Living Within Our Means and Getting What We Want—America’s New National Security Strategy

On December 4, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS) document. Such guiding documents are usually issued once in a presidential term to lay out the direction for the country’s foreign policy. Though not legally binding, they do send a message as to the goals a presidential administration has—and the means by which it will reach them.

The new version has already drawn a great deal of attention, both positive and negative, for the change of direction it signals. The document lays out a vision that is “motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words, ‘America First.’”

Such a direction might seem too obvious to say. What else would a national government’s strategy be primarily motivated by than the good of the nation?

Yet, as the NSS observes, too many post-World War II “foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country.” The problem with this approach is that trying to keep on top of the entire world ends up both stretching our capacities to the breaking point and selling American interests short.

America’s foreign policy elites “overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex.” In attempting to do so, they “lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty.”

In short, rather than domination of the world by Americans, Americans were dominated by the shadowy world of those international institutions. Deliberately declining to speak about every area of the world, the NSS focuses on what are termed “core interests” to American life: “A strategy must evaluate, sort, and prioritize. Not every country, region, issue, or cause—however worthy—can be the focus of American strategy.” And what causes become our focus depend on what we as a nation want. The NSS lays out a series of “wants” that are most important.

The first two provide a big picture for the continuation of the republic and its safety. First, “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.” Second, “to protect this country, its people, its territory, its economy, and its way of life from military attack and hostile foreign influence, whether espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, cultural subversion, or any other threat to our nation.”

The others are the means by which the republic’s survival and safety will be achieved. They include:

• “full control over our borders, over our immigration system, and over transportation networks through which people come into our country—legally and illegally.”
• “a world in which migration is not merely ‘orderly’ but one in which sovereign countries work together to stop rather than facilitate destabilizing population flows, and have full control over whom they do and do not admit.”
• “the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent, plus next-generation missile defenses—including a Golden Dome for the American homeland—to protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies.”
• “resilient national infrastructure that can withstand natural disasters, resist and thwart foreign threats, and prevent or mitigate any events that might harm the American people or disrupt the American economy.”
• “unrivaled ‘soft power’ through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests.”
• “the world’s most robust industrial base.”
• “the world’s most robust, productive, and innovative energy sector.”
• “the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible.”

Some critics have observed that this list, as do other parts of the document, conflates foreign policy and domestic politics. But if the primary goal of the Trump administration’s NSS is the security of the American homeland, it is difficult to see how the document would not focus on domestic goals in at least equal amount to foreign goals.

For some, the idea of “American spiritual and cultural health” does not include pride in our nation or, as the document declares “a gainfully employed citizenry—with no one sitting on the sidelines” and “growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.”

Policy is inseparable from political viewpoints.

The principles to be applied to achieve these desires are thus delineated and include “a focused definition of the national interest”; “peace through strength”; “predisposition to non-interventionism”; “flexible realism”; “primacy of nations”; “a balance of power”; being “pro-worker”; and a “focus on competition and merit.”

The priorities include ending mass-immigration, protecting core rights and liberties, shifting and sharing international burdens, and economic security.

And the priorities among regions are indicated by the five sections that cover the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The Trump administration plans to renew the Monroe Doctrine with a “Trump Corollary.” Not only will America be the preeminent power in the Western Hemisphere, she will also “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”

This strategy will involve enlisting “regional champions” to help make the Americas stable. It will also mean keeping and increasing our own military presence, particularly in the waters and in key land locations to protect our borders and to fight the cartels.

Concerning Asia, the NSS outlines the mistaken assumptions by the West in thinking that trade with China would pacify the Chinese Communist Party. Though China is not treated as an enemy, it is treated as a competitor who threatens our economic security and the American worker. The goals are “prioritizing reciprocity and fairness” in the economic arena and preventing war in the Indo-Pacific.

These goals will require use of economic tools (including Trump’s favored tariffs) and working “to improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through continued quadrilateral cooperation with Australia, Japan, and the United States (‘the Quad’).” There is also a demand that South Korea and Japan share more of the defense burden in the region.

Europe comes in third place as a priority. Many European Union figures and their proxies have already expressed anger that the NSS echoes themes of Vice President Vance’s February speech. It describes the threat of “civilizational erasure” coming from “activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

The American position is to support nations (particularly in Southern and Central Europe) and parties in Europe that want their native populations to survive (“cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within nations”), to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine War, and make sure Europe is stable in its relationship to Russia.

The NSS clearly identifies the Middle East as an area the U.S. ought to make less of a priority than it has in the past. One important way to achieve that goal is making sure of American energy independence. Another is continued work on peace agreements in the region.

The emphasis in Africa is a change from “providing, and…spreading, liberal ideology” via aid packages to “an investment and growth paradigm capable of harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential.” While liberal commentators have made this sound as if it were selfish, there is a real need to help Africans develop the kind of sound market and civic life that will allow them to thrive, too. There is also a call to the kind of diplomatic work of helping keep peace on the continent and remaining “wary of resurgent Islamist terrorist activity in parts of Africa while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitments.”

One can pick at or criticize various parts of the document, as commentators from all parts of the spectrum have done. The value of the 2025 NSS is that it demonstrates a serious attempt at thinking about how America can both focus on our own nation and aid other parts of the world—but do so while living within our means and the limits of what is possible.

America First does not have to mean “America Only.” It must, however, mean prioritizing the United States, leaving behind the role of the world’s policeman, and working within a world that looks much different than it did in the years after World War II.  

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.