US National Security Strategy on EU disputes, Russia, abandonment of Atlas’ role

The White House has published an updated National Security Strategy of the United States.

Strategy says:

“Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfareregulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex… Not only did our elites pursue a fundamentally undesirable and impossible goal, in doing so they undermined the very means necessary to achieve that goal: the character of our nation upon which its power, wealth, and decency were built.

None of this was inevitable…

The questions before us now are: 1) What should the United States want?

2) What are our available means to get it? and

3) How can we connect ends and means into a viable National Security Strategy?”

The document declares Washington’s departure from the philosophy of sole responsibility for the world order, indicates a desire to achieve strategic stability in relations with Russia and notes the remaining contradictions with Europe.

TASS has summed up key points of the strategic document.

US and foreign policy

- The United States will no longer prop up the entire world order "like Atlas" and wants other countries to assume responsibility for regional defense.

- The White House intends to "align the actions of our allies and partners" with its own joint interests to prevent "domination by any single competitor nation."

- The United States wants to end the perception of NATO as "a perpetually expanding alliance."

- Washington believes that "a world on fire" engulfed in regional conflicts threatens the country’s national interests. The priority is to end them.

US and Russia

- The United States considers reestablishing strategic stability with Russia one of key foreign policy priorities in Europe.

- The US core interest is a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine.

US and Asian countries

- The United States believes that the Indo-Pacific region will be among this century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds.

- Washington plans to strengthen commercial and other relations with New Delhi.

- Deterrence of a potential conflict over Taiwan, including military overmatch, is a priority for the country.

- The United States should focus on trade with China only in non-strategic goods.

- The White House no longer views the Middle East as the dominant factor determining foreign policy.

- The United States intends to work to stabilize Syria and transform it from a "problem" into an integral and positive player in the Middle East.

- Washington should stop trying to push Middle Eastern countries to abandon their traditions, reforms in the region will be encouraged, but without attempts to impose them from outside.

US and Europe

- The US administration finds itself "at odds" with European officials, many of whom "trample" on basic principles of democracy.

- Washington wants Europe to take responsibility for its own defense.

- The White House expects to build up "the healthy nations" of Eastern and Central Europe through commercial and defense deals.

- Washington has rejected the "disastrous "climate change" and "Net Zero" ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries."

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the Michigan National Guard at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, in Harrison Township, Mich.
Photo: AP

The U.S. National Security Strategy, which presidents usually release once each term, offers a formal statement of U.S. global priorities, POLITICO notes.

President Donald Trump intends for the U.S. to keep a bigger military presence in the Western Hemisphere going forward to battle migration, drugs and the rise of adversarial powers in the region, according to his new National Security Strategy.

The 33-page document is a rare formal explanation of Trump’s foreign policy worldview by his administration.

The Trump National Security Strategy, which the White House quietly released Thursday, has some brutal words for Europe, suggesting it is in civilizational decline, and pays relatively little attention to the Middle East and Africa.

It has an unusually heavy focus on the Western Hemisphere that it casts as largely about protecting the U.S. homeland. It says “border security is the primary element of national security” and makes veiled references to China’s efforts to gain footholds in America’s backyard.

The new National Security Strategy says the U.S. has to make challenging choices in the global realm. “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. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests,” the document states.

In an introductory note to the strategy, Trump called it a “roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.”

A “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine

The document describes such plans as part of a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The latter is the notion set forth by President James Monroe in 1823 that the U.S. will not tolerate malign foreign interference in its own hemisphere.

The strategy says the U.S. should enhance its relationships with governments in Latin America, including working with them to identify strategic resources — an apparent reference to materials such as rare earth minerals. It also declares that the U.S. will partner more with the private sector to promote “strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region.”

The strategy even nods to so-called traditional values at times linked to the Christian right, saying the administration wants “the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health” and “an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes.” It mentions the need to have “growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.”

China

The National Security Strategy spends a fair amount of time on China, though it often doesn’t mention Beijing directly. Many U.S. lawmakers — on a bipartisan basis — consider an increasingly assertive China the gravest long-term threat to America’s global power. But while the language the Trump strategy uses is tough, it is careful and far from inflammatory.

The administration promises to “rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence.”

But it also says “trade with China should be balanced and focused on non-sensitive factors” and even calls for “maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.”

The strategy says the U.S. wants to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific — a nod to growing tensions in the region, including between China and U.S. allies such as Japan and the Philippines.

“We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” it states. That may come as a relief to Asia watchers who worry Trump will back away from U.S. support for Taiwan as it faces ongoing threats from China.

Russia

The document states that “it is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine,” and to mitigate the risk of Russian confrontation with other countries in Europe.

But overall it pulls punches when it comes to Russia — there’s very little criticism of Moscow.

Europe

Instead, it reserves some of its harshest remarks for U.S.-allied nations in Europe. In particular, the administration, in somewhat veiled terms, knocks European efforts to rein in far-right parties, calling such moves political censorship.

“The Trump administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the [Ukraine] war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition,” the strategy states.

The strategy also appears to suggest that migration will fundamentally change European identity to a degree that could hurt U.S. alliances.

“Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” it states. “As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”

Still, the document acknowledges Europe’s economic and other strengths, as well as how America’s partnership with much of the continent has helped the U.S. “Not only can we not afford to write Europe off — doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve,” it says.

“Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” it says.

To gain favor with the leaders of nuclear powers

Trump’s first-term National Security Strategy focused significantly on the U.S. competition with Russia and China, but the president frequently undercut it by trying to gain favor with the leaders of those nuclear powers.

If this new strategy proves a better reflection of what Trump himself actually believes, it could help other parts of the U.S. government adjust, not to mention foreign governments.

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