Key Takeaways:
- The new National Security Strategy (NSS) document published by the Trump administration marks a significant departure from the post-World War II trajectory of American strategy.
- The document prioritizes the Western Hemisphere, but its approach is based on a flawed understanding of the region’s dynamics and ignores the importance of alliances and diplomacy.
- The NSS downgrades America’s system of alliances and special relationships, which could potentially destroy them and lead to a more dangerous world.
- The document’s approach to China is unclear and lacks a comprehensive strategy, instead focusing on economic competition and deterring conflict over Taiwan.
- The NSS’s emphasis on "Hemispheric Defense" or "Fortress America" is ill-suited to the challenges posed by a tightening axis of adversaries, including Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.
Introduction to the National Security Strategy
The National Security Strategy (NSS) is a public document that each new administration is required by law to publish. However, as a rule, these documents are not terribly accurate guides to each administration’s actual policies. In fact, most government strategy documents are not too useful, as they tend to be bureaucratic compromises filled with vague platitudes about what the U.S. government ought to do, with precious little indication of how these ends are to be accomplished. Despite this, the NSS can still provide insight into an administration’s preferences, priorities, and central tendencies, making it worth close attention.
A Departure from Traditional American Strategy
The first Trump administration’s NSS was written by serious people and marked a crucial inflection point by noting that the United States was moving away from the kind of conflict that had marked the previous decade and a half, namely counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, and had entered an era of great-power conflict, in particular with a rising China and a revanchist Russia. In contrast, the new NSS presents something altogether different, filled with chest-thumping pomposity and shrill rhetoric, marking a sharp break not only with the post-Cold War trajectory of American strategy but more broadly with the direction of U.S. national security strategy since 1941.
The Core of the Strategy
The core of the strategy comes in a sentence midway through the document: "The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over." This resignation from the role of chief maintainer of the global order is what marks the real break from eighty years of American foreign policy. No longer will the United States, as President Kennedy said in 1961, "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." Instead, the document prioritizes the Western Hemisphere, a region which it correctly notes has been neglected for too many years, but its approach is based on a flawed understanding of the region’s dynamics and ignores the importance of alliances and diplomacy.
Downgrading America’s System of Alliances
The document’s goal for the multilateral alliance in Europe is not protecting it from the very real threat of Russian revanchism and an ongoing hybrid war against NATO, but rather to "correct its current trajectory." This approach depicts the United States not as the guarantor and backstop of European security, but rather as a mediator between Europe and Russia, which could potentially destroy the transatlantic relationship. The strategy’s emphasis on using economic tools of coercion to persuade Latin American governments to accede to U.S. preferences on immigration, transnational crime, and other issues is also problematic, as it replays the "dollar diplomacy" of the 1920s and simply repurposes the 1895 Olney Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that "American fiat is law" in the Western Hemisphere.
The Approach to China
The new NSS largely defines the strategic competition with China in economic terms, suggests pushing Indo-Pacific allies to choose between economic relations with the PRC and the United States, and calls for deterring a conflict over Taiwan "ideally by preserving military overmatch as a priority." However, this approach lacks a comprehensive strategy and ignores the complexities of the region’s dynamics. The document’s emphasis on economic competition and deterring conflict over Taiwan is also unclear, as it is not at all certain that the United States currently maintains an ability to overmatch the PRC with conventional forces in the region, nor is the administration devoting anything close to the budgetary resources necessary to do so.
Conclusion and Implications
The predictable effect of pursuing the policies indicated by this NSS is the weakening of U.S. alliances, with two baleful consequences. The first is that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will read in this document a diminishment of America’s attachment to its allies, and an openness by the United States to economic blandishments that will further weaken those ties, which will open up the prospect that further aggression by these leaders between now and 2029. The second is that the weakening of U.S. security guarantees worldwide will quicken the danger of nuclear proliferation, as states may seek self-help and develop their own nuclear deterrents. It is imperative that members of Congress exercise vigorous oversight and use their power to prevent the United States from pursuing some of the more damaging initiatives that the administration seems bent on pursuing.
