Two Cheers for the National Security Strategy

Trump’s new document gets much right and a few things wrong.

A close view of the back of a helicopter. December 11, 2025, 12:39 PM

Trump’s Second Term

Ongoing reports and analysis

Last week, the Trump administration published a new National Security Strategy (NSS), and critics panned the document as a “moral and strategic disaster.”

But claims that U.S. President Donald Trump is abandoning the liberal international order focus heavily on values and give inadequate attention to the order’s security and economic foundations. By promising to revitalize American “economic and military preeminence,” the NSS correctly doubles down on many of the key pillars of the United States’ successful 80-year grand strategy, updating them with prac

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