A few days ago the US published a new official National Security Strategy.
It is definitely worth reading in full - 33 pages of easy to read, but powerful text that will dramatically change the world.
This document provides the full intellectual basis for the current and future actions of USA under the Trump Administration and beyond.
It is a huge break from the past and indeed the first fully coherent national security strategy the US has had since the end of the Cold War.
A Guide to Understanding US Actions in the World
Read this document if you want to understand:
- what the US is doing in Venezuela;
- Elon Musk's fight with the EU over censorship;
- what Trump's tariffs & trade policies are about;
- US policy with regard to Russia or China; or
- what the US expects of its allies.
Many people think that President Trump is stupid and his policies are incoherent. The mainstream press portrays America's actions as almost random and never examines underlying strategy.
If you read this document you will understand that this is not the case.
I have never thought this was the case and have published a number of posts this year explaining what Trump is doing.
Feb 2025: @apshamilton/us-vp-vance-facially-rebukes-european-leaders-demands-free-speech-and-free-elections
March 2025: @apshamilton/what-is-trump-doing-with-tariffs
May 2025: @apshamilton/what-trump-is-doing-in-the-middle-east
Aug 2025: @apshamilton/meanwhile-back-in-the-real-world-
If you read them you'll see I was very much in alignment with what is now the clearly published strategy of the United States under the Trump Administration.
Trump and his team have a clear, clever and coherent strategy.
But it is a major break with the way the US has behaved since the end of the Cold War and it is going to shock many people.
It is a blank canvas reassessment of the world, US core interests and capabilities.
It recognises America's strengths, but also its limitations and weaknesses. It acknowledges past mistakes.
In many ways it is a return to US strategy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially with the renewed primacy of the Monroe Doctrine. But it is not isolationism, far from it. It is about reinvigorating & refocussing alliances, not abandoning them.
This document proves that while Trump sometimes implements policy via non-transparent means, via posturing and seemingly extreme statements, there are clear guiding principles - they have now been clearly enunciated.
While the document is aspirational and may not be successful in all respects, it clarifies the new path the US is taking and will have major global impacts.
History will view the Trump Doctrines embodied in this new National Security Strategy as a major turning point in world affairs.
Key Takeways
While I'm not going to deal with all aspects of the Strategy, I want to highlight a number of key takeaways.
1) Woke Globalism as a National Security Threat
The Strategy also represents the culmination of a trend that I have been noticing for some time, especially since Vice President Vance's February 2025 Speech at The Munich Security Conference.
The US is no longer treating woke globalism, censorship, DEI, transgenderism & mass migration as merely domestic threats.
It is treating them as threats to national security.
This means the US is not just stamping them out internally, but will use the full range of its powers to stamp them out globally, particularly to the extent they weaken key allies.
Some commentators such as UK Maj Andrew Fox, have been highly critical, calling this:
a choice to export domestic grievance into allied democracies, to elevate factionalism into policy, to lean toward the parties and movements that promise rupture and punishment."
This is, of course, missing the point that these maladaptive ideologies have been extremely damaging to the security & welfare of both the citizens of the USA and its major Western allies. These ideologies have seriously damaged military preparedness, social cohesion, institutional trust & much more.
It is not a stretch to say these ideologies are far more dangerous than ANY foreign threat, including China & Russia.
Indeed pushing these damaging ideas in the West, while quite sensibly banning them at home has been clever strategy from countries like China, Russia, Iran & Qatar.
a) Intervention to save Europe
This broader strategic decision drives part of US policy on Europe.
The section of the Strategy on Europe represents a harsh, but fair, assessment of Europe's decline and a stated intention to intervene to try to save Europe from Woke Globalism and restore its greatness.
Diagnosis
The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the
European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and
sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating
strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering
birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence. [pg 25]
US Policy Medicine
Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European
nations [pg27].
What this means is that the US will covertly and overtly intervene in Europe to promote and support what the mainstream media wrongly call "far right" parties and political figures like Tommy Robinson, AfD, Gert Wilders, Marine Le Penn, PM Viktor Orban and others.
