Notwithstanding the spin by America’s “mainstream media” on the United States National Security 2025 document released by the Trump administration, the US NSS 2025 is a compendium worth reading.

If at all there is something called a “top-down revolution”, the reversal of time and entrenched policies that created certain paradigms, then the contents of the US NSS 2025 correspond to that. 

So, what is the US NSS 2025? What makes it different (or quasi-revolutionary)? What is its content, in the main?

The US NSS 2025 is a compendium of policy notes, reversals, and a review of post-Cold War paradigms that determined and defined United States foreign and domestic policy. Going by the appellation of “globalism,” post-Cold War US foreign policy, according to the US NSS 2025, led to an unfocused and diffuse foreign policy, detached from means and ends.

In other words, globalist premises crafted policy paradigms that dissipated American national interests, leading to “forever burdens” on the country. 

In the main, this is what the US NSS 2025 seeks to reverse, creating a fresh and new crucible that puts America First. 

This, naturally, calls for “paradigm-shattering” philosophies and, as a corollary, policies that lead to American national renewal. 

By clear policy preferences, by implication, and by inference, the document calls for other states to adjust. How, then, does the document read, and what are its contents?

The US NSS 2025 reads as a fine and crisp document. It begins with an introductory note by the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump. The US President flags alarms and achievements of his administration since he assumed office in 2024. Calling the document a roadmap, President Trump makes a call for American freedom, security, and greatness.

The US NSS 2025 then defines and describes American grand strategy, which it states “had lost focus.” Calling for a “realignment between means and ends,” the US NSS 2025 suggests a “pecking order of priorities” for the United States, defined by “evaluating, sorting, and prioritizing.”

Alluding to the elitism that defined post-Cold War US foreign policy, marked by a disconnect between Americans’ aspirations and the national interest, the document calls attention to “free trade”-defined globalism. 

In the interstices of the two, sovereignty was denigrated and demeaned, and the American middle class was “hollowed out,” along with the country’s industrial base.

Employing a term from political economy, the document asserts that “America’s overstretch,” among other things, meant that “peripheral interests assumed centre stage.” 

In this schema, interests morphed into an “irrelevant” mishmash. It was (and is) under the leadership of Donald Trump that a “course correction” is sought and made real.

While disavowing any labels (realism, hyper-realism, and so on) and ideological proclivities, the US NSS 2025 privileges sovereignty and its accoutrements, including “survival, security of the United States, and strong borders”, and meshes these with the natural rights of Americans (a throwback to the Grotian tradition and that of Thomas Paine?).

The document recognizes hard power as the bedrock of making sovereignty real and of making the economy central to it. 

Contra perceptions and motivated commentary, the US NSS 2025 recognizes the importance of United States “soft power.” It historicizes America, calling for American “spiritual and cultural rejuvenation” and an unabashed “celebration of the country’s glories and its heroes.”

Recognizing that America operates in a world of nation-states, the document roots for the “primacy of nation-states” and their national interests. It defines America’s core interests as a “stable, well-governed Western Hemisphere that undercuts mass migration to the United States.” (This the document labels as “the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.”) 

The NSS 2025 then suggests “reversing and halting the damage done by foreign actors to the US economy.” It seeks to reassure European allies by stating that “the US will support the freedom and security of Europe and preserve the freedom of Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”

Regarding the Middle East, the document states that the US will prevent “an adversarial power from dominating the region – its oil supplies, chokepoints, and so on.” The document roots for developing and maintaining “US standards in AI, biotech, and quantum computing.” 

The US NSS 2025 then lists the means that America has at its command to bring its national interests to fruition.

These include a political system that can adjust and correct itself when needed, a highly innovative and wealth-creating economy that gives the United States leverage over countries seeking access to it, large and liquid capital markets, a cutting-edge technology sector, strong and effective military power, a network of alliances across key strategic regions, a vast landmass protected by oceans, and deep reserves of soft power and social trust that live in and are carried by the American people.

The document merges the foreign with the domestic agenda of the Trump administration. It seeks to restore agency to the people of America by “reinstilling a culture of competence, rooting out DEI and other institutional maladies that hold the country back,” unleashing energy production, and re-shoring production in order to “re-industrialize America.” 

This, in the document’s schema, will “support the American middle class and allow for control over supply chains.” It also roots for “tax cuts, deregulation,” making the country “a more business-friendly place for capital investment.” 

The document further calls for investments in “emerging technologies, science, and crafting competitive advantage for the country.” 

This is overlaid by maintaining a hard power lead “for future generations.”

In terms of a grand strategy, the US NSS 2025 re-emphasizes the “pragmatic focus” of the national interest and a foreign policy defined by meaningful “scope.” It does not call for an absolute American retreat from the world. 

Recognizing the “spillover effect” of regional conflicts with nuclear under- and overtones, the document calls for “stopping these conflicts.” 

