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Pull up your chair. Top off your coffee. Last week, the White House released President Donald J. Trump’s new National Security Strategy, and it is the chattiest foreign policy document you’ve ever seen.
Trump’s strategy cleans house. Out with mass migration, Europe and globalization. In with flexible realism, drug boat strikes and Golden Dome–style missile defense.
Of course, the foreign policy establishment immediately freaked out over the venting about Europe. They should have seen it coming. “Europe is in serious trouble. They have been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody has ever seen before,” Trump warned in his U.N. speech on Sept. 23.
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This is a strategy driven by economic priorities. “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” the strategy vows. “We want the world’s strongest, most dynamic, most innovative and most advanced economy,” it says.
For all its indiscreet and gossipy moments, it’s a spot-on policy diagnosis that points the way to a bright future. America is not retreating. Far from it. This is a strategy full of hope for peace and prosperity — and it makes way for nations like Poland, Finland, Japan, South Korea, Australia and others to step up. Read it and you’ll learn how America went off track with globalism and illegal immigration — and why AI, the status of the dollar and tech investments are leading American policy.
Here are the four major moments — and one serious miss.
1. Trump’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
If you’ve been tracking the drug boat strikes, you know Trump decided to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” That includes lethal force to defeat cartels and adjusting global military presence to put more U.S. forces in the Western Hemisphere — such as the F/A-18s from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford flying over the Gulf of Venezuela. The goal is for America to be the partner of choice.
It’s high time. China is all over Central and South America, and its influence in the Western Hemisphere needs to be eradicated.
2. Watch Out, Europe
The White House says Europe is on the verge of “civilizational erasure.” What a wake-up call. According to the strategy, Europe’s share of world GDP has declined from 25% to 14%. Also, the European Union has grown into a regulatory machine prone to spitting on U.S. business interests. It doesn’t make headlines, but it’s a major issue for Trump’s team. They believe migration, stagnation, free speech controls and, frankly, anti-American EU regulations on tech companies in key areas like space policy will make Europe “unrecognizable in 20 years.”
Will we still be allies? The strategy says it is “far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.”
So with that cathartic statement, the thunderstorm broke. Just as well. Maybe it is time for new security leadership from states serious about containing Russia: more Warsaw and Helsinki, less Paris and Berlin. On NATO and military matters, Europe is still family. Just look at all those F-35s chasing Russian drones.
3. Not All About the Middle East
The strategy wants to prevent any adversarial power — including China — from dominating the Middle East’s resources and chokepoints. But “the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over,” the strategy says.
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Got to agree with that. Credit is due to American B-2 bombers knocking back Iran’s nuclear sites.
4. America Stays on Top
The good news is “we should be headed from our present $30 trillion economy in 2025 to $40 trillion in the 2030s,” the strategy says. That is, if we keep our AI tech stack and energy dominance ahead of China — and “halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy.” So there’s the basis for Trump’s green light of third-rate NVIDIA AI chip sales to China. Global market share matters.
Space policy is the major miss
I’m disappointed. You’d never know that China is racing to control the Moon, box in satellites in low-Earth orbit and wield on-orbit attack options.
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Trump’s team has yet to lay out a vision for space — surprising, since he created the U.S. Space Force in his first term.
Trump owes Americans a plan for protecting space, which is vital to the U.S. economy and prosperity. National security depends on it.
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