Experts React: Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy

Introduction: Non-interference, non-intervention, and the rights of sovereign nations

The NSS also reaffirmed the centrality of the “nation-state” as “the world’s fundamental political unit.” “It is natural and just,” the NSS explains, “that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty.”

On the surface, then, the Trump NSS embraces non-interference, non-intervention, and sovereign equality, the same precepts at the heart of the United Nations Charter. That these passages in the NSS strike many as radical, however, suggests just how much has changed in international relations. Foreign policy elites today tend to treat sovereignty as a responsibility more than a right. Many have advocated for foreign interventions — including the use of force — to punish governments that have failed to protect vulnerable populations living within their borders or otherwise fallen short of their obligations.

The steady erosion of the principle of non-interference hinged on the presumption that foreign actors meddling in other states’ domestic affairs were operating in good faith, whereas any state invoking sovereignty as a shield against such intrusions was necessarily the villain. Call it the “we meant well” loophole.

President Donald Trump’s behavior and rhetoric so far in his second term give ample reason to revisit the merits of non-interventionism and of respecting other states’ sovereign rights.

For one thing, the NSS declares that “rigid adherence to non-intervention is not possible,” while promising to “set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention.” But that bar might not be so high after all. The administration reserves the right to meddle throughout the Western Hemisphere (the so-called “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine), as Benjamin Gedan notes. Akriti Vasudeva Kalyankar warns of a similar spirit guiding the administration’s approach to allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, who are expected to follow Washington’s lead, but with few benefits offered in return. And Europeans also have reasons to be concerned.  Nevada Lee calls attention to the Trump administration’s plan for cultivating “resistance” and boosting the fortunes of “patriotic European parties,” language which Emma Ashford explains could be read “as veiled threats” of “regime change.”

The NSS decries how past strategies read like “laundry lists of wishes” and asserts that it, by contrast, aligns ends and means to protect “core national interests” and avoid overreach. In the end, however, the actual priorities are hard to discern. As Kelly Grieco points out, the NSS invokes terms like realism and restraint, but may be operationally indistinguishable from the primacy that came before.

NSS Western Hemisphere pivot’s ends may betray its means

It is such a priority that the president gets naming rights, baptizing the strategy as the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” — a reference to President James Monroe’s 1823 declaration that any European meddling in the Americas would be treated as “the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

The pivot to our southern neighbors is sensible. Mexico is the top U.S. trading partner. Latin America produces the most copper and holds the world’s largest lithium reserves. It is also the region whose problems most directly threaten U.S. interests, from migration and drug trafficking to the rising influence of U.S. adversaries — above all, China. 

The proposed approach rightly looks beyond chest-thumping and gunboat diplomacy. It promises an emphasis on “commercial diplomacy” and recognizes the opportunity to build “critical supply chains” throughout the hemisphere. That goal reflects bipartisan concerns about pandemic-era supply chain disruptions and price spikes, as well as overdependence on Chinese manufacturing. The document even nods to “nearshoring”, the relocating of distant overseas factories to nearby countries — a strategy eclipsed of late by Trump’s preference for reviving the U.S. industrial sector. It also suggests expanded engagement by the U.S. Development Finance Agency to encourage U.S. businesses to operate in the region. The promised infrastructure finance would help Washington more effectively compete with China, though it would hardly justify the monogamy the NSS demands of U.S neighbors. (The document observes ominously that the United States wants “other nations to see us as their partner of first choice” and will “discourage their collaboration with others.”)  

Regrettably, there are reasons to doubt the administration’s sustained commitment to supremacy in the Western Hemisphere, and not only because of the president’s improvisational, transactional approach to foreign policy. Serious regional economic integration requires opening U.S. markets to Latin American trade. That was once widely understood; the United States has free trade agreements with 20 countries worldwide, 11 of them in Latin America. Both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush favored establishing a free trade area stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Over the past year, however, the United States has been increasing tariffs on imports from the region, compounding the economic damage from cuts to U.S. foreign aid, even as the president’s deportation agenda threatens to dry up remittances that constitute at least one-fifth of gross domestic product in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. 

