19. December 2025
On December 4th the White House published its 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS). The document is mandated by law for every incoming administration and serves as a compass for US foreign and security policy during its term. The new Trump NSS breaks away from traditional American strategic goals and interests and crystallizes the policies and actions taken by the second Trump administration in its first year. In this extended PRIF blog post, we provide an overview of the strategy and contextualize it, shedding light on notable aspects in short commentaries.
Rewriting American National Security Strategy Under Trump 2.0
Marking a decisive departure from the American strategic framework that has guided Washington in recent decades, the NSS omits shared democratic-liberal values, replacing global leadership with conditional influence and multilateralism with transactional bilateralism. For Europe, and for the broader democratic camp, the implications are profound: the transatlantic bargain that used to balance shared democratic and liberal values with shared interests is now fundamentally in question.
An era of shared interests, not of shared values
What is not said often carries more weight than what is—such is the case of the new NSS. The words “value” and “values” are not present in this administration’s text. Whether it is coincidental or a deliberate choice, it is one of the more novel characteristics of this document compared with those of previous administrations. Whatever the reason, the underlying message is quite clear – shared democratic values are out of the national security strategy that once steered US foreign policy, alliances, and partnerships. Instead, we find reference throughout the document to “God-given” natural rights and ambiguous Western civilizational characteristics.
This Trumpist approach to democratic values and foreign policy comes as no surprise. Vice President JD Vance said as much during his opening speech at the February 2025 Annual Munich Security Conference. Vance stated that his main concern was not Russia, China or any other military threat, but what he framed as a retreat of US allies in Europe from their “shared values”. Traditionally, American foreign policy has aimed to advance US values and interests. However, this strategy is interest-centric, adopting “flexible realism” as a guiding principle. Flexible realism, according to the NSS, seeks to build good relations with countries “without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories”.
Ask not what the US can do for the world, ask what the world can do for US
The new National Strategy seems to reject the idea that the US should play a purposeful and leading role in the world order. If anything, the overarching national security goals which the NSS puts forward are quite the opposite. It focuses instead on what seem to be self-serving priorities, avoiding much of the responsibility to the global order which every US president has taken upon himself in the post-Cold War era. US leadership, which could still be found in the first Trump administration’s NSS in 2017, is entirely missing from the new strategy, replaced instead by vague notions of US influence and domination—most notably in the Western Hemisphere.
Adopting the principles of an “America First” foreign policy, the strategy carves out the administration’s protectionist goals, focusing on long-standing interests on sovereignty, security, economy, industry, technology and, more uniquely, on protecting ‘Western civilization’ in the US homeland and abroad. The text projects a worldview that places nation-states at the core of the international system, emphasizing the importance of bilateral relations when it benefits the US This also comes as no surprise. The language is reminiscent of remarks made by former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, during his speech at the German Marshall Fund in December 2018, about the restoration of the role of nation-states in the Liberal International Order.
This framework sets the stage for a strategic realignment of the administration’s foreign policy, shifting from a traditional paradigm of what the US wants for the world to what the US wants from the world. Making global partnerships conditional on gains for the US, the strategy reorients the focus of diplomatic relations from the global interests outlined by the Biden administration to a narrower set of national interests. In a way, the doctrine resembles the thought of Alexander Hamilton, a founding father, the first secretary of treasury, and the most influential advisor to George Washington. Hamilton’s thought on commerce, in particular, seems to be something the Trump administration is keen to emulate.
Commerce as the cornerstone of Trumpian foreign policy
“The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares”. This is one of the opening statements of Alexander Hamilton’s 12th essay included in the Federalist Papers published almost 250 years ago, on November 27th, 1787. While Hamilton and Trump may have differed on many issues, the NSS does draw similarities to the way Hamilton viewed commerce as a central piece of American society.
The NSS shows extensive focus on economic and commercial domains, stressing the importance of economic security, achievable by reorienting trade balances, industrial policies, strengthening supply chains, self-reliance in critical sectors, energy independence, and a broad and productive defense industrial base. What makes this NSS distinctive is the primacy of economic security, which in turn explains why this priority receives such extensive elaboration compared with other strategic priorities outlined in the same document.
The return of the Monroe doctrine
To “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”, the new NSS states that the Trump administration intends to reinforce the Monroe Doctrine by enforcing a so-called “Trump Corollary”. Trump first cited the Monroe Doctrine in a 2018 speech at the United Nations, saying that “It has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs.” A year into his second presidency, and with the NSS at hand, it now appears the president has moved from words to action.
