Late last night, the Trump administration released the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America. It did so quietly, although as foreign affairs journalist at Politico Nahal Toosi noted, the release of the NSS is usually accompanied by fanfare, as it shows an administration’s foreign policy priorities and the way it envisions the position of the U.S. in the world.
The Trump administration’s NSS announces a dramatic reworking of the foreign policy the U.S. has embraced since World War II.
After a brief introduction touting what it claims are the administration’s great successes, the document begins by announcing the U.S. will back away from the global engagements that underpin the rules-based international order that the World War II Allies put in place after that war to prevent another world war.
The authors of the document claim that the system of institutions like the United Nations, alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and free trade between nations that established a series of rules for foreign engagement and a web of shared interests around the globe has been bad for the U.S. because it undermined “the character of our nation.”
Their vision of “our country’s inherent greatness and decency,” requires “the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health,” “an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age,” and “growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.”
Observers referred to the document as National Security Council Report (NSC) 88 and noted that it could have been written in just 14 words. White supremacists use 88 to refer to Adolf Hitler and “fourteen words” to refer to a popular white supremacist slogan.
To achieve their white supremacist country, the document’s authors insist they will not permit “transnational and international organizations [or] foreign powers or entities” to undermine U.S. sovereignty.
To that end, they reject immigration as well as “the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threatened the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.”
~ https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-5-2025
That’s fine. What’s done is done. Russia, on the other hand, seeks an alliance. Perhaps we should ally with those who want to be allies and let those who don’t want to be allies go their own way.
Even trying to end hostilities in Ukraine, while noble, should primarily be aimed at our interests and those of our prospective allies, not our erstwhile allies who no longer wish to be.
yawpitch•2mo ago