Trump's Unserious — But Dangerous — National Security Strategy

Trump's National Security Strategy conveys a flawed, incoherent, and deeply dangerous view of the world and America's role in it. America's allies will shudder; its enemies will rejoice.

Ever since Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986, incoming administrations have issued a new National Security Strategy. Many of these documents are mundane statements of administration priorities and most read like the committee-drafted document they usually are. Once issued, they tend to be quickly forgotten.

The same may well be true for President Donald Trump’s second National Security Strategy, which was released by the White House late Thursday night without notice or fanfare. But that would be a mistake. For this document, though disorganized and filled with platitudes and Trumpian boasting, demonstrates how far this administration has traveled from what used to be the foreign policy mainstream—long supported by Republicans and Democrats alike—and even from Trump’s first National Security Strategy issued in December 2017. Instead, the document paints a picture of a world that America’s adversaries will embrace and its allies, friends, and partners will abhor, if not fear.

Much of the new strategy document is an unsuccessful attempt to put a veneer of conceptual coherence around what has been a mostly incoherent and chaotic foreign policy. But there are at least three elements of the strategy that underscore the radical departure of Trump’s second term foreign policy from the post-1945 American norm: the pivot to the Western Hemisphere, the denunciation of Europe, and the elevation of profits over principles.

The Hemispheric Pivot

Trump loves the 19th century. He loves James Monroe, whose doctrine barring foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere bears his name. He loves William McKinley for the tariffs he imposed on foreign trade. He loves Teddy Roosevelt, who embarked on forceful expansion in the Hemisphere, including building the Panama Canal.

Now, in the second quarter of the 21st century, Donald Trump wants to return to the 19th century and make the Western Hemisphere his own:

After years of neglect, the United States 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. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.

To be clear, this “Trump Corollary” goes well beyond the Monroe Doctrine, which was a defensive declaration that the United States would oppose European colonization and intervention in the Hemisphere in return for the United States staying out of European affairs. Instead, the "United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity—a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.” Irrespective, or so it is implied, whether other states in the region concur or not.

That, of course, is a fundamental departure from the idea, enshrined in the UN Charter and the basis of international relations ever since 1945, that states are sovereign and must respect the sovereignty of others. Indeed, while the document plays lip service to the primacy of the nation state and the importance of state sovereignty, it pointedly notes that the “outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.” In other words, preeminence justifies dominance.

To underscore its dominance, the strategy document argues for readjusting the US military posture to bolster America’s military presence in the region in order to “secure borders and defeat cartels” through the “lethal use of force” rather than “the failed law-enforcement strategies of the last several decades.” This explains the deployment of troops at the border and the large military buildup in the Caribbean Sea over the last few months. The larger military presence is also necessary for “establishing and expanding access in strategically important locations.” Though the document does not mention any specifics, this is no doubt a reference to the Panama Canal and Greenland, both of which Trump has claimed are of strategic importance to the United States.

Whoever thought the era of imperialism had come to an end will be disappointed by its naked return in this new strategy.

The End of Europe

It wasn’t all that long ago that presidents referred to America’s relations with its European partners as “the cornerstone of US foreign policy.” No more. Instead, the strategy document paints a dark, pessimistic picture of our European allies. Pointing to the prospect of “civilizational erasure,” the document states:

The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.

It’s an extraordinary indictment, all the more so because little of it is true. Most European countries (with the exception of Hungary and some others that Trump and his supporters have long embraced) score far higher than the United States on Freedom House’s ranking of political and civili liberties. The foreign-born population in the United States is larger than in most European countries. Press freedom in most EU countries is far greater than in the United States according to the Press Freedom Index. And anyone who knows anything about Europe’s 20th century history will know the extraordinary contribution the European Union has made to Europe’s peace and prosperity since the end of World War II—a reality recognized in 2011 when the EU received the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Europe doesn’t need civilizational lectures from an administration that has eroded the rule of law at home and abroad, treated immigrants as animals, called political opponents “domestic extremist organization,” and espoused a racist, white, Christian nationalism.

While Europe has its problems—including a stagnant economy, political divisions, and lack of competitiveness—it’s a far cry from the dilapidated picture painted by the Trump National Security Strategy. The last thing it needs, however, is what the document offers:

American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism. Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory.