These people actually have the support of the vast majority of regular Europeans, but are vehemently opposed by the globalist undemocratic elites running Europe.
This is a political bombshell and is also a direct response to UK interference in US elections against Trump.
Elon Musk's calls for the dissolution of the EU (examined in this post by 
2) Israel, the Middle East & Expectations of Allies
The US strategic policy aim in the Middle East is simple:
We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East,
its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass while
avoiding the “forever wars” that bogged us down in that region at great cost [pg 5]
And Israel's massive victories over its and the US's enemies over the last 2 years have delivered this aim.
Conflict remains the Middle East’s most troublesome dynamic, but there is today
less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe. Iran—the region’s
chief destabilizing force—has been greatly weakened by Israeli actions since
October 7, 2023, and President Trump’s June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer,
which significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program. The Israeli-Palestinian
conflict remains thorny, but thanks to the ceasefire and release of hostages
President Trump negotiated, progress toward a more permanent peace has been
made. Hamas’s chief backers have been weakened or stepped away. [pg 28]
This US Strategy recognises that Israel's new regional hegemony essentially delivers the US strategic policy objective and allows the US to pivot away from the Middle East (while maintaining support for Israel & Arab allies).
It doesn't overtly say "Thanks Israel, you've solved our resource draining Middle East problems for us" but this is a clear message.
Moreover, the message to other allies is "Be more like Israel."
Burden-Sharing and Burden-Shifting – The days of the United States
propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over. We count among our
many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must
assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to
our collective defense. President Trump has set a new global standard with
the Hague Commitment, which pledges NATO countries to spend 5 percent
of GDP on defense and which our NATO allies have endorsed and must now
meet. Continuing President Trump’s approach of asking allies to assume
primary responsibility for their regions, the United States will organize a
burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter.
This approach ensures that burdens are shared and that all such efforts
benefit from broader legitimacy. The model will be targeted partnerships that
use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded
allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability. This strategic
clarity will allow the United States to counter hostile and subversive
influences efficiently while avoiding the overextension and diffuse focus
that undermined past efforts. The United States will stand ready to help—
potentially through more favorable treatment on commercial matters,
technology sharing, and defense procurement—those counties that willingly
take more responsibility for security in their neighborhoods and align their
export controls with ours. [pg 12]
3) Pivot to Western Hemisphere: The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
Perhaps the most major shift in US Strategy is the pivot to the Western Hemisphere (North, Central & South America) and The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This is the first region the Strategy deals with and the prioritisation is deliberate.
After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe
Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to
protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We
will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other
threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our
Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense
and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American
security interests.[pg 15]
If you study American history and visit the museums in Washington DC as I have you will understand how significant the Monroe Doctrine was and how it was the pre-cursor to the US achieving SuperPower Status. It also helps one understand that for most of it history the US saw European powers as competitors as much as partners.
For the past decades while the US tried to be everywhere and play global policeman, China, Russia, Iran & others made inroads into the USA's backyard and engaged in all sorts of activities inimical to US interests, not least flooding the USA with fentanyl.
Trump is now going to stamp this out and kick all hostile powers out of the Western Hemisphere.
First stop is Venezuela and I expect dramatic developments there soon.
Any country is stronger closer to home than far away (a lesson Europe has learnt painfully in Ukraine) and however powerful or not the US is in the Middle East, Europe or Asia, it is far more powerful in the Americas.
When America says clearly: "Get off our turf", people better listen. Indeed the US rarely had to enforce the original Monroe Doctrine because European Powers realised they were unable to challenge the US close to home.
I wrote back in August that "An Immense Geopolitical Re-Alignment is Underway" and this new US National Security Strategy reflects these new realities.
Now that clarity and coherence has returned to US Strategy it will be difficult for future US administrations, even Democrat, to change much from this path. The strategic confusion that allowed all sorts of crazy stuff to go on has been banished.
I predict that this new Strategy will guide the US for many decades to come.