By Nour Ghali Department of Research, Strategic Studies and International Relations 09-12-2025

The 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States represents one of the most ideologically explicit and domestically oriented security documents issued in recent decades. Previous NSS texts, such as the 2017 NSS or the Biden administration’s 2022 NSS, among others, anchored American strategy in the preservation of a liberal international order, multilateralism, and the importance of alliances. This NSS is framed around a narrow and sovereignty-centric understanding of the national interest.  Post-Cold War US strategy was very different, aiming to establish free market principles and international institutions. The Trump administrations in 2017 and 2025, in contrast, placed economic security as a core component of national security.

 The document presents a lengthy critique of post–Cold War U.S. foreign policy, attributing strategic drift to excessive global commitments, “forever wars”, overreliance on international institutions, and economic choices that allegedly undermined the American middle class. This reflects a different New Right trend that supports a US grand strategy based on a hazily defined notion of restraint, where US global overreach serves as a betrayal of American citizens. It can also be seen as part of a broader intellectual current associated with “national-conservative” foreign policy thinking, a transnational phenomenon that evident in Europe as well, where discussions in Brussels prevailed on preserving the nation-state.

One of the most striking aspects of the strategy is the degree to which it personalizes foreign policy around Donald Trump himself. The document repeatedly attributes several peace agreements and diplomatic outcomes directly to the president, a departure from the institutional, state-centric tone typical of NSS documents. The different format is partly a result of the National Security Council (NSC), where the President’s personality and management style have come to fundamentally shape how this coordinating tool is used, often allowing the NSC to function as a miniature government within the White House and overshadowing traditional departments. This is supported by academic observations, as noted in 2022 research by MG Mohamed ElKeshky on the National Security Council (NSC). The NSS is a document representative of US grand strategy, which should summarize the core objectives of the state and the best ways to efficiently achieve them. It is generally considered the highest form of state-making. Such a strategy need not detail every eventual move, yet it must offer enough detail to ground its ideas in practical action. Personalization of this kind in the NSS document risks blurring the distinction between national interests and the preferences of individual leaders.

Substantively, the NSS represents a major reordering of U.S. priorities. Migration is framed not merely as a policy challenge but as a major national security threat, a drastic shift that echoes the securitization of migration seen in Europe as well. Economic policy, including tariffs, reindustrialization, and reshoring of supply chains, is elevated to the center of national security. Furthermore, the explicit rejection of climate change and “Net Zero” policies marks a sharp break from past policy and discourse, as well as from the Pentagon’s own assessments of climate as a security multiplier.

The sharp critique the NSS directs at NATO and Europe stands out, as it not only demands greater burden-sharing but fundamentally reframes alliances as costly, time-bound commitments that do not necessarily serve direct U.S. interests. This raises questions about the practical sustainability of “deterrence from afar” in vital regions like Asia and the Indo-Pacific, where Chinese and Russian challenges require deeper strategic engagement. Furthermore, the document clearly signals a return to the “Monroe Doctrine”, or what they dubbed the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, with its near-absolute focus on the Western Hemisphere and framing foreign influence there as an existential threat. It champions separate spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe, and non-intervention. The focus is supposedly aimed at securing the homeland first, but it may weaken the U.S. ability to manage global competition in other key theaters.

In the Middle East, the document reframes the region not as a security risk but as a place for investments and transactional partnerships. This is consistent with current US foreign policy trends of moving away from interventionism and focusing on competition against great powers instead. Africa is approached mainly through the lens of competition with China, mineral extraction, and energy source, rather than governance or development, signalling a purely geoeconomic approach. For Africa, this means that going forward, there will be fewer bilateral or multilateral agreements if they do not produce advantageous short-term material benefits for the United States.

Overall, the 2025 NSS signals a redefinition of American grand strategy away from global leadership and toward selective engagement, economic nationalism, and civilizational framing. Whether this isolationist approach is sustainable, and how it reshapes the post-1945 order, remains to be seen.

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Nour Ghali is a researcher at Badr University’s Centre for Global Affairs. Her work focuses on public policy, comparative politics, and socio-economic equity in the MENA region. She specializes in policy analysis and translating complex issues into accessible insights for broader audiences.