On Thursday, 4 December, the White House published the new “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (NSS25) The document marks a significant shift in U.S. domestic and foreign policy that will have far-reaching consequences in shaping global relations and the emerging new global order. I believe it corroborates the Trump administration’s intent to reject the post-World War II and claim a dominant position of the United States in a new, multipolar world order. In all, the document is surprisingly short, easy to read and relatively straightforward to interpret.
In January of this year, State Secretary Marco Rubio stated during his confirmation hearings that the postwar global order was “more than obsolete,” and that it has been “weaponized” against the interests of the United States. In the new National Security Strategy, this is reaffirmed already in the introductory remarks:
“American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short—they have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes; … After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. … They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex.
Significantly, the document takes a swipe against the “free trade” system:
They placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called “free trade” that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend. They allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people, and sometimes to suck us into conflicts and controversies central to their interests but peripheral or irrelevant to our own.
Refreshingly, the NSS25 builds from the question, “What should the United States want?” It offers an answer: “First and foremost, we want the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God-given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well-being and interests.” Under, “Predisposition to Non-Intervention,” it reads, “all human beings possess God-given equal natural rights,” and that, “all nations are entitled by ‘the laws of nature and nature’s God’ to a ‘separate and equal station’ with respect to one another.”
Setting out the “God-given natural rights” of its citizens and of nations is an important affirmation of sovereignty of individuals and nations. It marks a radical departure from the entrenched globalist “New World Order” agenda, which doesn’t acknowledge any such rights, affirming instead that rights are granted to the “hackable animals” by state authorities. Of course, if the state can grant rights, it can also withhold them, making such rights, in fact, a privilege which the hackable animals must earn.
Thus, if you refuse to use a person’s chosen pronouns, you may be imprisoned for life; if you post content that causes discomfort or anxiety to others, if you fall behind on your vaccine schedules, criticize government officials, wear t-shirts with naughty slogans or pray silently in your own head, you may forfeit your rights and your liberty.
NSS25 states that “The world’s fundamental political unit is and will remain the nation-state. It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty.” In that sense, “U.S. policy will be realistic about what is possible… We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.” Furthermore, NSS25 explicitly embraces a new, multipolar global order:
“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over. We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense.”
These words refer mainly to European governments, which is affirmed on p. 26, in fairly harsh terms: “The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic process. NSS25 sets the policy toward Europe in the following seven points that again underscore sovereignty of individual European nations:
The above points amount almost to a blunt declaration of war on EU and pro-EU’s ruling establishments, warning them that unless they change course, they are risking irrelevance and “civilizational erasure.” Ouch!
Beyond Europe, NSS25 maintains adversarial approach toward Iran and China (but not Russia), and some of its provisions could be interpreted as outright hostile which sticks out as contradictory to the tone of the rest of the document, especially the following paragraph which might have been inserted by the John Brennan, John Bolton or Mike Pompeo:
“The terms of our agreements, especially with those countries that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage, must be sole-source contracts for our companies. At the same time, we should make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region.”
NSS25 has no hostile terms for the nations of Central and South America, it does reaffirm the “Monroe Doctrine,” suggesting that the U.S. intends to assert a dominant role in its hemisphere.
Perhaps the most radical change of course envisioned by the Trump administration is on the economic front at home. I’ve written here about the two alternative systems of governance, the British system of free trade vs. the “American System” as advocated by Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List. Well, the document includes an explicit rejection of the “free trade” system and even mentions the name of Alexander Hamilton, giving a clear indication of the direction in which Trump is taking the U.S.
“American policy will be pro-worker, not merely pro-growth, and it will prioritize our own workers. We must rebuild an economy in which prosperity is broadly based and widely shared, not concentrated at the top or localized in certain industries or a few parts of our country.”
Support for the American workers also means that, “The Era of Mass Migration is Over,” since “mass migration has strained domestic resources, increased violence and other cime, weakened social cohesion, distorted labor markets, and undermined national security.”
NSS25 formalizes U.S. change of course with an explicit rejection of the globalists’ New World Order agenda and an opening to the multipolar integrations. In promising to position the United States as an industrial power, the Trump Administration is opting for a development strategy that could be complementary to that of China, India, Russia and other regional powers in the sense that they will all ultimately benefit from a large and growing class of affluent consumers across the globe.
Therefore, the colonialist “free trade” approach that sought to keep most of the world’s nations chronically impoverished is being abandoned. Competition for resources and markets will continue to be at the center of international relations, but under the “American System” this no longer necessitates forever wars. NSS25 is a clear course correction and a hopeful moment for the future of peace in the world, less than a year into Trump’s second presidency. Hopefully, his administration will continue to build on this momentum which promises radical changes in international relations and the formation of a new global order that could be very different from what we came to know.
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By Independent News Roundup