A Change in Course: President Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy Document

If President Trump’s 2025 national security strategy document means anything, and I hope it does, the Union of Atomic Scientists can move back the hand on the doomsday clock a couple of hours. If President Trump’s strategy can survive the opposition of interest groups and the ideological left of the Democratic Party, and is continued by his successors in office, President Trump has indeed changed the course of America and the world.

The document endorses many of the points that I have made for decades. I will get to some of these points in a moment, but first of the greatest importance is the document’s abandonment of the Wolfowitz doctrine of American hegemony. In place of this war prone doctrine, Trump’s strategy is to approach the world on the basis of economic competitiveness. Of primary importance is the document’s call for reestablishing strategic stability between Russia and the United States and Europe. The absence of strategic stability between the West and Russia is a path to nuclear war. Thus, Trump’s approach to national security addresses the most fundamental issue of our time.

The document says that American elites placed misguided and destructive bets on globalism and the so-called “free trade” which hollowed out the middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military power depends and admits that it was the policy of offshoring American manufacturing jobs that built the Chinese economy. The document criticizes American policy elites for tying American policy to a network of international institutions, many of which are driven by anti-Americanism and by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty into a Tower of Babel. To ensure our success, America must be unapologetic about the country’s past and present. Our self-confidence, which has been damaged by intellectual elites, has to be regained. We must turn our back on the liberals’ efforts to destroy our self-belief by preaching guilt and our national cohesiveness with open borders. The document recognizes the importance of spiritual and cultural health, and of people who are proud of their achievements and heroes. The effort of the liberal-left to create a culture of self criticism and guilt, should it succeed, will result in national failure. The document rejects the liberal left policy of DEI. Without a merit-based system, the United States cannot compete in the world and will be bypassed by others.

The document expresses concern about Europe’s self-confidence and Western identity, the weakness of which together with low birth rates and massive immigration threaten Europe with civilizational erasure. Should present trends continue Europe will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.

The document is not perfect. It avoids assigning any responsibility for the conflict in Ukraine to Washington. And it does not connect the offshoring of American manufacturing to the US trade deficit. Nevertheless, it is a far better strategy than anything I expected to see coming out of Washington. If trump’s national security policy influences his approach to the negotiations with Putin, we should soon have a reasonable solution.

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