Worse still, the White House’s narrow, aggressive focus on migrants and drugs has frayed U.S. diplomatic relationships and damaged the U.S. image even as its NSS promises to “deepen our partnerships.” The president has threatened to invade Panama and fire missiles at Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. To protest the prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for a failed coup attempt, Trump imposed a 50% tariff on the region’s largest economy. In Mexico, 69% of the population now views the United States unfavorably, up from 33% a year ago, according to the Pew Research Center. Ironically, the NSS itself further tarnishes the U.S. image by reviving the Monroe Doctrine, a toxic brand that evokes a long history of U.S. military interventions and coup plots.

Finally, the strategy’s reliance on stepping up the U.S. military presence in Latin America is bad medicine for a region where sluggish growth and metastasizing organized crime demand greater U.S. investment and support for law enforcement institutions. “The choice all countries should face,” the White House insists, “is whether they want to live in an American-led world.” Troublingly, for many in Latin America, the answer is increasingly no.

NSS nods at restraint, but pursues primacy by other means

Yet even as it recognizes these failures, the NSS advances a strategy that, while rhetorically different, mirrors what it claims to replace. Where liberal hegemony pursued primacy through democracy promotion and multilateral institutions, this strategy pursues primacy through civilizational nationalism and economic coercion.

The strategy makes clear the scale of that ambition. It commits the United States to maintain the “world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military,” “the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent,” “the world’s strongest, most dynamic, most innovative, and most advanced economy,” “the world’s most robust industrial base,” all while remaining “the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country.” Yet the strategy simultaneously declares that “the days of the United States propping up the world order like Atlas are over.” This raises a question: does the NSS reject American primacy, or merely the liberal values that once guided it? The answer is the latter.

Rather than seeking liberal primacy, Trump’s NSS advances civilizational primacy. It warns of Europe’s “civilizational erasure” from migration and “cratering birthrates,” blaming the European Union (EU) and other transnational institutions for eroding liberty, undermining sovereignty, and stifling creativity and industriousness. By pledging to “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory,” the NSS signals support for political movements that would reshape allied politics and weaken the EU. Just as liberal primacy made governance a security concern, civilizational primacy makes demographics and cultural identity strategic priorities, drawing the United States into allies’ immigration, demographic, and social policies.

The NSS also imagines that aggressive economic coercion can sustain this vision. It treats China primarily as an economic threat, pledging to “rebalance America’s economic relationship with China” through tariffs, export controls, and supply chain restructuring. It demands that allies spend 5% of GDP on defense and conditions “favorable treatment on commercial matters” on alignment with U.S. export controls. The document makes assistance to states in the Western Hemisphere “contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence.” The strategy assumes that what failed under liberal primacy —transforming adversaries through economic engagement, building alliances on shared values, and sustaining U.S. influence through cooperation — can be achieved through some clever combination of carrots and sticks. This is implausible. Economic coercion breeds resentment, not willing cooperation, and the costs of primacy remain regardless of how it is advanced.

The 2025 NSS replaces one unsustainable vision of primacy with another. Civilizational nationalism will fail just as liberal internationalism failed — not simply because the values differ, but because comprehensive dominance exceeds American means. Until Washington accepts that U.S. security does not require global preeminence, U.S. strategy will keep repeating the same mistakes, producing overextension, resentment, and failure. The illusion remains.

China welcomes NSS’s reevaluation of Sino-American relations

For example, the NSS section on China does not reference ideology or political regime, which in Beijing’s view removes a fundamental conflict between the United States and China that complicates bilateral relations. And the declared “Predisposition to Non-Interventionism” anchors an isolationist tendency, which reduces China’s threat perception of U.S. intervention in regions where China’s interests are growing.

The NSS wording on the most important issue in US-China relations — Taiwan — is satisfactory for China. The NSS states that the United States “does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.” China had been advocating for explicit U.S. opposition to Taiwanese independence, but is willing to settle for this statement, which implies that the United States does not support Taiwan’s independence. While the position also indicates that the United States does not support China’s unilateral action to achieve unification either, China has developed diverse approaches under the threshold of direct conflict to advance its goal in this regard. In this sense, the NSS’s focus on deterrence may not fully capture the full scope of China’s activities or effectively counter the threats they pose. This is particularly true if the Trump administration’s prioritization of trade deals prevents the implementation of policies that may offend or anger Beijing. The core issue here is not necessarily whether the United States can deter China, but whether the Taiwanese people maintain their confidence in the will of the United States to intervene militarily in a Taiwan contingency. If they don’t, capitulation may become a real possibility.

