An America First Security Strategy
With a heavy dose of Christian nationalism.
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.
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It is a ludicrous and unserious document. We can only hope that Trump will be gone in time for us to erase this embarrassment before serious damage is done.
Vomitous.
@Michael Reynolds:
We also have to hope that Vance’s lack of discernible talent relegates him to collecting large speaking fees on the private circuit to keep him far away from any policy-making role.
Unfortunately, that Thiel money goes a long way.
I wonder if anyone has done an analysis to parallel this security/policy/priority document to a famous fourteen word phrase.
For many years, centuries even, the governments of Europe have been promoting “Land und Boden” i.e. a Christian nationalist view. Sometimes it was Church and Crown, and sometimes it was power centralized in a charismatic personality. Haven’t these guys studied history? Remember how all this ended up? These are not new ideas. These ideas have failed spectacularly before.
I would like to know who is the principal author of this. We know it isn’t Trump. There are a lot of awful people behind the scenes that are driving this country to ruin.
I seem to be yelling at my congresscritters on a daily basis lately.
@Michael Reynolds:
I fear that all of this is deeper than just Trump and that while his exit may allow another faction of the GOP to become dominant, this wing is not going away. My optimism on this wing losing dominance wanes as this stuff gets more deeply embedded (see, e.g., murder on the high seas as policy).
I was just discussing this with a friend who said “our country is dying and now I’m worrying about what kind of undead monster it will become.” Can’t say that I disagree
I’ve seen excerpts that indicate they plan to leave Europe much more on their own. Is the same true for Eastern Asia?
Huh. It’s as if they are going to cross off every bullet point in a hard-right white-supremacist isolationist wishlist this year. We may not be able to keep all these treasures, but we’re going to get them, by gum!
Or maybe it’s an attempt to placate and secure all the right wingers who are mad at him about Epstein.
I had some comments on this in yesterday’s forum, most of which I think are still applicable
I am, perhaps a little less dumfounded and outraged now.
(Though, I assure you, still pretty pissed off.)
It would be hilarious if was not so dangerous, foolish, infuriating and saddening.
As someone on Xitter said: “it’s like a Groyper trying to cosplay as Kissinger.”
With a “global Culture War” standing in for the Cold War.
I’ve heard some reports the core draft was by Michael Anton (author of “The Flight 93 Election”).
(Though some people also think at least parts indicate use of ChatGPT, lol)
The whole thing is at base a petulant and unrealistic set of demands that the world conform to the desires of MAGA, with not even a coherent strategy for making it do so.
Seriously, even setting aside the sheer insolence of it, it ignores the thorny issues of how to achieve its objectives, and the likely reactions of other actors to a US attempt at achieving them.
Setting aside the arrogance of its statements re Europe, which I covered on Friday well enough, I think, there is the assertion, or assumption, of hemispheric dominance.
Brazil, for one, seems disinclined to accept subordination to the whims of Washington.
In some points it is just entirely fatuous:
And if my Uncle Fred had wheels, he’d be a bicycle.
Wut? WTF? WTFF?
Those would include the “allies” the administration has just insulted, and seem inclined to backstab?
Europe: “New phone; who dis?”
Back to the question of US-Europe relations:
European Council on Foreign Relations member Ulrike Franke:
The US has become accustomed to a generally peaceable and deferential Europe (periodic French expostulations aside) to an extent it seems to have internalised that as some sort of heavenly-ordained natural order.
(A pacific Atlantic, if you will. 😉 )
It is not.
It has been the product of sustained diplomatic effort, and economic/strategic cooperation and coherent policy effort since 1945 by both the US and Europe.
The US is now saying that its former closest allies are actually its worst enemy in the new world of Cuture War.
Well, seek hard enough and ye may find, perhaps to your woe.
A saying comes to mind:
“Do not call up what you cannot put down.”
@Scott: My money would be on Pentagon Policy Director Colby being the scribe, under the close supervision of Vance.
It’s understandable the new strategy has received such a muted response in the media. It reads more like a Vance campaign speech than a serious statement of public policy. But I was struck by this passage:
That is such an irrational proposition it’s hard to believe it was written with a straight face. Because the United States has chosen to devote enormous resources over the decades to military adventures everywhere from Vietnam to Iraq, allies who avoided such foreign entanglements are expected to “make up for the imbalance”? It’s unfair that allies choose not to invest in massively expensive carrier battle groups and nuclear submarine fleets to project power across the globe, like America does? Therefore they must spend hundreds of billions buying arms (from the US) for no reasaon other than to match America’s past spending? That is deranged.