Amidst fear of expansionism by continental empires onto the colonies of the Americas, the doctrine was introduced during American President Monroe’s 1823 annual message to Congress, in which he warned European powers not to interfere in the Americas. Today, the US administration is no longer worried about European influence in the Hemisphere. Washington is more intent on reasserting a hemispheric dominance while countering immigration and illegal narcotics, along with containing “adversarial outside influence” on the Western Hemisphere—an implicit allusion to China’s deepening foothold in the region. The Trump Corollary seems to expand the idea of non-interference by extra-regional powers to the economic realm.
The NSS thus breaks away from the “Pivot to Asia”, which has dominated US foreign policy circles since the Obama administration. In 2011, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would put the Asia-Pacific region first, after centuries of preoccupation with Europe and decades of “forever wars” in the Middle East. During the first Trump term and Biden administration, Indo-Pacific strategic primacy was kept. For Trump (2017-2020) the Indo-Pacific was seen as a region of Great-power competition with both China and Russia reasserting their influence regionally and Globally. For Biden (2021-2024), it was seen as a region for strategic competition with China as its pacing threat, marked as the only competitor with both the intent and capabilities to reshape the international order. While the new NSS uses language related to China, it is less strategically coherent or combative towards Beijing than either Trump’s 2017 NSS or the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, assumed by many to have been largely adopted by the current administration.
Trump’s MEGA (Make Europe Great Again) unravels the US-Europe relationship
Among the regional sub-chapters of the NSS, the section on Europe is by far the most jarring, but this also comes as no surprise. The current American administration has freely aired its grievances with the Europeans since the very beginning, making the current NSS merely the formalization of the critique. The NSS argues that the continent has abandoned the ideas and values behind “Western civilization” in favor of an open-society ideal, warning that without restoring European “identity” American interests in the continent will diminish.
According to the new document, however, these “like-minded” European countries are still crucial to the administration’s effort to counter adversarial influence, yet the relationship does not seem to be intended as an equal partnership. With a hegemonic order based on a loyalty system, the new NSS seeks to reward the so-called “healthy” nations of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe with commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges, leaving a hanging question mark on the US position towards Northern and Western countries on the continent.
By insisting that Europe must ‘recalculate its course’ and take responsibility for its future, the new NSS employs a rhetoric that underscores the US as the Western Hegemon ruling over Europe, implicitly assigning Washington a pivotal role in preventing threats to “God-given” civilization. This role extends not only to threats emanating from international actors but to adversarial forces within the European continent.
Subordinates instead of partners
The current NSS marks a decisive departure from the American strategic framework that has guided Washington in recent decades. By omitting shared democratic-liberal values, and replacing global leadership with conditional influence, and multilateralism with transactional bilateralism, the Trump administration articulates a worldview in which the US no longer aspires to lead the international order, but rather to extract from it. The return of Hamiltonian economic thinking and the reintroduction of the Monroe Doctrine signals an administration intent on consolidating power at home and in the Western Hemisphere. It also signals a shift in American foreign policy. This shift is particularly destabilizing in Europe, where the NSS treats allies not as partners but as subordinates within a hierarchy in which interstate-relations are conditioned by US priorities. For Europe, and for the broader democratic camp, the implications are profound: the transatlantic bargain that used to balance shared democratic and liberal values with shared interests is now fundamentally in question.
Ilai Yaron Levy
Democracy, Europe, and Transatlantic Relations in the New US National Security Strategy
The new US NSS document does not refer to “values” in general, nor to “human rights” in particular. But this doesn’t mean it lays out a purely transactional or strictly interest centered agenda. In fact, the strategy is highly normative, even ideological. It is just that the values have changed. “God-given equal natural rights” are crucial principles, the defense or restoration of “Western identity” and “civilization” important aims.
The fact that these normative aims are applied to Europe, rather than to Russia or China, reflects neither an “internal incoherence” nor does it turn Europe an “enemy” of the US, as some observers have suggested (see, e.g., here). The strategy identifies Europe as part of the “democratic world”, which is of crucial strategic relevance to the US. Here, the Trump administration sees “allies” sharing the “Western identity” and being part of the same “civilization”. It is precisely because Europe is seen as a privileged space that the NSS is concerned about “anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties” here, while it refrains from doing so with a view to countries elsewhere “whose governing systems and societies differ from ours”.