Europe doesn’t need civilizational lectures from an administration that has eroded the rule of law at home and abroad, treated immigrants as animals, called political opponents “domestic extremist organization,” halted all refugee admissions except for white Afrikaners it falsely claims are victims of genocide, and espoused a racist, white, Christian nationalism.

But the strategy document’s attack on Europe is not only ideological. It’s also strategic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses the gravest threat to European security since at least the end of the Cold War. The reason is clear: Vladimir Putin’s Russia has resorted to using force to try and undo the post-Cold War order—an order based on the sovereignty and independence of all European states. The document, however, is silent on Russia’s quest—indeed, it is silent on the Russian threat. Instead, it argues that the problem stems from Europe’s lack of self-confidence and its supposed undermining of democracy at home. In yet another eye-popping claim, the document asserts:

The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.

It then suggests that it is a “core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine” and that the best way to do that is for the United States to mediate between Europe and Russia. Ending the war will enable Washington to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.” Nowhere does the strategy document suggest that denying Russia its claims or its ability to reap gains from the use of force would have to be a precondition for strategic stability.

All of this puts the Trump administration’s latest efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine—including the 28-point plan that the administration originally presented to President Volodymyr Zelensky as a fait accompli—in a very different light. Trump blames Europe, not Russia, for the war. He seeks an end to the war that Russia can live with and Ukraine and Europe will have to accept, whether they like it or not.

In all, the new strategy document makes clear that the United States no longer believes in an alliance based on common interests, values, and threats. It represents the end of the transatlantic relationship as we have known it for the past 80 years.

Profit Over Principles

For more than 80 years, successive presidents and administrations have justified their international engagement on the basis of a core set of values and principles that they believed were the foundation for peaceful relations among states. Freedom. Democracy. Human Rights. These were what Americans cared about most. And as the largest and most powerful nation on earth, a nation founded on the precept that its purposes rested on the protection and advancement of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” America had a special role to play to defend and advance these principles across the globe. That is what it meant to be the Leader of the Free World.

But in Trump’s vision of America, the United States is no longer a Leader. Nor is there any longer a Free World. Instead, what matters most is to make money. Aside from its ideological assault on Europe, the new strategy is all about profits, not principles.

This new direction is most evident in its Hemispheric policy of regional preeminence. The goal is to use America’s domination to advance US business interests.

The U.S. Government will identify strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region and present these opportunities for assessment by every U.S. Government financing program. […] The terms of our agreements, especially with those countries that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage, must be sole-source contracts for our companies. At the same time, we should make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region.

But it isn't just in the Americas that the administration seeks economic advantage or views the region in terms of economic gains. In Africa, the strategic document proposes a transition from providing aid to focusing on trade and investment, especially with countries that will “open their markets to US goods and services” or offer investment opportunities in “the energy sector and critical mineral development.” The Middle East, with energy needs met increasingly by production at home, “America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.” It no longer is a source of conflict, but rather “a source and destination of international investment.”

Even in Asia, which the document recognizes as “the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battleground,” the bulk of its focus in the region is on economic opportunities and protection. Taiwan is important because of its semiconductors and protection of vital sea lanes, not because it is a vibrant democracy that the United States has assisted and protected for decades. Keeping the South China Sea open for navigation is similarly important for economic reasons, rather than the geostrategic reason of preventing China’s dominance of the Indo-Pacific. Even the relationship with China, which both Trump in his first term and President Joe Biden identified as the greatest strategic competitor of the United States, the new strategy document is silent on the strategic threat China poses and instead focuses on building “a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.”

An Unserious Document

In all, the new National Security Strategy is a deeply unserious document—befitting an unserious president. But it is no less important—or dangerous—for that. It at once throws our longstanding allies (who, even the document admits, can help America achieve some of its goals and are needed to help deter threats to American interests) under the bus. And it does away with a broad, bipartisan consensus—developed in no small part by the first Trump administration’s policies—of the need to compete politically, technologically, militarily, and economically with China. It is silent on the increasingly threatening ties between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And it abandons any thought that the values and ideals that made America great and respected need to be held up, protected, and advanced.

In short, this document will deeply alarm America’s allies and strongly encourage its adversaries.