Nations make decisions about defence spending based on careful threat assessments. Demanding they spend more just because America does is childish. It might be different if Trump was proposing allies spend more so America could spend less, but he isn’t. Indeed he intends to increase his defence budget with wild schemes like the “golden dome”. Good luck to America if that’s what they want. But to use it as a reason why Japan or New Zealand or Portugal should more than double their defence spending makes zero sense. It’s especially jarring in a document that emphasises again and again that sovereign nation states protecting their own interests are the key to global stability.
@Steven L. Taylor:
In my opinion (and it seems, reading around, its one widely shared in “opinion forming” circles in UK/Europe) J. D. Vance is generally to be regarded as far more dangerous than Trump.
Because Trump is a mush-minded fool, who will play for the kudos and the grift, and veers according to which courtiers have his ear.
Whereas Vance seems (so far as can be judged) to actually believe this.
Or at least to think advocating such policies pleases both a sizable amount of the nutty MAGA base, and his tech-bro backers.
The problem for UK/Europe, and other allies (Australia, for instance) is that if this a set stance of a MAGA/tech-bro dominated Republican party, we CANNOT revert to depending on a US alliance even if the Democrats won in 2028, and mortgage our security to the votes of some swing state districts in 2032.
Also, once Europen strategic separation begins, it will have its own institutional and interest group momentum.
Consider the current adminsistration demand that Europe pay the US for all weapons supplies to Ukraine.
Which immediately raises the question: “why pay the US if we can make it ourselves?”
A lot of US commentaors seem to automatically assume “only the US can..” re such systems.
Ignoring for that, for instance, SAMP/T is already a peer to Patriot on peformance; and the same applies to many other system types.
Or that Europe is now a much larger producer of artillery ammunition than the US.
Or an assumption that US satellite intelligence dependency is somehow “ordained of the Lord”, when Europe has a rather effective space capabilty, should it choose to develop it further.
Which it is now highly likely to do.
This will take time; so in the interim look for protestations of “the Atlantic alliance remains fundamental” Which nobody serious actually believes any longer.
It’s done.
@Ken_L:
@Ken_L:
Colby or Anton?
Or both?
Place your bets. 🙂
I agree that Vance is likely to be deeply involved in this.
Which also indicates how far Rubio has been pushed aside; as SecState and National Security Advisor he has a rather unusual nominal predominance.
In practice, he seems to have been reduced to being little more than an errand-boy.
Anyone with shred of self respect would have resigned.
But then, we are talking about Marco Rubio.
The hilarious thing (if it wasn’t so serious) is that Europe is already massively ramping defence expenditure.
(Perhaps because who knows which country that capabilty might need to deter, in the not so distant future?)
Many European states chose to uphold their US alliances, at a cost in blood and treasure, in Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Being slighted for that rankles somewhat.
(Especially when Israel somehow gets to be regarded as THE primary ally of the US, because reasons.)
The US being a global Power had, and has, obvious costs, and obvious benefits.
What the MAGA seem incapable of parsing is that a peaceable Europe, that was also a (mostly) cooperative economic and diplomatic partner was massively advantageous to the US.
Europe as an adversary would make China look trivial by comparison.
Assuming that “cannot possibly happen” is folly: sensible strategic statesmanship is based on ensuring that what you do not want to happen is excluded either by co-operation or by coercion.
In either case, by the engaged self-interest of other actors.
That was the foundation of the entire post-WW2 security/economic architecture planned by Roosevely, enacted by Truman, and upheld by Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Now we have Trump, or more precisely those idiots let loose by the roi faineant gleefully demolishing those structures, and assuming that their demoltion will not damage the US.
Because reasons.
Because how could we possibly f@ck up?
It’s just inconceivable.
@JohnSF: Anton was reported to be leaving the regime back in August; I can’t find any confirmation that he actually did so, or if he did, where he is now. He doesn’t appear to have any social media accounts.
@Ken_L:
Just something I read.
On Vox I think? Yup.
Politico earlier.
May not be definitive, obvs.
I’m sure the current Whitehouse national
stupiditysecurity team has plenty of identikit idiots to hand, with fantasies of being the Metternich de nos jours, with a little helping hand from ChatGPT.I would dearly love to see the actual drafting and guidance tree on this shit-heap, if only for my own amusement.
Personally, I’d wager a good bottle of claret on Vance being deeply involved, and Rubio being sidelined and whining ineffectually.
Paul Nitze may be rolling in his grave at steam turbine speed right now.