The strategy calls for the US military to prevent the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere
News Desk - The Cradle
“To ensure that America remains the world's strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come, our country needs a coherent, focused strategy for how we interact with the world,” the strategy document begins by saying.
Each US president releases such a national security strategy once every term to outline the administration's foreign policy priorities, as well as to guide how the Department of War's massive budget should be allocated.
“The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity – a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region,” the document states.
In recent months, the US has built up its forces in the Caribbean Sea, apparently in preparation for invading oil-rich Venezuela. The US military has carried out over 20 strikes on boats allegedly transporting drugs, killing at least 83 people.
The document seeks to update the 1823 Monroe Doctrine that dictates that the US will not tolerate the world's major powers intervening in Latin America, which Washington views as its “backyard.”
“The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence – from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.”
China has sought to increase its investment in Latin America in recent years, including building ports and other infrastructure.
“In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” the document affirmed.
The document focuses less on West Asia, Russia, and fighting terrorism, which were given great attention in previous national security strategy documents.
Instead, Trump's strategy calls for prioritizing the protection of the US homeland over dominating the entire globe.
“After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests,” the document states.
The strategy calls explicitly for “a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis.”
It also stipulates that the US should work with Latin American governments to identify strategic resources – an apparent reference to materials such as rare-earth minerals – and to promote “strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region.”
In addition, the strategy calls for focusing on prioritizing the interests of the US over those of its allies.
Previous US leaders “allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people, and sometimes to suck us into conflicts and controversies central to their interests but peripheral or irrelevant to our own.”
The document is likely not referring to Israel in this paragraph. However, it is noteworthy that the US has provided Israel $20 billion in military aid to destroy Gaza since October 2023, while also coming to Tel Aviv's aid to bomb Iran in June.
Trump's new strategy promises to “rebalance America's economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence.”
Since coming to office, Trump has sought to impose high tariffs on Chinese imports. Beijing has responded by restricting its export of rare minerals needed for the tech industry in the US.
The strategy indicates the US will continue to support Taiwan's independence.
“We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” it states.
Beijing says the island nation belongs to China.
Trump's strategy also calls for working with Russia to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. “It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine,” and to prevent a direct conflict between Europe and Russia.
It criticizes European leaders who want the war to continue.
“The Trump administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the [Ukraine] war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition,” the strategy dictates.
Though Trump campaigned on ending the Ukraine war, he has failed to end US arms shipments to Ukraine that fuel the war. While slowing US support for Ukraine, Trump has encouraged his NATO partners to take over the US role by purchasing US weapons to send to Kiev.
The strategy also discusses the possible effects of mass migration from Africa, West Asia, and South Asia into Europe, saying that Europeans could become minorities in their countries moving forward.
“Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” it states. “As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”
“Not only can we not afford to write Europe off – doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve,” it says.
“Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” the strategy adds.
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