NSS shift of focus away from Indo-Pacific could trouble allies

However, a closer look at the strategy suggests a radically different U.S. approach, which would exert significant pressure on allies and partners in the region to address critical threats and sometimes put them at odds with Washington.

Broadly, the strategy seeks to focus U.S. foreign policy on prioritizing core American national interests, defined as a strong economy, robust manufacturing base, powerful military, secure borders, and economic and technological preeminence. To be sure, this is a worthy goal for any country. But the strategy goes against decades of U.S. policy that focused on ensuring global prosperity and stability and instead turns inward. In the Indo-Pacific, the strategy calls for moving away from burden sharing and instead towards significant burden shifting, expecting allies and partners “to assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense,” but without clarifying how the United States would support such endeavors.  Additionally, while the strategy predicates competing in the Indo-Pacific on allies’ economic and material strengths, it does not consider how the administration’s own tariff measures could weaken U.S. partners’ positions on this count. 

Additionally, while the strategy discusses deterring conflict in the Indo-Pacific, it does not address scenarios of Chinese military aggression or malign influence outside of the First Island Chain. It barely mentions Southeast Asia and does not even touch South Asia, both regions where Beijing’s predatory and coercive tactics are on full display.

Most worryingly for Indo-Pacific allies and partners, the NSS does not explicitly mention China as a strategic competitor and accords topmost priority to the Western Hemisphere, in a departure from at least 15 years of U.S. policy focused on a pivot to Asia and the Indo-Pacific.  For countries like India, the explicit U.S. aim to focus more on the near abroad, which would likely reduce U.S. involvement in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, may raise serious questions about where and how it can depend on the United States to manage China’s rise going forward. For instance, U.S. redeployment of forces from the Middle East and Indo-Pacific to the Western Hemisphere would have an operational, coordination, and resource impact on India. Moreover, with the strategy’s explicit focus on reindustrialization and guarding dual-use and advanced technology, some of the key inducements Washington may have had in getting New Delhi to step up on regional security are now gone. Concerningly, the NSS’ Indo-Pacific section reads like a litany of asks from allies and partners rather than the promulgation of a collaborative approach to jointly tackle threats in the region.

(Culture) war: what is it good for?

The strategy even explicitly argues that current European governments engage in “subversion of democratic processes,” and not-so-subtly suggests that the United States would like to see many current ruling parties pushed aside by their more conservative counterparts. It’s no surprise that this all seems to have been taken by many European observers as both insulting and a sign that Trump’s America is no longer friendly to Europe.

This somewhat misreads the situation. The Trump administration both loves and hates Europe, in much the same ways as it both loves and hates the United States of America. The document’s criticisms of European policy bear a strong resemblance to those of Trump and the MAGA movement regarding modern America. They believe content controls and disinformation monitoring on social media amount to censorship, believe that conservative parties are naturally disadvantaged in a modern media environment, and that stifling regulation inhibits economic growth and dynamism.

The NSS thus argues that Europe must regain its civilizational footing and become stronger by embracing the kinds of policies that the Trump administration hopes to implement in America, from migration restrictions to slashing regulation and bureaucracy. And as in American politics, there’s even a grain of truth to some of these criticisms: the Draghi report, for example, commissioned by the EU itself, pointed to regulatory overload as one key reason for a lack of European economic dynamism.

No doubt the Trump administration sees the criticisms in the NSS as written in the tone of a concerned friend — trying to help Europe to find its way. But of course, that’s not at all how it is being received in Europe, where many governments and observers see these points as direct criticism of their own actions or as veiled threats that the United States may engage in regime change by helping far-right parties come to power.

Then there’s the other problem. It should come as no surprise to any observer that Trump is hostile to the EU and the project of greater European unification that it represents. The president has been friendly with Britain’s Nigel Farage since his first run for office; MAGA foreign policy hands value sovereignty, something that they see as in direct contradiction to the EU’s supranational mandate.

Again, none of this is philosophically inconsistent or surprising. It is, however, entirely counterproductive. At a time when the United States is trying to persuade European allies to do more for their own defense and build up their military capabilities, it is not helpful to alienate them. Nor is it particularly helpful to try and undermine the EU’s common financing and coordination mechanisms, which offer significant benefits as the bloc shifts toward more effective defense capabilities.

