President Trump’s New National Security Strategy

December 18, 2017

President Trump’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) deserves careful attention, particularly by America’s allies and strategic partners and by those who deal with everything the President says or issues in terms of knee jerk criticism. It is a document that President Trump reviewed and altered in some depth and that represents his views—rather than a bureaucratic compromise. At the same time, it both expands on the classic themes of U.S. strategy—rather than rejects them—and commits the U.S. to playing its traditional role in leading the free world.

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Trump sets out national security strategy of ‘principled realism’ and global competition

By Anne Gearan (The Washington post)

President Trump framed a new national security strategy Monday that cast his election as a pivot from failed economic policies and shortsighted negotiating strategies.

“You spoke loud and you spoke clear,” Trump said of his upset election last year. “On November 8, you voted to make America great again. You embraced new leadership and new strategies and also a glorious new hope,” he said.

The congressionally mandated National Security Strategy presents China and Russia as competitors that want to realign global power in their interests, potentially threatening the United States.

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National Security Plan Hints at Return to Cold War Footing

By David  E. Sanger and Mark Landler (The New York Times)

President Trump’s first national security strategy, which envisions rivalries with China and Russia, is at odds with his often-warm relations with the leaders of those two countries.

But Mr. Trump, in presenting a new national security strategy that carried distinct echoes of the Cold War, said nothing about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, even though the official strategy document itself warns briefly of “Russia using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies.”

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Trump labels China a strategic ‘competitor’

By Demetri Sevastopulo (Financial Times)

Donald Trump described China as a strategic “competitor” in his first national security strategy, as he accused the Chinese government of maintaining a “repressive vision” and pursuing economic aggression designed to weaken America.

While the national security strategy released on Monday outlined a range of threats, the report reserved most of its criticism for China and Russia, which are described as “revisionist” powers trying to “shape a world antithetical to US values and interests”.

“This strategy recognises that, whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of competition,” Mr Trump said after the release of the NSS. “We . . . face rival powers, Russia and China, that seek to challenge American influence, values and wealth.”

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