CNAS Insights | The 2025 National Security Strategy

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) is less a shot across the bow to D.C. elites and more like a targeted drone strike to the idea of U.S. global leadership. “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” The NSS spells out what has been implicit in the administration’s actions—a turn away from 80 years of American global leadership toward a much more isolationist, protectionist, and transactional foreign policy.

While the document’s plan to retreat from the world, abandon the defense of democracy, and chastise Europe might shock the consciences of those who believe America still has a vital role to play in world affairs, D.C. elites would be wise not to dismiss the strategy as merely the current whims of the mercurial President Trump. This strategy is the culmination of a slow turn toward isolationism over the past 25 years.

A quarter century ago, President George W. Bush brought to power a new brand of ideologue who wanted a more muscular United States, but one that was also highly interventionist in world affairs. The slow failure of those interventions has steadily led to a more isolationist America—first with the more cautious selective interventionism of the Obama administration and then finally to an “America First” isolationist vision during Trump’s second term.

The NSS correctly diagnoses a disconnect between what bipartisan elites in Washington have wanted for America’s role in the world and what the American public has been willing to support. “Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest.” This sentiment isn’t going away, and those who favor America remaining engaged in world affairs will need to make a stronger case as to why.

The NSS centers the national interest on protecting the nation and its people from military attacks and hostile foreign influence. This is an important re-centering of American interests. The American people might reasonably ask why the nation should attend to problems in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, or Taiwan when there are problems that warrant attention at home.

The Trump administration’s strategy will almost certainly make the world a more dangerous place for Americans. It will embolden hostile foreign powers, including Russia and China. Allies, seeing America head for the exit, will seek to guarantee their own security through rearmament, including possibly with nuclear weapons. The world the strategy envisions will strengthen autocrats, destabilize regions that are critical to U.S. trade, incentivize military aggression, and risk nuclear proliferation. It is foolishness to think America’s oceans will insulate us from the rest of the world. In the first half of the 20th century, the United States learned painfully the price of isolationism and the need for American leadership—in order to secure American interests. But to stay engaged in the world, first the national security community will need to earn the support of the American people.

Written in a plain-spoken style that marks a departure from most national security documents, the NSS speaks directly to the American people. It explains why a strategy is needed and what America should want from the rest of the world. Those who find fault with the strategy should take note. America needs to remain engaged with the world, not for the world’s sake, but for America’s. Making this case at home is the first step toward securing American interests abroad.

The National Security Strategy (NSS) is right to emphasize a culture of competence and merit for American security—both in the military and the national security civilian workforce.

The United States has long recruited, promoted, and trained the military to clear, high standards. Requirements are defined at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, and uniformed personnel are managed according to those standards within congressionally mandated end strengths. This approach increases lethality, reduces risk, and strengthens the appeal of military service to the next generation, underscoring why the NSS rightly highlights merit and competence in uniform.

By contrast, competence and merit in civilian political appointments remain less defined, even as these positions shape national security outcomes—a challenge that spans administrations.

While presidents may nominate their preferred candidate for any position, there should be a clear articulation of the knowledge, skills, and experience required of the position. Such requirements should drive the selection process for any individual nominated to a presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed (PAS) national security position—traditionally including the Department of Defense, State, Homeland Security, the intelligence community, and the military departments. The NSS’s more integrated view of national security, which incorporates economic security, appropriately extends these expectations to departments such as Commerce, Energy, and the U.S. Trade Representative.

Each position’s requirements should outline the competencies needed to manage critical institutions: experience leading large organizations, fiscal responsibility, and demonstrated knowledge of the constitutional, legal, policy, and regulatory frameworks relevant to the role. Presidents and transition teams should screen nominees using these criteria, and senators should reference them in confirmation hearing questions and base confirmation votes on a candidate’s demonstrated ability to meet the requirements to ensure alignment with the NSS’s emphasis on merit and competence.

