New U.S. National Security Strategy Prioritizes Western Hemisphere
December 5, 2025 11:45 am (EST)
The Trump administration pledged to deprioritize Europe and focus more on the Western Hemisphere in a new National Security Strategy released last night. The document had not been updated since 2022, when the Biden administration listed competition with China and Russia as top priorities. Trump’s strategy focuses on trade imbalances, halting mass migration, and energy dominance. It broadly encourages partner countries around the world to take more responsibility for security in their respective regions.
On Europe, the document calls for quickly ending hostilities in Ukraine, reestablishing “strategic stability” with Russia, and “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.” It criticizes European officials for “unrealistic expectations” regarding the war in Ukraine, claiming that the “subversion of democratic processes” in Europe is blocking a broad public desire for peace. The document is a shift from Trump’s first-term national security strategy in 2017, which pledged to work with Europe to “counter Russian subversion and aggression.”
Trump’s new strategy devotes the bulk of its attention to the Western Hemisphere, where it aims to reduce migration, fight crime, and preserve access to critical supply chains. It reasserts the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine rejecting external influence in the region. It also calls for a broad shift of military attention toward the hemisphere and away from other theaters—including the Middle East, which the strategy says has decreased in relevance due to greater U.S. energy independence. The strategy gives little attention to Africa, mainly identifying it as a source of natural resources.
While the strategy commits to keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, it also calls on Pacific allies such as Japan and South Korea to play a larger role in making that happen. It notes that “deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority” and reiterates the current U.S. policy of rejecting “any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.”
More broadly, the strategy elevates U.S. economic interests of reindustrialization, access to critical supply chains, and fortifying the defense-industrial base. It criticizes attempts to impose on other countries “democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories,” a break from the Biden strategy’s affirmation of support for democracy in the face of rising global autocracy. Trump’s new strategy also rejects efforts to address climate change, calling it a threatening ideology.
“It is unclear how the ‘predisposition to non-interventionism’ squares with the reasserted Monroe Doctrine or present focus on regime change in Venezuela. But no written document can guide, capture, or discipline President Trump’s foreign policy—it is too impulsive, erratic, and opportunistic. Further, the unceremonious rollout—a late-night release seemingly without an accompanying speech by the president or national security advisor—suggests the White House may see the National Security Strategy mostly as a box-checking exercise, rather than a binding statement of strategic intent.”
—Senior Fellow Rebecca Lissner tells the Daily News Brief
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Trump lays bare his contempt for Europe in blistering new national security plan (CNN)