Will the Trump White House National Security Strategy impact Asia?

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Will the Trump White House National Security Strategy impact Asia?

Published: 12 Dec. 2025, 00:03

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Michael Green

The author is the CEO of the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Last weekend, the Trump White House released the first National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States for its second term. Based on the NSS, the Pentagon is expected to soon release its own National Defense Strategy (NDS). Both documents will be scrutinized by friends and foes of America.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks next to President Donald Trump during a dinner with the leaders of the C5 1 Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Nov. 6. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

The National Security Strategy of the first Trump administration was surprisingly prescient and enduring. Drafted under the leadership of then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and penned by foreign policy expert Nadia Shadlow, the 2018 strategy had flavors of Trump’s “America First” unilateralism but was noteworthy for declaring that the intergenerational challenge for the United States would be strategic competition with China and Russia. No previous White House National Security Strategy since the end of the Cold War had been so blunt. And the Biden administration accepted that premise of strategic competition as its own starting point.

Does the 2025 NSS set a similarly enduring framework? The short answer is no. Like the second Trump administration’s policy process itself, the new NSS is full of contradictions and has ideological and transactional qualities that will not survive contact with reality.

The front cover of the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS), released on the White House website on Dec. 4. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

As many anticipated, the main emphasis of the NSS is Trump’s promise to dominate Latin America in a corollary to the 1824 Monroe Doctrine. To be fair, George W. Bush also put an emphasis on the Western Hemisphere before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks shifted his focus, and protecting the Homeland is usually at the core of any national security strategy. But this NSS reads more like an effort to justify the administration’s hyper-militarization of immigration and drug control policies than a plan to protect the region from external hegemonic actors. Current policies are alienating key partners and opening opportunities for Russia and China — the exact opposite of the supposed Trump Monroe Doctrine.

The NSS section on Europe is equally political and divorced from the reality of geopolitics. The populist right wing of the Republican Party has long been skeptical of Europe, advancing isolationist views before American entry into the Second World War and then opposing the establishment of NATO after the war. In earlier periods, the right loathed Europe for its monarchical class snobbery, and now it loathes Europe because of social progressivism and open borders. Populist movements in the American heartland have also often feared that East Coast elites might conspire with Europeans to entrap them in wars to save Britain in 1940 or Ukraine today.

Congressional and public support for NATO is still robust, but anti-Europe ideologues now control key parts of the U.S. government, including the vice presidency, and their views are reflected in the NSS. Particularly shocking is the NSS promise to work with opposition groups within countries like Germany to prevent “civilizational erasure” — a concept that will warm the hearts of Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Vladimir Putin, particularly since Russia is never mentioned as a threat to peace and democracy. Yet the NSS does not call for a U.S. withdrawal from NATO and still emphasizes U.S. support for freedom and security in Europe. This NSS will shake but not break the trans-Atlantic alliance.

The section on Asia may be the most normal part of the NSS. The tone on China is muted compared to the earlier Trump and Biden strategies — reportedly because Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent toned down the language in pursuit of a trade deal with China ahead of Trump’s April summit with Xi Jinping. That softer tone reflects how transactional and nonstrategic the NSS is this time. Still, there are multiple references to the dangers of war in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, and the document emphasizes that the administration’s intent is to prevent such a war. That suits Trump’s quest for the Nobel Peace Prize, Bessent’s efforts to avoid offending China to secure a trade deal and those in the Pentagon and Congress who want to shore up deterrence.

When the NDS comes out, one can expect that the mission of deterring China will not change, which would reassure allies. The NSS underscores the importance of Taiwan’s security, praises India and emphasizes the importance of allies in Asia — while calling for more defense efforts. This contrasts with the document’s harsher treatment of allies in Europe.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives to join Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol to brief lawmakers on the military strike on a suspected drug smuggling boat and its crew in the Caribbean near Venezuela Sept. 2, at the Capitol in Washington on Dec. 9. [AP/YONHAP]

Korea appears multiple times in references to Asian allies, but the Korean Peninsula and the North Korean nuclear threat are missing. This could mean that Trump has lost interest in diplomacy with Kim Jong-un. Hopefully, it does not mean the administration is losing interest in the security of the Korean Peninsula. The NDS will also tell us how much the pivot to Asia will be siphoned off for operations in the Caribbean. But even if the new Trump Monroe Doctrine consumes resources, it is not likely to be a long-term trend.

Overall, this NSS has many points of continuity for American strategy toward Asia and some useful safety nets for Europe, even if the rhetoric about the trans-Atlantic relationship is shocking. Reading it, I could see where the internationalists around Marco Rubio preserved the focus on alliances, balance of power and geopolitical competition. And it is obvious where Vice President JD Vance or Stephen Miller inserted a more extreme tone on Europe and Latin America. In the end, it is unlikely historians will see this NSS as anything more than a fleeting expression of how Donald Trump felt about the world in December 2025. It is more Rorschach test than grand strategy.