In short, this national security strategy rightly focuses on the importance of burden shifting to capable allies, both in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific. It is past time for the United States’ allies to do more for their own defense, particularly as we enter a period of contested multipolarity and great power competition. Yet focusing on culture-war slogans is likely only to undermine the push for burden shifting in Europe, resulting in a weaker and more fragmented continent that cannot pick up the burden from the United States.

The Trump administration would be wise to think about how it prioritizes these two concerns.

Trump administration’s interest in diplomacy requires reinvestment

The administration is right to elevate diplomacy in the foreign policy toolkit and likewise is accurate in criticizing past versions of the NSS as being full of priorities while lacking prioritization. But when it comes to utilizing the diplomatic tool, the strategy fails to meet the measure it sets. Its reliance on “presidential diplomacy” to advance U.S. interests is insufficient to accomplish the administration’s goals.

The NSS accurately represents the approach to diplomacy that the Trump administration has taken. The President has consistently spoken about his desire to resolve conflicts and tasked his administration, namely Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, with engaging in aggressive negotiation. While one can question the extent of the role played by the United States in the eight conflicts that the President claims to have ended, the underlying inclination towards utilizing diplomacy rather than military intervention or disengagement should be applauded.

Likewise, the emphasis on American “soft power” is a departure from past strategies, none of which have used the term in discussing the country’s strengths. The Trump administration’s recognition that the United States maintains influence around the world, and that these ties can be utilized for diplomatic ends, has been woefully absent from previous NSS documents.

However, the Trump administration’s strategy falls short in matching its ambition for diplomacy with the means it makes available. It relies almost solely on the use of presidential diplomacy to engage the world, ignoring the importance of the diplomatic corps. The United States needs capable and empowered diplomats who can secure U.S. interests abroad, communicate opportunities for additional U.S. engagement, and develop relationships that facilitate peace agreements and trade deals. This capability has been severely harmed by the Trump administration’s cuts to the State Department and elimination of USAID, and there is no indication of a course correction. A recent survey of the U.S. Foreign Service by the American Foreign Service Association found 98% of Foreign Service officers (FSOs) reporting poor morale and 1 in 3 considering leaving the State Department. The survey reported that 86% of FSOs felt the changes to the Department since January have “affected their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities.”

Presidential diplomacy is likely to remain the preferred approach of this administration, but it will require an expert diplomatic corps to backstop the President’s efforts. The agreements touted by the NSS, like those between Armenia and Azerbaijan and DRC and Rwanda, require sustained and complex diplomacy to maintain (or ideally, build upon). Reinvestment in the traditional tools of U.S diplomacy is required if President Trump is to succeed as a peacemaker.

What does the NSS mean for South Korea?

To begin, the NSS mentions South Korea three times. The first moment references the U.S. “current account deficit” vis-à-vis South Korea — calling it unsustainable — and urges South Korea, among other countries, to help absorb Chinese excess capacity (p. 22). On both counts, South Korea has worked to address these concerns. Even in the face of an unexpected domestic political upheaval, the incoming administration in Seoul negotiated a trade deal that commits South Korea to inject $350 billion into the U.S. economy (capped at $20 billion per year). On trade, South Korea accepted a general tariff of 15% with an adjustable tariff on semiconductors while agreeing to eliminate several non-tariff barriers. But even before the deal announcement, South Korea’s overall goods trade surplus with the U.S. declined from $44.3 billion in the first ten months of 2024 to $39.7 billion in the first ten months of 2025. Regarding China, South Korea has maintained a trade deficit with Beijing since May 2022.

The NSS also raises the issue of South Korea’s role in coordinating with the United States on providing developmental assistance to the “Global South” (p. 22), calling for Washington and its allies to formulate a joint strategy. In reality, South Korea has coordinated with the United States on this issue since 2019 through various channels, some of which continued into this year until the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Finally, the NSS calls upon South Korea to increase its defense spending and contribution to burden sharing (p. 24).  SIPRI’s data on military expenditure shows South Korea as having the world’s 11th highest ($48.5 billion) military spending as of 2024, which is 2.56% of the country’s GDP. During the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju, President Lee Jae Myung pledged to spend $25 billion on purchases of U.S. military equipment by 2030 and provide $33 billion in support for the 28,500 U.S. forces in Korea. He also committed to increasing South Korea’s defense spending to 3.5% of GDP. This move prompted Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby to applaud South Korea as “a model” and “the first treaty ally of the U.S. outside of NATO to commit to the 3.5 percent standard.”

