U.S. government documents are a dime a dozen. The Pentagon, for example, puts out an annual report on China’s military power and capabilities. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases a worldwide threat assessment every year, which Congress uses to determine what resources should be authorized and appropriated to the various U.S. intelligence agencies.
The U.S. National Security Strategy and U.S. National Defense Strategy are, however, arguably more important than any of the other U.S. government planning documents. A considerable amount of work goes into drafting, editing, and eventually releasing them, and it’s typical for the entire process to get bogged down as inter-service rivalries within the U.S. military play out. Reporters covering the national security beat are keenly eager to report on the two strategies, for good reason. Ideally, both are meant to illustrate to the American people and the world at large what Washington’s foreign policy priorities are and how the United States aims to meet them.
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According to public reports, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy will reportedly become available over the next few weeks. The National Defense Strategy, which focuses exclusively on the War Department, is running into a bit more drama as chunks of the plan continue to receive pushback from senior U.S. military officers, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, who believe China, commonly referred to as Washington’s peer competitor, is getting short shrift. While we don’t know the exact contents of the strategy yet, some snippets have been leaked — the Western Hemisphere and the U.S. homeland are supposedly treated as the top priorities. And while great power competition will certainly still be a feature, the strategy is likely to rub a lot of conventional national security types the wrong way.
But move the specifics aside for a moment and ask yourself a big question: do these documents really mean much anymore?
In a more traditional administration, the answer would be an unequivocal “yes.” For example, former President George W. Bush’s 2005 National Security Strategy elevated the fight against terrorism and the spread of democracy as core concepts — and for the most part, Bush lived up to the strategy he articulated (whether that strategy was doable, cost-effective, and successful is another debate entirely). Former President Barack Obama’s second-term National Security Strategy emphasized terrorism as well, but also made clear that the U.S. was moving on from the large ground wars and nation-building projects that took so much of Washington’s attention over the previous decade and a half. Meanwhile, former President Joe Biden’s strategy, unveiled in 2022, leaned heavily on the democracy vs autocracy framing and was no doubt powered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during the same year. Generally, all three presidents upheld the themes outlined in those documents.
Yet not to put too fine a point on it, we live in a different age with a much different man at the helm. President Donald Trump isn’t Bush, Obama, or Biden. Far from it; he’s the antithesis of conventionality, isn’t process-driven, and probably isn’t even reading the national security documents his administration is producing. The man views unpredictability and volatility as an asset rather than a liability. Sometimes this can be a benefit, such as when Trump leveraged his influence over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign a ceasefire agreement with Hamas that he refused to agree to only a few months before. Sometimes, Trump’s topsy-turvy nature causes unneeded chaos. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at Wall Street in the days since Trump threatened to place 100% tariffs on China, two months after he extended a trade truce with Beijing.
What you see in Trump is what you get. He rules by gut and instinct, not by ideology. Trump isn’t reading political scientist Kenneth Waltz or former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. There is no unified theory here. Bilateral relationships that are working out just fine today may collapse into ignominy weeks or months later, and vice versa.
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He’s the anti-strategy president, somebody whose policy moves in one area can contradict his policy goals in another. Take Brazil as a prime example: Trump decided to slap 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods in retaliation for what the Trump administration views as the persecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Yet those tariffs have only accelerated Brasilia’s push to search for alternative markets, like China, precisely the opposite of what Washington wants to achieve.
So as speculation continues to swirl about what may or may not be in the Trump administration’s second-term national and defense strategies, remember this: whatever it is, Trump is unlikely to hold to it for very long.
