promises to stop "intimidating" Gulf monarchies into "abandoning their traditions," which rarely resemble James Madison's democracy.
I asked Rebecca Lisner what she thought of the new strategy. She drafted an early version of the NSS during Joe Biden's tenure, before becoming a top adviser to his vice president, Kamala Harris. The document was "a 'fill in the boxes' exercise," she wrote to me in an email, and "more bellicose than strategic." Indeed, it must be the first NSS to cite the fight against "DEI" as a priority for maintaining America's strength and security. As in Trump's first term, it won't make much difference in practice, she believes, because the president is "overly impulsive, volatile and opportunistic."
However, the document is worth reading, whether you are in Beijing or Moscow, Brussels or Berlin, Caracas, Riyadh or even Pyongyang – the latter remains inexplicably absent from the document. This new National Security Strategy reflects a government that claims to have no ideology, but still sees the world through the glasses of MAGA. It depicts a government that will continue to be distorted to add semantic coherence to the whims of a president who does what he wants.
Adaptation – Editing: Lydia Roubopoulou