This does not imply an inter-national confrontation between the US and European governments, but rather suggests a transnational struggle over the meaning of democracy, core rights and liberties. This pits the Trump administration and its ideological allies in Europe against those on both sides of the Atlantic who are opposed to such an openly right-wing, and at least implicitly White supremacist, agenda.
A comment by Jonas Wolff
The Coercive Hegemon
The new US NSS affirms the principle of non-interference into the domestic affairs of other nations while openly embracing interference into the democratic systems of the United States’ European allies. While it has been noted that this appears to be contradictory , a closer look reveals that it is not. The document quite consistently envisions a world order in which the United States acts as a coercive hegemon in its own (perceived) sphere of influence, whereas non-interference is reserved for rival great power peers. Proposed pathways to US dominance vary across the two regions within the US zone of influence: open coercion in Latin America – legitimized with an explicit revival of the historic Monroe doctrine – and anti-democratic domestic interference in Europe. In both approaches, however, the NSS exhibits openly imperialist tendencies. Contrary to Russian and Chinese claims, these are not directed against them but at the United States’ Latin American neighbors and European partners.
A comment by Caroline Fehl
Classic Arsenal of US Strategy
Much of what we find in the updated US National Security Strategy has been common knowledge for a long time. It represents the blending of a fundamental strategic realignment via a focus on Asia (i.e., a downgrade of Europe), and an America First view of the world. In addition to traditional international threats and conflicts, the transnational culture war between “progressive” (liberal) and “restorative” (neo-republican) forces has moved to the center of security policy thinking. Just as at the domestic level, the Trump administration seeks to rescue “Western civilization” and democracy in Europe by strengthening like-minded political movements and parties. This type of interference to assert one’s own interests is not new in itself; Latin America can tell us a thing or two about it. Also familiar is the considerations of strategic cooperation with rivals such as Russia and China while maintaining one’s own military and economic advantages. In general, the document contains the tried-and-tested elements of a strategy, defining the overarching security policy goals of the US, assessing the global and regional situation and, based on its own capabilities, blatantly deriving the means deemed necessary to achieve these goals.
Even if we disagree with their ends, the means are part of the classic arsenal of US strategy and naturally complement military power and deterrence. The language is also predominantly straightforward, sober, and, in this sense, strategic. The biggest change is probably the (realistic) reassessment that the US can no longer act as an unchallenged global hegemon, or at least no longer wants to, and is thus to a certain extent relinquishing its traditional claim to dominance. Another novelty is that, for the first time, Europe is being ruthlessly identified as a weak point in US global power projection and thus becomes exposed to the subversive methods of international influence. If we view this shift not with hysteria and resentment, but strategically, it reveals opportunities for a European strategy. For example, the US seems to remain fundamentally interested in strengthening Europe and supports the goal of European sovereignty in security matters, not least as a way of conserving its own resources. This might also include ownership and leadership in NATO for the defense of the continent. The withdrawal of the US from Europe does not necessarily have to lead to a power vacuum. Rather, it seems conceivable that capabilities and command structures could be actively transferred. Therefore, Europe cannot allow itself to fall back into amnesia and cling to Washington as if suffering from Stockholm syndrome. It must seize this opportunity and negotiate its emancipation within the alliance with the US in a sober-minded manner.
A comment by Sascha Hach
Trump First and Flexible Realism
Three major themes pervade the NSS – a focus on Donald J. Trump as a person, the various right-wing ideologies of his supporter base, and a professed Realpolitik approach to international politics.
The NSS is highly personalized around the figure of Donald J. Trump, at times equating and personifying US policy as the policy of Trump and as “America First” policy, evincing a stark shift in the very tone and structure of this kind of document. The strategy names Trump as having “cemented his legacy as The President of Peace” (capitalization in the original). This contrasts with previous NSS documents, including the last three under Biden (2021/2022) and Trump (2017). Trump himself is mentioned 27 times, including in section headlines—the Biden 2022 NSS only names the president five times and only in quotes. Reflecting Trump’s own rhetorical tendencies, the text begins by painting a picture of a decade-long misguided policy and then names Trump as the person that fixed and course-corrected policy for the better.
