In these strange and troubled times, when the head of NATO is glooming us up for the imminent prospect of war, I thought I would read the National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America, November 2025. So I printed it off and read it, twice. It’s 30-odd pages of A4, maybe about 10,000 words. I’ll try and summarise it. (I’m using English rather than American spelling, eg defence for defense, and also, dare I say, Calibri font, sans serif, which is easier for the visually impaired. Marco Rubio in the State Department has rejected it in favour of Times New Roman).
We begin with a message from the President. “My fellow Americans…” This year, the administration has brought the world back from the edge of disaster, taken back control of US borders, strengthened the military (and expunged it of “woke lunacy”), got NATO to increase defence spending from 2% to 5%, unleashed energy production, imposed import tariffs, obliterated Iran’s nuclear programme, taken on the drug cartels, and settled eight raging conflicts worldwide. The theme underlying all this activity is “America First”. The President signs this preamble with his signature signature, so to speak (so familiar to us from a plethora of executive orders), which looks to me like a long barbed wire fence interspersed with goon boxes.
The Strategy follows. It is in four parts.
- Introduction – What is American strategy?
The aim is to ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come. Previous administrations have gone astray by overburdening the country with overseas commitments not integral to its own interest, becoming embroiled in the activities of international institutions, while attempting to run a massive welfare-regulatory-administrative state. No more – thanks to “President Trump’s Necessary, Welcome Correction”.
- What Should the United States Want?
At home, survival and safety, protection from hostile attack (in the broadest sense), control of borders, resilient infrastructure, the most powerful military in the world, a modern nuclear deterrent and associated missile defences, the world’s most advanced economy, the world’s most robust industrial base and energy sector, the most advanced science and technology, unrivalled “soft power”, and a restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, rooted in strong traditional families that raise healthy children.
Abroad, a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine (a stable Western Hemisphere, supporting critical supply chains and free of hostile incursion), reversal of damage to the US economy from hostile actors in the Indo-Pacific (reliable supply chains and access to critical materials), support for the preservation of freedom and security in Europe, prevention of an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, with the US leading the world in AI, biotech, and quantum computing.
- What are America’s Available Means to Get What We Want?
A nimble political system, the world’s leading economy, financial system, technology, military, and network of alliances, enviable geography, cultural influence, courage, willpower and patriotism.
In addition, President Trump is re-instilling a culture of competence, rooting out “DEI” (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) practices, unleashing energy production, reindustrialising, cutting taxes, deregulating, and investing in science and technology.
- The Strategy
“President Trump has cemented his legacy as The President of Peace… A world on fire, where wars come to our shores, is bad for American interests.” The US will cultivate peace through strength, while respecting other sovereign nation-states. The US will protect its own sovereignty, and not allow any power to become so dominant that it threatens US interests. America will be pro-worker, and expect allies to treat the US fairly. America will be a meritocracy with no “favoured group” status, but global talent will not be allowed to undercut American workers. The era of mass migration is over. Core rights, freedom of speech, religion and conscience, must never be infringed.
“The days of the united States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” NATO countries must spend 5% of GDP on defence. This is “burden-sharing and burden-shifting”.
The President will seek peace deals, even in countries peripheral to immediate core interests, if it increases global interests, and opens new markets.
The US will work to strengthen the economy, through balanced trade relations, access to critical supply chains and materials, reindustrialisation, and a revival of the military-industrial complex. American energy dominance will be restored. America will preserve and grow its financial sector dominance.
The paper concludes with a discussion of five global regions.
- The Western Hemisphere
America will enlist and expand partnerships. There will be serious pushback to non-hemispheric competitors.
- Asia
America will rebalance the economic relationship with China, combating, with the help of allies, unfair and predatory business practices, and while focusing on deterrence of war in the Indo-Pacific. The US will invest in military and dual-use technology, including undersea, space, and nuclear. “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” The US will not allow a competitor to control the South China Sea.
- Europe
Europe’s problems include insufficient military spending, economic stagnation, “civilisational erasure”, the activities of the EU and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, out of control migration, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birth rates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence. “The continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less.” Certain European countries may not remain reliable allies. Europe needs to regain its civilisational self-confidence. The US needs to engage diplomatically to manage European relations with Russia, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and the European states. The US wishes to expedite a cessation of the war in Ukraine.
- The Middle East
President Trump’s June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear programme. Progress towards a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace has been made. The US can work with Middle East partners to advance economic interests, and to open up new markets. The Strait of Hormuz must remain open, and the Red Sea navigable.
- Africa
The US will transition from a foreign aid paradigm to an investment and growth paradigm.
That’s it. What do you make of it? I can’t say anything surprised me. It was an iteration, and reiteration, somewhat repetitive, of things we’ve been hearing over the past year, and during the previous Trump administration. If I had to summarise it in half a dozen words, these would be “America First – make America great again.” The meaning throughout is reasonably clear, though the language is rather too abstract for my taste. On page 12, for example, on the topic of the US working with allies, this sentence appears:
“The model will be targeted partnerships that use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability.”
