The UK and Trump’s National Security Strategy

The current Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy can best be described as a sober look in the mirror by the American administration to realistically observe the state of the nation and its readiness to assert global influence. Having looked in the mirror, the strategy suggests the United States needs a major make-over. Put in that context, there is a framework of logic to the new National Security Strategy that seeks to reinvigorate American capacity to address the nation’s most fundamental security interests, to assert global influence, and to build stronger alliances to exercise global leadership together.

Whether the administration follows the strategy in its international undertakings is another matter. Donald Trump has been described as a President who seeks under all circumstances to preserve as much decision space for the oval office as possible. Translation? His decisions may be mercurial and will not always align with the strategy. But the strategy should nonetheless serve as a general guide to how the broader administration will conduct policy. Now, having had time to process and reject the some of the strategy’s clearly objectionable rhetoric, it is time to ask what is the Trump administration’s strategic framework, and what are the implications for the United Kingdom and for Europe?

The US National Security Strategy

The strategy’s framework has five core elements. The first is that the United States will focus more narrowly on national interest than on global leadership. ‘In everything we do, we are putting America First,’ President Trump declares. He faults the ‘elites’ of previous administrations for ‘shouldering burdens’ and following policies for ‘which the American people saw no connection to the national interest.’ National interest and global leadership are not entirely unrelated, so this is more a matter of a shift in emphasis than a sharp departure from the past. But whereas past security strategies focused on what might be called system maintenance, which led to a mindset of American indispensability to the maintenance of a stable global system, this administration acknowledges the limits of American power and will prioritise involvement only in those issues that bear most directly on the national interest. The strategy professes a predisposition for non-intervention, which does not mean Trump eschews the use of force to achieve American objectives. Iran, Somalia, Nigeria and now Venezuela can all attest to that. However, Trump campaigned on a promise to avoid long costly wars in peripheral regions that drain American resources and achieve little in terms of the direct national interest, and this strategy seems to reaffirm that policy.

Second, the United States intends to ‘restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere.’ In strategies it is the verbs that matter most, and the American national security apparatus is directed with the imperative verb to ‘ensure’ that the Western Hemisphere is ‘stable and well-governed, and free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets.’ Unchallengeable American power in the Western Hemisphere is the most important element of the United States’ ability to focus resources on guaranteeing the security of allies in Europe and Asia and to exercise global leadership in our mutual interest. To accomplish this goal, the strategy ‘readjusts’ US military presence, ‘expands’ its regional networks, ‘protects strategic points,’ and ‘develops’ the region’s strategic resources. Nothing in the recent interventions in Venezuela should therefor come as a surprise.

Third, the strategy seeks to stabilise great power relations, which is a significant shift from the escalating competition that marks previous security strategies. The Trump administration appears ready to reset relations with China and Russia in particular. The strategy rejects American global domination but promises to prevent global or regional domination by others, even as it acknowledges the special or ‘outsized’ leadership role ‘of larger, richer, and stronger nations.’ It is in this light that the professed ‘predisposition to non-interventionism’ should be understood. Trump sees interventions by great powers to maintain security and stability in their regions as different from interventions that impinge on the important interests of other great powers. This is a clear step away from liberalism and toward power as the organising principle of world affairs. In fact, the strategy does not mention the word ‘rules’ once. Furthermore, in a significant shift of tone, it only uses the word ‘competitive’ five times, all in reference to business practices, and the word ‘compete’ appears only three times – once in relation to American business operating abroad, once in relation to China, and once in reference to a strong Europe’s ability to help America ‘prevent any adversary from dominating Europe.’ This stands in stark contrast to the Biden administration’s security strategy, which used the word ‘compete’ twelve times, ‘competitive’ fifteen times, and ‘competition’ four times – nearly all describing the administration’s approach to other great powers.

The View for the Revisionist States

That does not mean Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will be entirely pleased with the Trump strategy. The fourth and perhaps most significant element of the strategy is its shift in the American military’s global posture. Since Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, first introduced the concept of rebalancing toward Asia in her October 2011 Foreign Policy article, three Presidents and four successive American administrations have sought to make that a reality. Like the imperatives used to describe the strategic approach to the Western Hemisphere, the strategic goals for the Indo-Pacific are similarly directive. The United States will ‘keep’ the Indo-Pacific Free and Open, ‘preserve’ freedom of navigation, ‘maintain’ secure supply chains, ‘deter’ conflict over Taiwan, and ‘deny’ aggression anywhere in the first island chain. China’s leaders will no doubt read this as an American intention to continue what they see as a policy of regional meddling and containment in East Asia with a beefed-up presence. It certainly means the American military will have its hands full in East Asia.

In stark contrast, the only verb used to describe the American strategy for freedom and security in Europe is ‘support.’ For those tempted to believe this means Europeans will be left on their own to deal with Putin’s aggressions, the strategy also explicitly favours a balance of power and pledges to ‘work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries.’ While it is clear the administration expects European armed forces to take a more significant, even leading, role in deterring Russia, Europeans will not be left alone.

Fifth, the strategy focuses heavily on reinvigorating the American economy. The hallmarks will be policies that emphasise balanced trade and reindustrialisation of the American economy, a revived defence industrial base, maintaining access to low-cost energy supplies, and protecting the financial sector. It clarifies that a reinvigorated economy is one with secure, ‘independent and reliable access to goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life.’ This is explicitly about ‘expanding American access to critical minerals and materials’ and ‘countering predatory economic practices.’ Considering China’s near stranglehold on the global supply of many rare earths and critical minerals, and its attempts to drive other countries out of automobile manufacturing, it is clear why economic reinvigoration is an essential aspect of American, or any nation’s, security in today’s global environment.

Where are the Europe and the UK?

What are implications for the United Kingdom and for Europe? The first is that global affairs are at an inflection point and will not return to more familiar territory. Russia, China and now the US, to varying degrees, reject an international order based first and foremost on international law and are pursuing power-based policies to manage affairs until a new order emerges. It is highly unlikely that Trump’s successor, of either party, will return to a strategy the central element of which is to maintain a rules-based international order. Since at least the end of the 19th century, states have accepted the importance of both law and power as essential to a stable global order. That remains the case. International law is not dead. But the scale has tipped toward the primacy of power and will continue to do so until a new stable order emerges among the world’s great powers.

Another implication is that the United Kingdom and Europe are being pushed into taking more responsibility for Euro-Atlantic security. As noted above this has been coming for at least 15 years. But today the stakes are higher in part because China’s power has continued to grow and in part because the Sino-Russian entente means Eurasia is for the first time in history a unified security system. Any major power war anywhere now implicates the security interests of the UK and Europe. The UK is best positioned to exercise greater leadership over Euro-Atlantic security affairs and will inevitably be called upon to do so. Do not expect the US to leave a complete vacuum of either leadership or military power in Europe as it focuses its strategic efforts on the eastern end of Eurasia. But for the Euro-Atlantic to remain the solid centre of global stability, Europe will need to do much more, and quickly, to ensure stability on Eurasia’s western end.

© Peter Alan Dutton, 2026, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author's, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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