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“The United States will reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere, build military strength in the Indo-Pacific, and possibly reassess its relationship with Europe, President Donald Trump said on Friday in a sweeping strategy document that seeks to reframe the country's role in the world…
“The National Security Strategy, released [last Friday], described Trump's vision as one of ‘flexible realism’ and argued that the U.S. should revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere to be Washington's zone of influence. It also warned that Europe faces ‘civilizational erasure’ and must change course.” Reuters
The left criticizes the new NSS.
“China has compromised U.S. telecommunications networks and can now listen to calls or read text messages by any American it chooses. If you feel like your communications might be of interest to the Chinese Communist Party, you should be using only encrypted apps for messaging and calls. In another operation—labeled Volt Typhoon—China has penetrated U.S. infrastructure, including water-supply plans, electricity grids, and transportation, with a view to conducting destructive cyberattacks…
“Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2025 threat assessment, Russia ‘is developing a new satellite meant to carry a nuclear weapon as an antisatellite capability,’ which, if detonated, ‘could cause devastating consequences for the United States, the global economy, and the world in general.’ None of these direct threats to the American homeland are even mentioned in Trump’s NSS.”
Thomas Wright, The Atlantic
“To the extent there is an ‘America First’ foreign policy ideology, the document is a pretty tidy encapsulation of it. Far from an isolationist or ‘restrained’ worldview, it calls for a very assertive American role on the world stage. And notably, it’s a worldview in which Russian revanchists and Chinese communists often seem to be treated as less of a threat to America’s interests than European liberals.”
Joshua Keating, Vox
“It is not in fact plausible that any European nation will have a Muslim-majority population, or a mostly nonwhite population, or anything close to that, in the foreseeable future. Second and far more important, what message is being sent when the government of a multiethnic democracy built on three centuries of immigration — roughly 99 percent of the U.S. population has ancestral ties to other continents — makes the official claim that ‘immigrants will corrupt the values of the societies they move to,’ as The Economist puts it?…
“[This is] a long-term, deep-horizon manifesto for the reactionary-revolutionary Red Caesar regime dreamed of by Miller, Vance and the bro-genius billionaires. It imagines unilateral U.S. domination of the Western Hemisphere — the Monroe Doctrine, but with drones and AI — a Crusader-style reconquest of secular Europe by the white right, and a chummy division of the rest of the world into old-school spheres of influence, involving Russia, China, the Saudi monarchy and whoever else gets invited.”
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
“[Trump’s] approach, they write, is ‘pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist,’ realistic without being ‘realist,’ principled without being ‘idealistic,’ muscular without being ‘hawkish,’ and restrained without being ‘dovish.’’ A convenient translation: Strategy is whatever Trump says tomorrow on Air Force One, or later in the Oval Office, even if it contravenes everything he said on Truth Social today.”
Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg
The right generally praises the new NSS.
The right generally praises the new NSS.
“The United States will now have a focused and clear definition of the U.S. national interest. ‘Since at least the end of the Cold War,’ the document states, ‘administrations have often published National Security Strategies that seek to expand the definition of America’s ‘national interest’ such that almost no issue or endeavor is considered outside its scope.’…
“This is indisputably true and is one of the cardinal sins the U.S. foreign policy establishment commits on a daily basis… If everything is a priority, nothing is.”
Daniel DePetris, American Conservative
“This year, the Trump administration has assembled a vast armada in the Caribbean, with the obvious intention of driving Venezuela’s authoritarian and corrupt president Nicolás Maduro from power. This is part of a sustained effort to reassert American influence in Latin America after three decades of not-very-benign neglect, actuated mostly by a misplaced sense of embarrassment about past U.S. interventions in countries such as Chile…
“Maybe the real lesson of history is that if the U.S. doesn’t act effectively, you end up with Cuba, Nicaragua, and now Venezuela—each more durably disastrous than Chilean General Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year reign. The most important line in the NSS is: ‘We will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine’—an allusion to the Roosevelt Corollary, named after President Theodore Roosevelt’s assertion in 1904 that the United States had a right to intervene in Latin American countries in cases of ‘chronic wrongdoing.’…
“The NSS makes it clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as criminals build narcotics empires whose principal targets are young Americans. Instead, the U.S. will enlist support from aligned countries such as Argentina and expand its influence, countering the growing economic presence of the People’s Republic of China in the region… About time.”
Niall Ferguson, Free Press
“Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul issued a tetchy response to the Security Strategy report, claiming his country does not need ‘outside advice.’ Is he sure about that? Last year the chief of police in Berlin, Barbara Slowik, warned Jews and gays to hide their identity in the city’s ‘Arab neighborhoods.’ In France, Jews have been leaving the country in large numbers…
“In Brussels, a Muslim city councilor recently declared that Belgians who object to women wearing the hijab should go and live somewhere else. The same city last week unveiled its traditional nativity scene in its historic market square. There is a difference this year: the Holy family have no faces and it’s been suggested this is not to offend followers of Islam where it is not permitted to show the faces of the prophets… Trump is right to warn against mass immigration and the Islamification of Europe.”
Gavin Mortimer, Spectator World