That sentence could have been generated by AI. Perhaps it was.
The tone overall is supremely self-assured, and self-confident. It certainly lacks humility. The references to the activities of the President are somewhat sycophantic. Much is asserted, with little underlying argument or back-up. Then again it is a policy document, outlining a strategy as it now is, rather than how it evolved. It is quite possible to read it and conclude that it is coherent, plain, straightforward, pragmatic, and reasonable. It is a rah-rah call to patriotism. Why shouldn’t people be encouraged to excel, to be the best they can be?
All well and good. I should therefore try to explain why I incline to think that the National Security Strategy is tosh, and a load of old codswallop. Bigly.
“The world works best when nations prioritise their interests.” That is perhaps the key sentence in the entire document. The idea is that if we are all primarily out for ourselves, there will be an international balance of power as if guided by an invisible hand. But would we support such an idea if it were applied to the individual? Would we regard as honourable a person who only looked out for “Number One”? All of the world’s established religions, moral philosophies and codes of ethics argue against selfishness, and regard indifference to the wellbeing of others as being directly opposed to the way in which “the world works best”. When G. K. Chesterton was asked what was at heart wrong with the world, he replied, “Me”. He had humility.
The trouble with prioritising national interest is that it creates a highly competitive, “dog eat dog” world in which powerful nations strive to be “A number one, king of the heap”, happy to sit at the top of what is likely to be a pile of excrement. That leads on to another key sentence of the NSS:
“We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidise out adversaries.”
This, despite the fact that the scientific world is virtually unanimous in believing that manmade climate change is real, and an existential threat. The trouble for the current US administration is that recognition of this fact would, and should, rather curtail the ambition to exploit the US’ enormous resources of fossil fuels. Refusal to face this fact is of itself an ideology. Climate change cannot be real, because it contradicts this latest iteration of the American Dream. Once you recognise the imminent threat of climate change, you are obliged not only to curtail mining activities but also to cooperate with other nations, allies and adversaries, in order, for example, to keep the increase in average global temperatures since the pre-industrial age to under 1.5 degrees Celsius. No nation can do this alone. Some people argue that there is little point in worrying about climate change when countries like the US, China, and India ignore it. That is a non-strategy, a strategy of despair.
The current US administration is happy to cooperate with allies, but only insofar as this serves, or is perceived to serve, the US national interest. Another key sentence:
“(Previously our elites)… 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 document does not have a good word for international institutions. The United Nations does not get a mention, nor the World Bank, and certainly not the Conference of the Parties (COP). The EU gets a poor press, as does NATO. The attack on Europe is a contumely, blistering in its contempt. But there is no criticism of Russia.
All in all, the NSS is all about the accumulation, for the US, of power, and wealth. The US may not be an empire, but it is certainly an hegemony. “We should be headed from our present $30 trillion economy in 2025 to $40 trillion in the 2030s.” The rich get richer. Money, in fact, is the predominant preoccupation of the NSS. Everything is seen in terms of a business deal. There is no reference to any ethical framework or moral code, beyond a couple of references to something nebulous called American “decency”, which, whatever it is, is taken for granted.
Poor Americans! What a ghastly dystopia awaits them. Perhaps it has already arrived. The US reminds me of “Pottersville”. In the celebrated Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life, James Stewart spends a lifetime putting self-interest to one side in favour of helping people who one way or another are in trouble. A series of personal misfortunes leads him to the brink of suicide. He is not a praying man, but in despair, all that is left for him is prayer. He believes his life has been futile, but his guardian angel shows him what the world would have been like if he had never existed. In particular, the small town in which he grew up and lived is turned into a repository of tat, of tasteless kitsch, as a result of the profiteering of one Henry Potter (no relation to J. K. Rowling’s creation). Pottersville is hell on earth. America is fast becoming Pottersville. There is a long tradition in Hollywood of the quiet, unassuming man, or woman, who takes on an adversary not because of a business opportunity, an eye for the main chance, but because something is happening to society which is fundamentally wrong. Garry Cooper, James Stewart, Tom Hanks. Who, and where, is such a figure now?
In fact, the idea that there might conceivably be something rotten in the state of the US is entirely ignored in the NSS. No mention of interpersonal violence against the backdrop of the 2nd Amendment; no mention of a profound societal rift between Republican and Democrat, with no apparent attempt to “reach across the aisle”; no mention of poverty, and the increasing gap between rich and poor. All of America’s woes are perceived as external threats, adversarial manoeuvres coming from beyond its borders. And in terms of foreign policy, other than a belief in the survival of the fittest, there is no consideration of what must surely be the most important, the most critical question of our time: how can we best get along together, without destroying ourselves, and the planet?
Yet there is hope. Winston told us that America could always be relied upon to do the right thing, after it has exhausted every other possibility. I think of President Trump as Shelley’s Ozymandias. In form, Shelley’s poem is really a sonnet. I print it in full here because it seems extraordinarily apposite:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
jamescalumcampbell 