Last night, the White House released its 2025 National Security Strategy, a document that, upon preliminary review, appears to be a mish-mash of America First talking points beginning with the stated objective of the strategy: “To ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come.”
It blames mass migration, “unfair” economic and trade practices by other countries and years of rule by liberal ideological rule, among other things, for the ills that plague the country and promises the reversal of those past bad policies. In fact, President Trump, in the letter introducing the 33-page document, declares that “No administration in history has achieved so dramatic a turnaround in so short a time.”
A few elements of the document stand out:
The document establishes a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. “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.”
It targets economic relations between China and the countries of the Western Hemisphere. “Non-Hemispheric competitors have made major inroads into our Hemisphere, both to disadvantage us economically in the present, and in ways that may harm us strategically in the future. Allowing these incursions without serious pushback is another great American strategic mistake of recent decades.
“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. The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence—from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.”
On Europe and Russia, it stresses strategic stability with Russia, a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine and even suggests that NATO expansion ought to come to a halt.
