Analysis
The ever-changing views of US President Donald Trump have shaken global affairs almost daily in 2025. (Reuters: Al Drago)
The ever-changing views of US President Donald Trump have shaken global affairs almost daily in 2025.
So you might think that a document which seeks to codify a doctrine that underlies his administration's foreign policy would have gained a lot of attention.
But when the White House quietly released its national security strategy late one night last week, it seemed to get lost in other news. Except, perhaps, in Europe.
The strategy's assertion that Europe faces "civilisational erasure" because of migration, and that the EU was "undermining political liberty and sovereignty" did not go down well there.
Nor did the assertion that it was in the United States' interest to "cultivate resistance" in the bloc to "correct its current trajectory".'
European Council President António Costa said that Europe could not accept Donald Trump's "threat to interfere in European politics".
Europe not happy
European Council President António Costa said that Europe could not accept "the threat to interfere in European politics".
Trump later doubled down in an interview with the Politico Europe website describing European leaders as "weak" and leading a "decaying" group of nations neither controlling migration nor ending the war in Ukraine.
The US strategy for Europe — and everywhere else — redefines an American view of the world which is unlikely to be reversed, whatever the future holds for Donald Trump and his particular MAGA brand of Republicanism.
The strategy rejects the ideas of "common values" that have ostensibly driven US foreign policy and alliances in the past, as a "laundry lists of wishes or desired end states" which have "not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes; and have often misjudged what we should want".
You would have to say there is some truth in this — and also glaring gaps in the United States' adherence to those common values over time.
But those vague platitudes have been replaced by a whole set of new ones such as "pragmatic without being 'pragmatist', realistic without being 'realist', principled without being 'idealistic'."
It rails against what it says have been hugely misguided and "destructive bets on globalism" and "so-called 'free trade''" — ideas very much driven by, and in the interests of, the US in the 20th century.
It says the US wants to maintain its "unrivalled 'soft power' " — an assertion that overlooks the damage that has been done to that soft power by savage cuts to foreign aid in the past year.
Mass migration seen as a bigger threat than Russia
Other underpinnings of the document are deeply troubling — such as the echoes of the "great replacement theory" — a conspiracy theory that claims white populations in Western countries are being deliberately replaced by non-white immigrants, with the complicity of "elite" groups.
Mass migration is seen as a bigger threat than Russia in this document.
The only consistency is around the idea of "America First", which turns out to be a policy defined by inconsistency.
Mass migration is seen as a bigger threat than Russia in this document.
For example, it asserts that "permanent American domination of the entire world" is not in the interests of the country.
"The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over," it says.
But this sits uncomfortably with its blunt statements about how the Trump administration wants to see the rest of the world operate in future: a world where the US still maintains military and economic pre-eminence.
"The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests," it says.
"As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others."
But "this does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world's great and middle powers".
In other words, other great powers should be able to what they want, within their spheres of influence, as long as that doesn't upset the US's implicit right to ultimately dominate.
'God-given natural rights'
There are several references to the "God-given natural rights" of America's citizens and the presumption that America has a God-given right to rule the world is redolent throughout a document which doesn't seem to entirely grasp that the power balances in the world have indeed changed.
The US seems to think that we still operate in a post-Cold War unipolar world, when the rise of China and other major economies would challenge that presumption.
"The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world," it says.
The strategy speaks of supporting allies "in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe's civilisational self-confidence and Western identity", even as it speaks of effective disengagement from Europe.
It speaks patronisingly of how, "as a result of Russia's war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat".
"Managing European relations with Russia will require significant US diplomatic engagement, both to re-establish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states."
In other words, the US would have a neutral view of conflict between Russia and European states, just that it would be better if it didn't happen.
The explicit threats that the first Trump administration's national security strategy saw from Russia and China have disappeared.
It says the need for a major American strategic investment in the Middle East — which it defines as driven by demands for oil and gas- are no longer there.
New Trump strategy uses statecraft to advance economic agenda, says global strategist (Kirsten Aiken)
Controlling the Western Hemisphere
At the heart of the strategy though is a focus on controlling the Western Hemisphere — the broader Americas — that it says is there to serve US purposes:
"The United States must be pre-eminent 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."
"We want a hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations," it says.
Unfortunately, the policy seems most confused and ambiguous when it comes to our own region.
In the Asia-Pacific "we want to halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy while keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials".
It says US policy in the Asia Pacific has been framed by "more than three decades of mistaken American assumptions about China".
The long-term imbalance in the US-China trade relationship — which developed when it was a (mistaken) relationship between the richest country in the world and one of the poorest — has to be addressed, amid a "robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific".
It is at this point the confusion and contradictions with what the Trump administration has actually been doing become clearer.
It says the US must "work with our treaty allies and partners… and use our combined economic power to help safeguard our prime position in the world economy" yet overlooks the impact its own actions on tariffs are having on some of its allies, including India, Japan and South-East Asia, or its declining capacity to project military power in the region when China is building three times as many ships as the US.
US interest in the future of Taiwan is no longer one of supporting democracy but is based on "Taiwan's dominance of semiconductor production, but mostly because Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theatres".
"Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the US economy. Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority."
There are the obvious pragmatic issues that flow from a world view so heavily based in self-interest and economic interest.
But for a country like Australia that has obsequiously paid homage to, and relied upon, the flowery rhetoric of "vague platitudes" in its relationship with the US, this strategy document requires a much more fundamental rethink than simply quietly distancing itself from the wilder rhetorical flashes of the US president.
How we progress down that path in 2026 will be one of the defining stories of the year ahead.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.
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