Sometimes, what a troubled relationship needs more than anything else is honesty. That is what President Donald Trump‘s 2025 National Security Strategy would deliver to Europe. Despite what critics want you to believe, the document calls for active and engaged United States relations with the rest of the world, even though Trump’s priorities are different than those of past administrations. If anything, what should worry observers is not the strategy laid out in the document, but Trump’s ability to execute it.
It begins with a trenchant critique of American foreign policy since the end of World War II, saying correctly that “elites … 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.” The same people “allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people” and “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.”
The answer to these mistakes is not to retreat from the world but to pursue America’s interests abroad with a renewed and refocused vitality. Beginning at home with the Western Hemisphere, the strategy adds a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine that would “protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region” while denying “non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets in our Hemisphere.” This is a clear reference and warning, primarily to China, but also to Russia and Iran.
To accomplish this “Trump Corollary,” the document promises to “enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability on land and sea.” This would be accompanied by an effort to cultivate “new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice.” As this passage shows, any suggestion that Trump does not recognise the threat of China’s encroachment into our backyard is unfounded.
The next section offers a clear-eyed assessment of our interests in Asia, with China’s economic and territorial ambitions playing a leading role. The document spells out the strategic importance of preserving the status quo in Taiwan in both economic (“Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production”) and military terms (the island “splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinctive theaters”).
On the economic side, the document calls for working “with our treaty allies and partners to counteract predatory economic practices … and ensure that allied economies do not become subordinate to any competing power.” It calls for diplomatic efforts to increase U.S. military access to allied ports and more defense spending from allies on their militaries. These are good approaches.
Most controversy focuses on Trump’s approach to Europe, and some challenge the document’s claims, too. The tenor of this section is also tactless, presumably deliberately. It bluntly reminds European leaders that the continent’s share of the world economy has dropped from 25% in 1990 to just 14% today, and that unless Europe’s nations end mass migration and increase birthrates among their indigenous populations, they will face “civilization erasure.” All this is true. On its present course, Europe is becoming more and more irrelevant, and as the document explains, Europe’s decline is not in America’s interests.
Trump’s desire to see Europe become great again is another area where critics are misrepresenting the strategy document. Trump does not, as some claim, assert any moral equivalence between Europe and Russia. “We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe,” the document says, adding that, “It is a core interest of the United States … to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.” Anyone who says Trump is indifferent to the outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine either has not read this passage or is choosing to ignore it.
But it is fair to question whether Trump is living up to his strategy. When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has bolstered defense spending, recently said an invasion of Taiwan would threaten Japan‘s “survival,” Trump sided with China and told her to shut up about the issue. This is not how one supports allies against Chinese territorial ambitions in the Pacific.
Still, the new strategy document is a welcome break from the past administration’s faith in the magic of international institutions to advance American interests. Where former President Barack Obama campaigned in Europe against Brexit, Trump promises to campaign for nationalist parties. Where past Democratic presidents pushed America into international agreements that undermined domestic manufacturing and energy production for mythical reductions in global temperatures, Trump is prioritizing American workers and industrial capacity.
Whatever one thinks of Trump’s style, the 2025 National Security Strategy is neither isolationist nor incoherent. It is a candid diagnosis of allied weakness and global competition paired with an assertive vision of American leadership. The real test is not the document’s honesty, but whether the president consistently acts on it.
