Trump's America signals radical foreign policy shift with warning for NATO
This is the key line in the 2025 US National Security Strategy – a watershed document that upends decades of American foreign policy and condemns past approaches to Europe, China and the western hemisphere as misguided.
It signals a new future for America in which Washington will approach the world differently based on a set of new inward-looking priorities focused on the “continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic”.
At a moment of heightened strategic uncertainty and global peril, Washington is decisively shifting its primary focus to its own neighbourhood while questioning the value of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
If Australia needed another wake-up call on defence spending, the security strategy makes explicit Washington’s conviction that allies must do more in burden-sharing to preserve global stability.
“In our dealings with Taiwan and Australia we maintain our determined rhetoric on increased defence spending,” it says.
The good news for Canberra is the strategy’s commitment to preventing large-scale conflict in the Indo-Pacific – a sign there will be an enduring rationale for AUKUS in the Trumpian world view. Yet, the worrying news is Washington’s critique of Europe – a development that will heighten uncertainty among US partners about the changing character of American leadership and reliability.
By expressing open ambivalence and caution towards Europe and NATO – coupled with relative silence on the Russian threat – the strategy reads as a considered attack on the foundations of the post-World War II trans-Atlantic partnership. “It is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. 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,” the strategy warns.
Washington is openly declaring one of its principal concerns to be the “stark prospect of civilisational erasure” in Europe while questioning the ongoing legitimacy of the EU project itself.
The 2025 strategy sounds the alarm on the “activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty”, while questioning “migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife”.
It reserves the ability of the US to intervene in European politics, declaring “our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory”.
While The Hague Commitment, in which NATO members agreed to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, is touted as a new global standard, it is also presented as an American liberation from the security treaty.
Deep cracks are emerging in one of the most successful alliances in history, which has preserved peace in Europe for more than seven decades – an outcome likely to lead to heightened instability rather than improving future security.
Crucially, ending the Ukraine war and ensuring its survival as a viable state are identified as key objectives. But the motivations for these include re-establishing “strategic stability with Russia” – the terms of which are not spelled out.
The elevation of US dominance over the western hemisphere as the pre-eminent foreign policy goal represents another major departure. The strategy describes this objective as “a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” – a correction taking place after “years of neglect … to restore American pre-eminence in the West”.
A major endeavour, this shift will lead to the US enlisting neighbours to “stop illegal and destabilising migration, neutralise cartels, nearshore manufacturing and develop local private economies”. It will also involve a “readjustment of our global military presence”.
Amid intensifying global competition, the Trump administration is fortifying its dominance closer to home while signalling its intention to play a reduced role in fighting global tyranny. This will be seen as a new model of how the US projects power – doing so more brazenly and openly, but more often in its own backyard. Under this approach, the contentious attacks on suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean appear likely to become the new norm.
The most reassuring elements of the strategy relate to the Indo-Pacific, with the document outlining the need for military deterrence to ensure stability while upholding the importance of maintaining the status quo in Taiwan.
America will “build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain”. But the strategy makes clear that Washington “should not have to do this alone. Our allies must step up and spend – and more importantly do – much more for collective defence”.
The goal is to “win the economic future” while preventing military confrontation. In addition to lifting defence spending, this will see Washington pushing Australia harder to “counteract predatory economic practices” from China.
Rebalancing economic ties with Beijing is seen as a joint effort that can only take place if it is accompanied by an “ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific”.
This position should provide great assurance to Australia by setting a key principle – improved economic ties with Beijing must not come at the cost of concessions being made on vital matters of national security.
Holding to this ideal will become one of the critical tests for Donald Trump in his second term as President, especially as he embarks on a new phase of high dialogue with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
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“The days of the US propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.”