On December 6, 2025, the Trump administration released the National Security Strategy (NSS) document detailing the new global positioning of “America First”.
The new strategy states that the United States will no longer bear “forever global burdens” and will prioritize stopping destabilizing illegal immigration, revitalizing American industrial strength, and enhancing America’s leadership position in the Western Hemisphere, explicitly reaffirming and expanding on the Monroe Doctrine.
Additionally, the document calls for US European allies to take on more responsibility for collective defense, urging them to address their own structural challenges to ensure that Europe can maintain its crucial role as an ally to the United States.
In the Indo-Pacific region, the strategy emphasizes that economic and technological advantages are the most reliable ways to deter and prevent large-scale military conflicts. It also commits the US to build a military capable of deterring Chinese aggression in any area within the First Island Chain.
The core pillar of the national security strategy is shifting the geographical focus to the Western Hemisphere, asserting that the US must maintain absolute preeminence in the region as a necessary condition for American security and prosperity.
At the heart of this vision is the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which aims to prevent foreign competitors, hinting at the Chinese regime, from deploying threatening military forces in the Americas or acquiring and controlling key ports, telecommunication networks, or other infrastructure in the region.
The US will counter external influences by strengthening the Coast Guard, navy deployments, and adopting more robust commercial diplomacy. The military deployments will be readjusted from regions of decreasing importance to the Caribbean and Latin America.
Border security is considered a top priority for national security. The document explicitly states that “the era of mass immigration must end” and emphasizes the need for the US to have complete control over its immigration system and borders to combat transnational threats such as drugs, human trafficking, and foreign infiltration.
While the US holds a “severe view” of Europe’s current state, the strategy emphasizes that Europe is still “strategically and culturally significant” to the US. Transatlantic trade is crucial to the global economy and America’s prosperity.
The strategy aims to “support our allies in maintaining freedom and security in Europe, while restoring Europe’s confidence in its civilization and Western identity”.
The Trump administration asserts that the days of the US supporting the entire world order like Atlas in Greek mythology are over, demanding that European allies take on more responsibility for collective defense.
The document sets a new global standard, the “Hague Commitment”, requiring NATO countries to increase defense expenditures to 5% of their GDP.
Regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US will swiftly negotiate a ceasefire as a core interest. This is aimed at stabilizing the European economy, preventing accidental escalation or expansion of conflicts, and restoring “strategic stability” with Russia.
The strategy warns that Europe faces the risk of “civilizational erasure” due to factors including immigration policies, low birth rates, cumbersome regulations, and suppressed political freedoms.
The US hopes Europe can “correct its current trajectory”, regain confidence in its civilization, and maintain strong economic and military power to remain a reliable ally.
From manufacturing to technology and energy, the document emphasizes that Europe’s industries are still among the most powerful in the world, stating that “we cannot view Europe as a dispensable entity – doing so would be self-destructive to the goals this strategy seeks to achieve”.
Economic security is viewed as the foundation of national security, with several domestic priorities outlined:
– Reindustrialization: Using strategic tariffs and new technologies to drive economic reshoring and rebuild industrial production to maintain the US’s leading position in key technologies and defense industries.
– Energy dominance: Restoring US energy dominance in oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power, rejecting ideologies such as climate change and net-zero, which are seen as damaging to Europe and threatening to the US.
– Economic rebalancing: Prioritizing the rebalancing of trade relationships, countering dumping and unfair competition.
– Focus on labor-centric policies: US policies will be “Pro-American Worker”, ensuring the rebuilding of an economically prosperous body that benefits the masses rather than concentrating wealth at the top or in specific industries.
– Rebuilding defense industrial base: Addressing challenges posed by cheap drones to expensive defense systems, advocating for a balance between “low cost, high volume production” and “high-end elite systems”.
– Maintaining financial primacy and the US dollar’s status: Leveraging financial innovation and capital market advantages to ensure the US remains the most attractive and secure investment center in the world.
The strategy places the Middle East in a new historical phase of US foreign policy – the region remains strategically significant but is no longer a battlefield for endless military or political interventions. The Middle East’s status is shifting from a “battlefield” to an “investment and partnership region”.
Decades of massive interventions and nation-building efforts in the Middle East have failed to bring lasting stability but often distracted US resources from priority regions. Washington’s future actions will focus on protecting critical waterways, defending core partners, countering terrorism, and preventing adversaries from establishing threats to global energy security or US interests.
The core interests of the US lie in ensuring stable energy supply, safeguarding Israel’s security, and maintaining open access through the Hormuz Strait and the Red Sea, ending decades of fruitless nation-building actions and continuing to advance the Abraham Accords.
For Africa, the policy will shift from “aid” to “energy and mineral cooperation”.
The strategy criticizes past US emphasis on “aid and export liberalization ideology” in Africa and advocates focusing on resolving conflicts, establishing reciprocal trade relationships, and replacing traditional aid models with investment and growth.
The document acknowledges that the US’s over thirty-year engagement policy with China has been a complete failure, blaming US elites for “enabling or denying” the Chinese regime’s global ambitions over the past few decades.
The future approach will be based on principles of “reciprocity, fairness” and will restrict trade with China to “non-sensitive areas” while reducing US dependence on Chinese supply chains.
The strategy highlights that the US and its Western allies together account for over half of the global economy and should collaborate to resist predatory subsidies, technology theft, and manipulation of rare earths and critical minerals.
It will strengthen the “Quad” composed of the US, Japan, Australia, and India and utilize advantages in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum, space, and autonomous weapon systems to maintain military technological superiority.
It explicitly states that “deterrence in the Taiwan Strait” is a top priority and maintains a policy of “not supporting unilateral changes to the situation in the Taiwan Strait”.
It aims to build military capabilities to “deter aggression at any point along the First Island Chain” but emphasizes that the US military should not bear the burden alone, calling on Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and partners along the First Island Chain to significantly increase military spending and capabilities.
Warnings are issued to competing countries that may control the South China Sea, hinting at the Chinese regime, emphasizing the need for strong deterrent measures to prevent any country from imposing “tolls” or arbitrarily closing this vital global passage.
Overall, the Indo-Pacific strategy combines economic decoupling and reorganization, strengthens military deployments, and aims to maintain US long-term supremacy without triggering large-scale conflicts.
Guiding principles of the strategy include “Peace Through Strength”, a predisposition to non-interventionism in the affairs of other countries, and the primacy of nations.
The strategy document concludes that the Trump administration’s foreign policy seeks to be “pragmatic rather than ‘pragmaticism’, realistic rather than ‘realism’, principled rather than ‘idealism'”. Its core motivation can be summarized as “America First”. The goal of the US is to unite all leading global assets to enhance American strength and excellence.
The clarity of this strategy aims to efficiently address hostile and disruptive influences while avoiding failures caused by previous over-expansion and goal diversions.