‘PRINCIPLED REALISM’ UNDERGIRDS NEW NSS: The Trump administration is about to roll out its National Security Strategy, a formal document months in the making that is intended to flesh out the practical aspects behind Trump’s bumper sticker of “America first.” At the Reagan National Security Forum over the weekend, national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster said the strategy would help America regain its “strategic confidence,” and compared today’s threat environment to the world President Ronald Reagan faced when produced the first such formal strategy in 1987.
“The Soviet Union appeared to be on the rise and America, it seemed, was in decline,” McMaster told the gathering. “President Reagan ushered in a dramatic rethinking of America’s role in the world and a dramatic renewal of American confidence. … Today as we approach the unveiling of the Trump administration’s national security strategy, we are at a similar crossroads,” he said, in remarked quoted by the Pentagon’s internal news service.