That is not to say that all appointees should follow the same pathway into merit-based government service. The national security apparatus has leveraged the strengths of various levels and types of experience to successfully secure the nation; vital contributions have been made by academics, career civil servants, former members of Congress, governors, mayors, business leaders, retired military leaders, and former diplomats. But identifying clear positional requirements will enable the U.S. government to best fill positions based on merit with the full range of American talent.

The National Security Strategy (NSS) does little to clarify the administration’s mixed signals on economic security, especially when it comes to China. It emphasizes the need for U.S. technological leadership, yet out in the real world, the administration is rolling back controls on the export of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China. It says China’s “predatory trade practices” must end but presents no clear vision for how the United States can induce a change in China’s behavior.

Fundamentally, this NSS is about leveraging the heft of the U.S. economy to coerce other countries into giving the United States what it wants. But the administration’s tariff onslaught sparked severe retaliation from China, and the administration is now constrained from making any forward progress on derisking. The NSS papers over these complexities and provides no real clarity on whether the United States still believes itself to be an in a long-term strategic competition with China, let alone how it could win one.

If the approach to China is marked by confusion, the discussion on allies is a masterclass in gaslighting. The NSS nods toward coordinated action to counter China’s predatory trade practices, which many allies might be inclined to consider if they were not consumed with fending off such practices—from the United States. It’s a prime example of how the administration ignores the costs of its coercive approach to allies, and why it might not get everything it wants after all.

When it comes to the Indo-Pacific, the National Security Strategy (NSS) should provide allies and partners with a measure of reassurance. The strategy highlights the familiar U.S. goal of balancing power among nations and working with allies and partners “to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.” It discusses the importance of denying aggression in the First Island Chain and of “collective defense,” which is an acknowledgement that the United States alone cannot accomplish its goals in the region. Indo-Pacific allies and partners should also take heart in the strategy’s reaffirmation of a commitment to a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” a phrase coined by the late strategist and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Other portions of the strategy, however, will ring hollow. For instance, it states that American soft power is “unrivalled,” ignoring the fact that the Trump administration is squandering some of the most important U.S. tools of soft power by seeking to shut down its international broadcasting capabilities (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Network) and drastically reducing humanitarian and development assistance for vulnerable nations.

Trump administration officials must also realize that actions such as overrelying on tariffs at the expense of geostrategic goals, coaching allies to accommodate China’s expansionist ambitions, and reversing 25 years of strategic investment in developing a partnership with India will call into question whether Washington is still adhering to the principles (“openness, transparency, trustworthiness, commitment to freedom and innovation, and free market capitalism”) that, as the strategy notes, have made the United States the “global partner of first choice.”

The National Security Strategy (NSS) presents a clear break from the past and articulates new priorities for U.S. foreign policy. The NSS places Western Hemisphere security at the top of its list of core foreign policy interests. This is a distinct reprioritization from the U.S. foreign policy community’s more recent focus on great power competition, threats to U.S. and legacy allies’ interests posed by Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, and the post-9/11 U.S. security focus on international terrorism emanating from the Middle East. The NSS assesses that adversaries are attempting to “invade” the United States by manipulating its immigration system, processes, and enforcement; impacting U.S. neighbors; and dominating critical supply chains.

Unlike the last 25 years of U.S. foreign policy under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the NSS assesses immigration as a potential threat vector, border security as “the primary element of national security,” and countering drug trafficking, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, as a priority. The implementation of these areas of focus will continue to push the bounds of the existing U.S. legal framework at the intersection of domestic law, international law, and homeland security. Already, the administration’s implementation of a muscular Western Hemisphere foreign policy, counter drug trafficking strikes, and more robust domestic deployment of the National Guard have raised questions about whether the policy comports with existing legal frameworks.

