On Dec. 8, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova replied to questions about the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), which discussion was posted to the Ministry’s website.
Responding to one comment that the NSS appears to move away from “stereotypes and precepts” of previous documents, she suggests that there are signs of a “substantial reassessment of U.S. foreign policy doctrine,” as compared to the 2022 NSS. American elites, she said, had made “serious miscalculations” with their “hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism,” although she cautioned that time will tell whether the Trump administration will “truly heed this difficult conclusion for the United States itself.” But, for now, its recognition of the “failure of the globalist model appears significant.”
She also said that the U.S. “if not [declaring] a refusal to expand” NATO, at least officially questions “its traditional aggressive expansionist trajectory.” Despite these pragmatic elements, Zakarova points out that the NSS document contains several contradictions. There is a lack of clarity in the American vision of a “post-New START framework,” such that the definition of parity in the key quantitative limits on nuclear weapons is not spelled out. Further clarity is also needed on the Golden Dome missile system.
Zakharova addresses the “deepening contradictions” between the U.S. and the EU, “culminating in Brussels’ openly obstructive stance towards Donald Trump’s peacemaking aspirations regarding Ukraine.” The hope is that the new NSS “will have the same sobering effect on Europe’s `war party’ as President Vladimir Putin’s recent remarks on the absurdity of European `justifications’ for preparing for some sort of `war with Russia.’”
To one questioner’s reference to the NSS’s shift in focus onto the Western Hemisphere, in the form of the “Trump Corollary to the notorious Monroe Doctrine,” Zakharova replied that it was more akin to Teddy Roosevelt’s Corollary, “which proclaimed Washington’s right to intervene in Latin America under the pretext of `stabilizing’ the domestic economic situation.” On Venezuela, she expressed the hope that Washington would “avoid further spiralling into a full-scale conflict, which would carry unpredictable consequences for the entire Western Hemisphere.”