The reference is made metaphorically as “a world on fire where wars come to American shores is bad for American interests.”

The US NSS 2025 makes a reference to “peace through strength,” a re-emphasis on the sovereignty of the nation-state. 

By its very nature, the corollary of this is “non-intervention in the affairs of nation-states,” thereby respecting the “heterogeneity of the international system” and washing its hands of “social engineering.” 

The document then roots for the “balance of power” among nations in a way that “no other nation threatens the United States’ national interests.” 

From a domestic standpoint, the US NSS 2025 places the American worker on a pedestal and enjoins “fairness in interstate relations and world politics.”

In regional terms, the document calls for attention to America’s regional Western Hemisphere. The terms it employs for a robust engagement with the region are “enlist” and “expand.” 

With respect to Asia, the call is for “leading from a position of strength.” Supporting and partnering with regional hegemons in the Western Hemisphere appears to be a strategy of choice. 

The document suggests “rebalancing America’s relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness,” insofar as the trading relationship is concerned. 

Regarding military and security matters, the document calls for “robust deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and the South China Sea” and enjoins “burden sharing from Japan and South Korea.”

The document refers to America as the first partner of choice because of its openness, transparency, trustworthiness, commitment to freedom and innovation, and free-market capitalism. 

By calibrating these, America will deepen its engagement with the world. 

With respect to the Middle East, the US NSS 2025 states that “the region has in the past assumed priority over other regions, primarily because of the region being an important supplier of energy, a Cold War arena for superpowers, and deep conflict with spillover consequences.” 

But “given that two of the dynamics, energy and the morphing of superpower conflict into great power jockeying, have dissipated, America’s historic reason for focusing on the region will recede.” 

The document then expresses a hope that the Middle East will “increasingly become a source and destination for international investment, in industries beyond oil and gas, including nuclear energy, AI, and defense technologies.”

It is with respect to Europe that critics like Thomas Friedman of The New York Times have inferred that the Trump administration is seeking a “civilizational conflict.” 

But a mere perusal of the NSS 2025 suggests that this is not the case. 

The document seeks proportion and balance with Europe by: one, undercutting the “democratic deficit”; two, addressing the labyrinthine European Union; and three, undercutting the “widening and deepening of NATO.” 

All this adds up to a Union where the national will of its constituent states is respected, and sovereignty is not subsumed into a large, unaccountable behemoth. 

References to the “welfare systems’ morass, migration, and so on”, even though inflated in the popular European imagination, are, to some extent, real. 

The document seeks to “stabilize Europe’s relationship with Russia, burden sharing, and defense spending,” among other things.

It is in terms of Africa that the document disavows liberal pretensions in very strong terms. It states, “For far too long, American policy in Africa has focused on providing and, later on, spreading liberal ideology.” 

The NSS 2025 suggests weaning Africa from aid dependence, managing conflicts, and “transitioning to a trade- and investment-focused relationship … to develop a growth paradigm capable of harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential.”

The US NSS 2025 is a neat, crisp, and robust framework document that offers pointers into the Trump Administration’s national security strategy. It cannot be dismissed as a rhetorical, brusque, or off-hand document. 

It is obvious that countries, national leaders, and security apparatuses of states across the world would have pored over it, rightly so. The document provides insight into the conceptual, strategic, and tactical thinking of the Trump administration.

Essentially, to cut to the marrow, the US NSS 2025 calls for and roots for American renewal, the restoration of sovereignty and agency to the American people, and the disavowal of the cardinal tenets of extreme liberalism-informed globalism. 

This constitutes a challenge that essentially means a “roll back” to an era dominated by the nation-state, sovereignty, and its contents.

While it is not a compendium that roots for autarky or even the absolute withdrawal of America from the world, it clearly states an America First doctrine. 

The document abhors intervention in other states, in the name of spreading democracy and freedom, and thereby social engineering. 

Both, in the recent past, dissipated collective American energy, creating in the process a whole host of allied problems and issues for the country and its people (forever wars, for instance).

The US NSS 2025 neither seeks war nor conflict with other states. What it seeks is rebalancing in an idiom of fairness and genuine reciprocity. 

Even though the document identifies China as a kind of peer competitor, it does not seek a large-scale militarized conflict with the country. 

The tools for this rebalancing are tariffs and other features of American power.

All in all, the document is an indicator of what America will do over, at least, the next three years. 

The country is in a restorative, adjustment mode, using its vast fund of power for its own vigor and greatness. 

The only major omission in the document is the definition of America and Americanness. 

But while this may amount to a mere quibble, the larger import of the NSS 2025 must not be lost on other nation-states of the world. 

The document must be read in the correct light. The follow-up must take the form of adjustments that comport with both the retreat of American power, the redefinition of its national interests, and the employment of the “new” American posture and paradigm. 

The time for this is now!