The NSS also previews more widespread U.S. military activity throughout the Western Hemisphere, with the goal of limiting migrants’ access to the United States, disrupting drug trafficking, and exerting strategic control of the region through enhanced U.S. military presence. Implementation of this aspect of the NSS will have international and domestic consequences. The NSS would also likely provide a foundation for asserting greater U.S. influence throughout Latin and South America to counter non-Hemispheric countries that seek to influence and control access ways, infrastructure and military presence. However, the NSS does not clearly articulate which non-Hemispheric countries’ influence in Latin and South America it is designed to disrupt.

The new National Security Strategy (NSS) is sure to raise eyebrows, but it gets this right: technology partnerships are now essential to American statecraft. The strategy makes two astute observations to support this.

First, it recognizes that “America still holds the dominant position in the key technologies the world needs.” U.S. firms manage over 60 percent of the global cloud market, 75 percent of global GPU cluster performance for artificial intelligence (AI), and over 90 percent of all low Earth orbit satellites in orbit. Surging global demand for digital connectivity and services—especially in emerging markets—presents the United States with a generational opportunity to forge long-term commercial and strategic partnerships.

Second, today’s diplomatic and development paradigm is ill-equipped to secure such partnerships. To outcompete “low cost” foreign assistance with “hidden costs in espionage, cybersecurity, [and] debt traps”—a not-so-subtle reference to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Digital Silk Road—America needs a new approach. Too often, Washington’s bureaucracy and foot dragging lose out to Beijing’s fast and holistic toolbox to secure strategic tech deals abroad. Although the strategy is light on specifics, it calls for “robust diplomatic and private-sector led economic engagement” and offering partners “a suite of inducements,” including high-tech cooperation, to “tip decisions in our favor.”

Going forward, the administration will need to work with Congress to pair its ambition for proactive technology partnerships with the reforms and resources to achieve them. It can look to an October 2025 Center for a New American Security report on Countering the Digital Silk Road, which features several recommendations to help outcompete Chinese technology offerings in key emerging markets, from piloting a cohort of technology-focused diplomats to establishing a U.S. Partnership Agency that unites many of the resources and tools of commercial diplomacy under common leadership and priorities.

In the current political environment, the task of separating signal from noise has become even more challenging, including efforts to assess the significance of what the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) has to say on Europe. There is much in the strategy to agree with, and the viewpoints expressed are not necessarily new. Most importantly, it acknowledges that Europe remains strategically vital to the United States and that the United States plays an important role in securing stability in Europe, especially in mitigating the risk of conflict between Russia and European states. It is also correct in its ambition to see European allies take more responsibility for the defense of Europe, given mounting global challenges that the United States cannot shoulder alone. But the strategy on Europe comes apart in its condemnation of allies, focus on Europe’s “civilizational erasure,” and promise to intervene to “help Europe correct its current trajectory.” To say nothing of the lack of reference to the risks that Russia poses to the United States.

Political developments surrounding the NSS’s release add additional alarm to any interpretation of the implications of the NSS for transatlantic relations. Around the same time as the NSS’s release, senior U.S. officials are reported to have told their European counterparts that that they must take over the bulk of conventional defense responsibilities on the continent no later than 2027—an entirely unrealistic timeline for Europe to be able to ramp up the capabilities Washington would draw down, leaving a gap that would tempt further Russian aggression in Europe. The confluence of timelines only heightens the risk: 2027 is the year that many European governments have assessed that Russia would be able to reconstitute large parts of its conventional forces and that Chinese President Xi Jinping has reportedly set as the target by which he wants the People's Liberation Army to be capable of invading Taiwan. It is hardly the time for the United States to signal its lack of commitment to its allies.

On the other hand, the U.S. Congress is moving in the opposite direction and is poised to place new restrictions on the White House’s ability to reduce troop levels in Europe and vacate the traditional U.S. role of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Congress has also proposed extending the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to provide Ukraine with $400 million in support for each of the next two years.

Hence the difficulty in separating signal from noise.

The goal for the transatlantic allies now is to ensure that as Europe grows stronger, the United States and Europe maintain a close partnership—neither the United States nor Europe can go it alone. But that task will only prove more difficult so long as the administration appears so openly hostile to its closest allies.