The NSS strongly adopts certain staples of right-wing thinking, especially those present in the America First and MAGA tendencies. The “rule of law” is not mentioned at all in the NSS (compared with 5 times in 2022). While variations of “democracy” where mentioned about 100 times in the 2022 NSS, in 2025 the theme appears only rarely, and usually in connection to the supposed democratic deficits of European countries. The same applies to the themes of core rights and liberties. ‘Anti-DEI’ measures are meant to unleash American power potential. Also pervasive in the NSS is the theme, in line with long-lasting traditions of far-right ideology, of the US state and its people being victimized and taken advantage of by others.
The NSS explicitly formulates a “flexible realism” as an overall policy approach. This is characterized by a radical focus on a narrow national interest over the pursuit of universalist values; an emphasis on power and deterrence and the agency of great powers over other states; a disregard for international institutions; and a professed restraint regarding democracy promotion and international interventions. However, this approach is grounded in vague heuristics, rather than clear and consistent concepts. As is often the case with realist thinking (german link; english link), this leads to superficially plausible, yet fundamentally inconsistent and dangerous policy prescriptions. While social engineering and interference in other countries’ internal affairs is derided and alliances are praised, the document also attacks and discredits the governments and internal policies of key European allies.. Rather than placating other major actors in world affairs by balancing interests and power, the document calls for US primacy across all areas of capability, including in its pursuit of a “Golden Dome,” which has the potential to further destabilize nuclear relations between the world’s major powers.
The NSS regards the “expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine” as a core US interest, as this would stabilize European economies, prevent escalation, reestablish strategic stability with Russia and allow Ukraine’s survival as a viable state. In the light of Trump’s previous rhetoric and policies toward Russia and Ukraine, these passages might signal some ground for cautious optimism in Europe.
A comment by Jonas J. Driedger
Racist Rhetoric and Threats against Vulnerable People
In the new US National Security Strategy (NSS), President Trump praises himself for eradicating what he calls “radical gender ideology and woke lunacy” from the US Armed Forces. A presidential directive issued on January 27, 2025 implemented a policy banning transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people from military service, resulting in the removal of more than 1,000 soldiers. The NSS also explicitly rejects practices of “diversity, equality, and inclusion,” continuing the administration’s anti-feminist and anti-LGBTIQ+ agenda. As a consequence, U.S. foreign assistance for sexual and reproductive health and rights has been completely dismantled. The strategy abandons aid-focused, liberal peacebuilding in favor of a trade- and interest-driven “America First” approach. Domestically, the NSS contains racist rhetoric, framing “mass migration” as an “invasion” linked to violence, terrorism, and threats to national security. This sharp reversal of U.S. immigration and refugee policy has fostered fear and insecurity among the most vulnerable populations.
A comment by Simone Wisotzki
Far-Reaching Changes in the U.S. Military Command Structure
The downgrade of Europe in the second Trump administration’s strategic thinking, as well as the unexpected elevation of the Western Hemisphere over the Indo-Pacific – which was the focus during the first Trump administration – will likely have ramifications for the U.S. national security policy process. As the new NSS states, the US will “reconsider its military presence in the Western Hemisphere, readjusting its global military presence to address urgent threats in its own Hemisphere and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security have declined in recent decades or years.”
The National Military Strategy (NDS), which is currently being drafted by the Pentagon, will provide more details on what this means in pratice. The NDS typically builds on the NSS and then informs the National Military Strategy (NMS), a document produced by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide “strategic direction for the armed forces.” According to media reports, a draft from September 2025 prioritizes homeland defense and the Western Hemisphere, which would be consistent with NSS. However, it would also be a radical departure from the 2018 NDS under Trump 1.0, which geared the United States towards great power competition with Russia and China .
With cost-cutting spirit of DOGE still influencing the Pentagon leader Pete Hegseth, who wants to cut four-star positions by 20%, the U.S. pivot to the Western Hemisphere in the strategic documents might eventually lead to far-reaching changes in the U.S. military command structure. Such changes would have practical implications for Europe. There would likely be less regional expertise and, crucially, fewer personnel responsible for Europe in this new command structure. NATO depends a lot on U.S. military personnel. For example, in 2011, the United States had to backfill targeting specialists to the NATO air operations center to run the air campaign against Libya. If the plans come to fruition, therefore, Europe will need to shoulder not just the potential shortfall in U.S. combat troops and think about a transition of NATO command authority from U.S. general and flag officers to Europeans, but they may also need to replace the military staff in U.S. European Command that would support any potential NATO operation on NATO’s Eastern Flank.
A comment by Frank Kuhn
