Outside the Beltway

An America First Security Strategy

With a heavy dose of Christian nationalism.

James Joyner · Saturday, December 6, 2025 · 3 comments

The Trump administration published its new National Security Strategy Thursday evening. It’s a sharp departure from any of its predecessors, going back to the 1987 edition put out by the Reagan administration. I’m thinking through the limits of what I can say publicly about it in the current climate, but plan to write something for publication soon.

War on the Rocks editor Rick Landgraf provides a useful summary under the title “Ten Jolting Takeaways from Trump’s New National Security Strategy.” I recommend the whole piece, but especially want to highligh this:

Second, it narrows American purpose to “core national interests” and explicitly disavows the post-Cold War liberal order that the United States has built and led. The strategy defines foreign policy as “the protection of core national interests” and says that is the “sole focus” of the document. It criticizes “American foreign policy elites” for chasing “permanent American domination of the entire world” and for tying the United States to “so-called ‘free trade,’” globalism, and “transnationalism” that allegedly hollowed out the American middle class and eroded sovereignty. Where previous strategies wrapped U.S. power in the language of democracy promotion and the rules-based order, this one is markedly different. It redefines leadership and power through coercive leverage, bilateralism, and transactional alignment. This is an America that is not necessarily retreating from the world stage but consolidating its power through bullying and dealmaking.

and, especially, this:

Fifth, protecting American culture, “spiritual health,” and “traditional families” are framed as core national security requirements. It is here where the influences of Christian nationalism and the vice president are the most apparent. The document insists that “restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health” are prerequisites for long-term security and links this to an America that “cherishes its past glories and its heroes” and is sustained by “growing numbers of strong, traditional families” raising “healthy children.” America is thus cast as defender of so-called traditional values, while Europe lacks “civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”

The language of the document is not the typical passing nod to values and societal cohesion of previous national security strategies. It redefines culture and family as explicit national security issues, which brings domestic cultural politics into the domain of national security decision-making.

Sixth, the strategy elevates the culture wars into a governing logic for national security, and it does so through rhetoric that treats ideological and cultural disputes as matters of strategic consequence. The document denounces Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as a source of institutional decay and presents this as a national security problem. Yet the argument does not remain focused on personnel policy. It expands into a broader effort to define cultural cohesion, political identity, and even social change as indicators of strategic reliability. This is clearest in the European section, where the strategy suggests that some allies are drifting because of what it describes as failing political leadership, public dissatisfaction with policy toward the war in Ukraine, and supposed structural weaknesses in European democracy. The text also speculates about demographic and cultural shifts in Europe as a way to question whether future governments will share American views of their alliances. The strategy does not substantiate these claims. Instead, it uses them to imply that cultural alignment is essential to strategic partnership.

What emerges is not a traditional assessment of allied capability or political will but a cultural test for geopolitical trustworthiness. European governments seen as insufficiently responsive to public opinion are depicted as suppressing legitimate democratic impulses. Their policy disagreements with Washington are presented as evidence of deeper cultural or ideological drift. The strategy therefore treats internal political debates within allied democracies as matters for American scrutiny, while insisting on strict insulation of American domestic politics from foreign influence. This asymmetry reveals a worldview in which cultural politics becomes an instrument of statecraft. It positions the United States to judge the internal order of its partners through the lens of ideological compatibility rather than institutional capacity or shared interests. In doing so, the strategy folds the culture war into alliance management and treats domestic cultural narratives as strategic tools rather than purely political ones.

While none of this is surprising to those who have paid attention to President Trump’s rhetoric over the last several years, it’s nonetheless jarring to see it so bluntly stated in the NSS. It is a complete abandonment oft he liberal principles espoused uniformly by both parties—very much including the 2017 NSS by the Trump 45 administration—throughout the postwar era.