In sum, South Korea appears broadly aligned with the expectations laid out in the strategic vision of the NSS. It bears mentioning that even though South Korea is mentioned only three times, “allies” are mentioned over thirty-one times, acknowledging that America First does not mean America alone.

Lastly, “North Korea” and “denuclearization” never feature in this year’s NSS, unlike its predecessors in 2017 and 2022. While this could mean that the administration places greater priority on the defense of the First Island Chain, the exact meaning of this omission is not yet known, especially given that Trump and Lee reiterated their commitment to the complete denuclearization of North Korea.

NSS’s advocacy for interference in Europe is a strategic misstep

The Trump administration’s strategy toward Europe is, at its core, self-contradictory. The NSS signals that Washington wants European economies to grow, European governments to spend more on defense, and migration to Europe to decline. It cannot have all three. By focusing on what it calls “civilizational erasure,” the White House appears intent on re-anchoring the transatlantic relationship on ethno-nationalist grounds. In doing so, the White House would risk its opportunity for longer-term and sustainable change in transatlantic trade and military relations.

Immigration is a charged political topic across both Europe and the United States, and one could read the European part of the NSS as an effort to export the administration’s domestic agenda across the Atlantic. Some experts anticipated this goal, but the brazen, racially charged language — and the signals of how far the administration is willing to go in its defense of European “civilizations” — comes as a surprise, though it does reflect the ideas in Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. 

Europeans’ own views on immigration and national identity differ widely. This is, in part, because most European states — like the United States — would face steep population decline without immigration. This demographic reality arguably matters more for Europe, as Europeans are accustomed to a much more robust social safety net and will either need a workforce capable of sustaining that spending or to endure painful cuts. If European governments were to significantly restrict immigration, their economies would likely suffer, making the current momentum for increased defense spending difficult to maintain. 

The most chilling part of the NSS is the stated goal of “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” When the Trump administration attempted to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, it justified the effort partly by claiming the agency favored liberal ideals. There certainly is some truth to the fact that the post-Cold-War use of Radio Free Europe and other platforms originally created to combat Soviet propaganda played a part in straining the US-Russian relationship. The administration must realize that similar issues would arise from attempts to, once again, “cultivate resistance” in Europe. Both the United States and Europe should acknowledge that interfering to favor specific parties in other democratic states sets a dangerous precedent and reject meddling in their own states’ politics.

If the administration continues down this path of foreign interference, it will not only jeopardize the transatlantic relationship but also damage the United States’ global image. 

Lead with effectiveness

The overarching goal to build a military capable of meeting the nation’s security needs is correct, but the way it’s written all but guarantees the policy will fail. The key offending phrase is “technologically advanced.” Those words are particularly problematic because they give license for national security establishment leaders to continue with the failed practice of pursuing exquisite military technologies that have proven so troublesome in recent history.

Most of the Pentagon’s major weapons programs this century have proven to be major disappointments, if not outright failures. The Zumwalt-class destroyer, F-35, Littoral Combat Ship, Future Combat System, and Ford-class aircraft carrier are just a few of the systems that have cost a fortune yet failed to deliver a comparable level of utility. The latest tranche of weapons programs is now showing signs of repeated mistakes. The Sentinel ballistic missile program saw 81% cost growth, and the Navy recently cancelled the Constellation-class frigate.

What these programs have in common is that they were all intended to be “technologically advanced.” The phrase is vague enough to give defense industry leaders a broad mandate to incorporate every conceivable gadget into these systems. They are incentivized to increase the complexity of their products because doing so increases their revenues through the longer research and development process and, later, the higher price tag. The practice also comes with a political benefit: additional technology means extra subcontracts to be spread throughout more Congressional districts, thus increasing support for the program on Capitol Hill.

