.. the rest.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/12/new-u-s-national-security-strategy-fortress-america-compete-china-strangle-europe-forget-the-rest.html

The White House has released the new National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS) (pdf, 33 pages).

It is quite different from the last one released in 2022 under the Biden administration.

The new NSS marks the end of the rather infamous Wolfowitz doctrine:

The “Wolfowitz Doctrine” is an unofficial name given to the initial version of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–1999 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992). As the first post-Cold War DPG, it asserted that the United States had become the world’s sole remaining superpower following the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, and declared that its principal objective was to preserve that status.

The memorandum, drafted under the direction of Under Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, generated considerable controversy and was subsequently revised in response to public criticism.

In contrast to the Wolfowitz doctrine the introduction to the new NSS asserts:

After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.

The NSS is based on different consideration:

The questions before us now are: 1) What should the United States want? 2) What are our available means to get it? and 3) How can we connect ends and means into a viable National Security Strategy?

It next lays out principals, priorities and global regions.

The most remarkable point in the new NSS is, in my view, the acceptance of China as a (near) equal competitor.

As Twitter commentator summarized the paper:

“Trump Corollary” to Monroe Doctrine is now the core pillar.
China downgraded from existential threat to economic competitor.
Taiwan deterrence = “ideal” but conditional on allies paying up.
Indo-Pacific secondary, Western Hemisphere + homeland first.
No more democracy crusades, no value imposition abroad.
Tariffs quietly admitted as failure, focus shifts to multilateral pressure.
Biggest shift since 1945: from global cop to fortified hemisphere power.
Allies will be asked to foot the bill while US rebuilds at home.
Fortress America is back.

The reviving of the Monroe doctrine, which implies to counter all foreign influence in North and South America, is bad news for the countries in that region. They will have to fend off U.S. interventions and invasions. For the rest of the world it is good news as the U.S. will be decreasing its capabilities for global interventions.

Asia is seen important with regards to the economy. The military aspect is reduced to deterrence. The U.S. will try to recruit its allies – Japan, South-Korea, Europe – to compete with China economically as well as to ‘ideally’ upkeep the status quo around Taiwan.

With regards to Europe the NSS is contradicting itself. Its Principals say:

We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories. We recognize and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours even as we push like-minded friends to uphold our shared norms, furthering our interests as we do so.

But in its chapter on Europe the NSS is promoting U.S. intervention against the European Union:

The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.
…
American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.

Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory. 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 remarks on the war in Ukraine demonstrates the U.S. hostility towards the current crop of warmongering west-European leaders:

It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.

The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe’s, especially Germany’s, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world’s largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis.

The bureaucrats in Brussels will not like these priorities which sum up to heavy interventions in internal EU processes:

Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize:

* Reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia;
* Enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power;
* Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations;
* Opening European markets to U.S. goods and services and ensuring fair treatment of U.S. workers and businesses;
* Building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges;
* Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance; and
* Encouraging Europe to take action to combat mercantilist overcapacity, technological theft, cyber espionage, and other hostile economic practices.

The Middle East, with less than 1 1/2 pages in the NSS, is no longer seen as priority:

[T]he days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over—not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was. It is rather emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment—a trend that should be welcomed and encouraged.

Africa, which is covered in a mere 1/2 page, is only mentioned under economic aspects.

The new National Security Strategy is a stark break from the last 30 years of U.S. policies dominated by neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists. It is moving from ideological intervention and competition towards the prioritization of economic relations.

The U.S. is concentrating on the ‘western hemisphere’, de-emphasizing military hostility towards China to economic competition. It foresees intervention in the internal affairs of Europe while the Middle East and Africa are downgraded to mere side shows.

Some people, especially European Atlanticists, will hope that a future U.S. government will rescind the new NSS and help Europe’s aggressive efforts against Russia.

But that view ignores the bi-partisanship of U.S. policies. The Wolfowitz doctrine was followed by Republicans as much as by Democrats. The new National Security Strategy will likewise be furthered by both parties.

Posted by b on December 5, 2025 at 15:51 UTC