On December 4, the White House published Donald Trump’s long-awaited 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS). And while the release of the strategy was initially muffled by news of ongoing developments in the Russia-Ukraine peace plan, foreign policy analysts are now actively dissecting the document and its potential implications. Europe, most notably but perhaps not unexpectedly, was hit the hardest, signalling a significant shift in the U.S. strategy towards its post-1945 allies. But before we delve into the wider impact of this shift, it is first essential to look at what the strategy entails - and what it conveniently omits. 

It is fair to conclude that Washington’s latest NSS is the clearest, and perhaps boldest, articulation of President Trump’s global vision to date. From the outset, the document defines ‘strategy’ and offers a critique of how previous American approaches have fallen short since the beginning of the century. Strategy is framed as a ‘realistic plan’ linking ‘ends and means,’ marking a departure from the value-driven language that dominated earlier national security documents. It is worth noting, however, that a national security strategy functions primarily as a public messaging instrument and a bureaucratic guide. It does not constrain presidential decision-making and, in Trump’s case, is more likely to serve as a justification for action than as a restraint.

That said, the NSS does present a number of revealing and unprecedented claims in American foreign policy. Trump makes no secret of America’s preference for isolationism and the protection of core national interests. The language is openly assertive, and at times bordering on hubristic, reflecting what Jeffrey Sachs has described as a ‘Machiavellian’ view of international politics. The strategy asserts that the United States possesses ‘the world’s single largest and most innovative economy,’ ‘the world’s leading financial system,’ and ‘the world’s most advanced and most profitable technology sector,’ all underpinned by ‘the world’s most powerful and capable military.’ Preserving this position is presented as the central objective of American foreign policy.

Interesting, too, is the contrast with Trump’s first presidency, where the two NSS read like products of two very different administrations, despite being issued under the same president. The 2017 NSS was firmly grounded in the language of great power competition, explicitly identifying both Russia and China as ‘revisionist powers’ seeking to weaken U.S. influence and reshape the international order. In that document, strategic rivalry served as the organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy, with Europe, and by extension NATO, treated as an indispensable pillar of deterrence.

The 2025 strategy departs sharply from this framework. For the first time, a strong transatlantic relationship is no longer a priority for America, explicitly stating ‘the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over’.

The new administration acknowledges that previous policies of ‘American dominance’, defined by interventionism and the attempted imposition of political order abroad, were costly and ultimately unsustainable. In response, the NSS 2025 introduces elements of overdue realism, making clear that the United States will no longer seek to reshape other societies or act as a global guarantor, provided those states do not pose a direct threat to American national security.

This recalibration is particularly evident in the Middle East, where the strategy rejects the interventionist logic of the post-9/11 era and prioritises ‘commercial diplomacy’, as was expected from any Trumpian initiative. The document acknowledges the key to successful relations with the Middle East means ‘accepting the region, its leaders, and its nations as they are while working together on areas of common interest’. This logic extends beyond the Middle East. Across regions, transactional economic dealmaking is prioritised at the expense of previously championed democratic values and long-standing commitments to alliance management.

Another notable departure concerns Russia and China. While both remain present in the text, neither functions as the organising threat around which U.S. strategy is structured. China appears sparingly and primarily in economic terms, with limited attention paid to its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific or its challenge to the global balance of power. Russia, meanwhile, is treated less as a revisionist adversary than as a European problem, one that carries existential implications for the continent but does not, in itself, warrant direct U.S. involvement beyond mediation and risk management. Instead, the NSS identifies the principal threats to American security as emanating from across the border, particularly immigration, terrorism, and drug trafficking, implicitly aligning U.S. priorities with right-wing European leaders for whom cross-border threats constitute the primary security concern.

This logic is formalised in the strategy’s explicit revival of what the document terms a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine. For the first time in writing, the NSS elevates the Western Hemisphere to a first order strategic priority and frames U.S. security as dependent on preventing mass migration, suppressing transnational criminal networks, and denying ‘non Hemispheric competitors’ the ability to own or control strategically vital assets in the region. The risks for China are clear, whose economic and infrastructural footprint in the Americas is now elevated to a national security concern. 

While China escapes the scrutiny it previously attracted, the consequences of the foreign policy shift are most acutely felt in Europe. The document abandons the long-standing assumption that transatlantic security is a core pillar of U.S. strategy, instead casting Europe as a region in ideological and strategic decline. Its framing closely echoes Vice President J.D. Vance’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference, which portrayed Europe as weakened by mass migration, economic stagnation, strategic incoherence on Russia, and dependence on China. The NSS goes further by expressing ‘great optimism’ about the rise of ‘patriotic European parties,’ effectively endorsing selective political alignment over institutional partnership.

This is where the document’s internal contradiction becomes clear. The NSS insists it will not impose political order abroad and will respect sovereignty, yet it makes an exception for Europe by implicitly advocating intervention in its domestic political trajectory. The same logic is visible in the alliance language. The strategy calls on European states to take ‘primary responsibility for [their] own defense,’ abandons the expectation of an ever expanding NATO, and pushes dramatically higher defense spending as the new baseline for credibility.  

But the problem is not merely financial, though the strategy’s call to raise defence spending from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP would, in practice, force a political and fiscal reordering across European capitals. The more serious issue is that, amid an ongoing conflict with Russia, the U.S. is signalling that Europe is expected to carry primary responsibility for its own security, and that American leadership is no longer guaranteed but conditional on alignment with U.S. priorities.

European leaders have responded with a mix of restraint and unease. German officials described the strategy’s implications for Europe as ‘unacceptable,’ while stressing that the continent must now ‘take greater responsibility for its own security.’ In Brussels, EU officials pushed back against the document’s ideological framing, warning that Europe would not accept external actors deciding which political forces are legitimate. European commentators have gone further, arguing that the strategy confirms a more adversarial posture from Washington and that Europe’s remaining leverage lies in its control over key industries and regulations, particularly in semiconductors and data governance.

In two words, the 33-page strategy can be summarised by Trump’s infamous slogan - ‘America First’. For Europe, this marks an end to the post-1945 security order, in which American leadership is no longer guaranteed. The question is now whether Europe will manage its security without relying on Washington.