The practical results of the desire for technological overmatch are ballooning costs and dysfunctional systems. Weapons become so complex that it becomes impossible to get all the components to work together properly, and costs rise dramatically as a result. Program cost is important not only because of the taxpayer burden, but because it determines the size of the force. As costs rise, service leaders will often reduce the number of units produced to balance the budget. That is how the Air Force went from a planned fleet of 750 F-22s to one of only 187.

Rather than trying to build the “most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced” military, the administration should have stated the simple goal of building the most effective force. National security leaders should carefully evaluate what the services actually need to carry out their missions. Low-tech solutions should be used whenever possible. When the situation calls for more technological sophistication, engineers should still work to keep the system as simple as possible. Doing so will reduce both the time and costs required to field the new weapon. These programs will also increase readiness by reducing supply chains and maintenance burdens, thus making the force more effective.

Missing the point on security assistance in the NSS

Each reference underscores the Trump administration’s uniquely transactional view of security cooperation and implicitly points to arms sales as a compensatory instrument for an emerging foreign policy approach that prioritizes U.S. commercial competition and the reduction of overseas security burdens.

But beyond these oblique discussions of security cooperation, what the NSS leaves out is a more explicit — and strategic — consideration of the role security cooperation should play in advancing U.S. interests beyond offsetting a reduced U.S. global presence. The absence is especially concerning given the administration’s efforts to accelerate U.S. arms transfers and dismantle key guardrails on arms transfers. Over the past year, the administration has signed executive orders that are intended to reduce the “rules and regulations involved in the development, execution, and monitoring of foreign defense sales and of transfer cases,” encouraged Congressional efforts to revamp and speed up the arms transfer process, and dispensed with longstanding norms that allowed lawmakers to effectively voice concerns about specific arms sales packages.

In effect, the administration’s NSS presents a foreign policy that suggests the United States will expand arms transfers to enable burden shifting and offset more aggressive commercial diplomacy, but without outlining a clear strategy for how security cooperation can be more effectively leveraged to support U.S. interests. It is a missed opportunity. What the administration should have done in the NSS is explain how security cooperation and assistance can be more effectively structured to enable responsible partnerships without unnecessarily entangling the United States in foreign crises or conflicts. Such an approach requires discernment and restraint, themes that should align with an NSS that so directly critiques the overextension of the United States’ overseas burdens and commitments.

A shifting premise for the Transatlantic relationship

Beneath the rhetoric, some elements of the new strategy echo longstanding views from both sides of the U.S. political spectrum. Europe needs to take more responsibility for its own security, which it has done by committing to a 5% of GDP target for defense spending at the NATO summit this past summer. It also needs to develop specialized capabilities to replace those that the United States currently brings uniquely to continental defense. The strategy’s explicit linkage of economic fairness and regulation to security provision strengthens the coercive tools Washington will deploy in its future dealings with European counterparts. The NSS’ most vivid departure from past U.S political consensus comes from its underlying attitudes toward Europe — still valued partners, but on a dramatically different foundation. As a consequence, the strategy advocates for relative U.S. disengagement from security leadership on the continent, emphasizes “healthy” countries (an apparent code for the elevation of far-right voices and parties on a continent that has an unfortunate history with them), and demands economic “fairness” on U.S. terms. It is squarely an America First agenda, and that should not come as a surprise. 

While it does not say so explicitly, the strategy and the administration’s rhetoric take aim at the existence and purpose of the EU and deny that it could play any potential role in facilitating the achievement of U.S. goals. Traditionally seen as an economic player with decisions made in full transparency by sovereign governments and often supported by popular referendums, European governments are now turning increasingly to the EU to help build needed security capabilities, such as a renewed defense industrial base, in a way that NATO, dominated by the United States, cannot. Yet the NSS denigrates the EU as being illegitimate, undemocratic, and unrepresentative of the goals and aspirations Washington thinks Europe should have for itself. 

The Trump administration should more consistently apply its realistic and America First lens to an interest-based perspective on the European project, recognizing how it can take on the regional security burden in Europe that Washington wishes to shed or shift. The Trump administration should also take a more nuanced and differentiated view of how Washington and Europe should view the security threats from Russia. Moscow is actively probing Europe’s defenses, while catering to Washington’s wishful thinking about carefully defined spheres of influence. What might seem abstract and distant to the White House is very real in Warsaw, Vilnius, and Brussels.