National security under Trump 2.0

The world is buzzing with ongoing speculation about how President-elect Donald Trump will lead during his second term. This is particularly true when it comes to foreign policy. More or less support for Ukraine? Israel? Taiwan? A course change toward China? NATO? Iran? Perhaps the best way to forecast Trump’s 2025 approach to foreign and national security policy is to look at the national security blueprint he signed off on in 2017.

By law, U.S. presidents are required to publish a national security strategy within months of entering office, though the deadline is not often met. Sometimes, presidents begin immediately with statements of priorities, as President Joe Biden did by issuing National Security Memorandum-4 two weeks after taking office in 2021. NSM-4 directed all foreign-directed U.S. government agencies (e.g., the departments of State, Defense, etc.) to advance LGBTQ rights within the agency and in their external relations with other countries. As the Federation of American Scientists summarized, “In effect, the defense of LGBTQI+ rights has now been elevated by the Biden Administration to a national security policy of the United States.” (Although the Biden White House published other interim guidance, it took until October 2022 to finally publish a national security strategy).

In stark contrast, President Trump’s “new National Security Strategy for a new era” from 2017 provided a comprehensive vision and strategy for advancing American interests and ideals. When reading it, one feels as if the Trump NSS was written for 2025 and beyond.

Its vision was to “Protect our homeland, advance our prosperity, and preserve peace.” What was, and is, the threat context? Trump’s NSS told the reader in stark terms that “great power competition has returned” after “being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century.”

More specifically, America faces a three-fold threat: “A central continuity in history is the contest for power. … Three main sets of challengers—the revisionist powers of China and Russia, the rogue states of Iran and North Korea, and transnational threat organizations, particularly jihadist terrorist groups—are actively competing against the United States and our allies and partners.”

How are we to meet the threat? The 2017 strategy was uniquely Trumpian: “The United States will seek areas of cooperation with competitors from a position of strength, foremost by ensuring our military power is second to none and fully integrated with our allies and all of our instruments of power.”

This strategy summary is worth dissecting, and it did mark a departure from previous administrations. It begins not with a threat but with a pledge of diplomacy that the “United States will seek areas of cooperation with competitors.” Later in the document, it reaffirms this approach concerning China and Russia: “The United States stands ready to cooperate across areas of mutual interest with both countries.”

Trump was criticized for being naïve, or craven, for his meetings with dictators, but his purpose was publicly stated all along. Trump, the negotiator-in-chief, believes that even with our adversaries, there may be areas of “mutual interest” where tensions can be lowered and mutual gains achieved. Thus, it will not be surprising for him to seek what he considers a realistic end to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine that will pull Europe back from the brink of a continental, and perhaps even global, war. He will likely take a similar approach to unfair Chinese trade tactics.

But that “cooperation with competitors” begins “from a position of strength.” Like President Ronald Reagan, peace through strength is the underlying concept here. And that strength is not President Barack Obama’s strategy of hope or President Biden’s strategy of promoting LGBTQ rights, but, rather, military and economic power.

As the American Enterprise Institute reports, in contrast to Biden and Obama’s dramatic cuts to military spending, the first Trump administration sprinted to modernize the U.S. defense and intelligence establishment. Trump also emphasized patriotism and traditional military core values in the armed forces. We should expect to see all of this again.

The 2017 NSS calls for two more things. The first is strong allies “integrated” with America’s national security establishment. The second is a holistic approach to international security leveraging “all of our instruments of power.”

Regarding our allies, Trump was derided in many quarters for his “America First” approach, but his mantra was never “America Only.” One may recall that in his famous NATO remarks, shortly after becoming president, he argued that every government must act first and foremost on the interests of its own citizenry. That is natural and good. He then called upon NATO leaders to live up to their signed commitments on military spending, both as a solemn covenant under the NATO charter and because it was in the best interests of protecting their people. It is also in the interests of the United States for our allies to have powerful modern militaries and pay their fair share for global security.

The phrase “instruments of power” is a term of art in the security community, often associated with the acronym DIME (diplomacy; information, including ideas, cyber, soft power influence, and strategic communications; military; and economic forms of power). Moreover, President-elect Trump’s appointments in many of these key roles, such as Marco Rubio, Michael Waltz, Stephen Feinberg, and others, demonstrate this comprehensive approach to U.S. security.

In sum, much of the 2017 National Security Strategy resonates today, from a sober assessment of threats and priorities to the likelihood that a vigorous, travel-ready president will promote peace through strength.