The Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy

The United States

Targeted opportunities for transatlantic cooperation.

By Dr. Daniel Kliman in Washington, DC

The US National Security Strategy (NSS) crystallizes many of the essential elements of the White House's approach to the world. These are a focus on burden shifting to allies and partners globally, a proclivity for resolving conflicts to limit the risks of entrapment, a recalibration of international economic relationships to promote prosperity at home, and a distrust of multinational institutions. At the same time, the NSS makes clear that China remains a competitor of the United States.

Europeans may object to parts of the NSS, but the document offers several opportunities for cooperation that should resonate. These include a global effort to offer alternatives to China's physical and digital infrastructure and combating "mercantilist overcapacity", an indirect reference to Chinese high-technology exports. Given current transatlantic tensions, the United States and Europe must seize these opportunities for collaboration in the year ahead.

The EU and NATO

Confirming the worst expectations.

By Dr. Ian O. Lesser in Brussels

EU and NATO observers will likely see this highly ideological US National Security Strategy as confirmation of established concerns about the direction and style of American policy. It is explicit in its attention to states over institutions as partners. It also points to European cultural and demographic decline in ways likely to reinforce the views of hard-right elements in Europe. Viewed from Brussels, the strategy underscores the reality of an administration that is not isolationist but rather hyper unilateralist.

Germany

Shocked but not surprised.

By Dr. Claudia Major in Berlin

For Germany, the US National Security Strategy (NSS) confirms what President Donald Trump has been saying and doing since his inauguration. Still, Berlin is concerned that his positions are now officially enshrined in US doctrine. The NSS’s core messages contradict German convictions that are deeply rooted in a transatlantic partnership based on shared values, interests, and worldview. Berlin disagrees with many elements of the strategy, including the cultural-ideological positions that criticize Europe for lacking freedom of speech and for its migration policies. The document’s meager criticism of Russia is also a point of disagreement.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadepuhl responded to the NSS by noting that Berlin needs no external advice on freedom of speech. Yet he also underlined that the United States remains Germany’s most important ally in NATO. This reflects the country’s need, despite all the criticism, to maintain the transatlantic relationship. Berlin remains dependent on Washington, particularly for security and defense.

The United Kingdom

Undeterred and focused on delivery.

By Georgina Wright in London

The United States’ National Security Strategy confirms London’s assessment of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. It is one that leaves the United States narrowly focused on its own interests and expects the United Kingdom to assume greater leadership in Europe rather than in the Indo‑Pacific. The latter region, however, will continue to be vital for London, and the AUKUS trilateral security partnership will remain a central pillar of British engagement in Washington. At the same time, the United Kingdom is strengthening its leadership role in Europe by investing strategically in the High North and the Arctic while underscoring its unwavering commitment to Ukraine.

At the same time, London seeks to leverage its position outside the EU but inside Europe to attract US tech investment while diverging modestly from European artificial intelligence and tech standards. This delicate balancing act aims to avoid entanglement in US‑EU regulatory disputes while protecting prospects for an EU‑UK reset.

France

Strategically vindicated, politically challenged.

By Martin Quencez in Paris

At the strategic level, France will feel vindicated by a US National Security Strategy that strongly emphasizes the need for American allies to assume more security responsibilities and confirms the long-term trajectory toward a narrow definition of US national interests.

At the political level, however, the French leadership will see the strategy as a direct challenge to its core principles. Its rebuke of the EU—defined in the text as a project that suppresses political freedom, prevents innovation, and fosters Europe’s civilizational decline—goes against President Emmanuel Macron’s entire political vision, while the open goal of “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” will appear as a call to interfere in favor of his political opponents. The strategy will reinforce the view that France should pursue cooperation with the United States on clearly defined mutual interests rather than seek an unrealistic, value-based partnership with the Trump administration.

Poland

A warier eye is cast eastward.

By Philip Bednarczyk in Warsaw/Washington, DC

Poland sees the US National Security Strategy (NSS) as a continuation and clearer definition of what it had suspected. With Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine still raging, the document is a chilly reminder of two things. First, the Trump administration does not see Moscow as a threat. It is, rather, a potential economic partner with which to pursue strategic stability. Second, the White House sees the main danger to Europe from within. It is rotting societies and warped democracies. Poland remains a staunch, versatile transatlantic ally, but one concerned about the current trajectory of US strategic thought. Warsaw is consequently looking to hedge its bets.

The NSS language has vivid parallels with President Trump’s July 2017 speech in Warsaw in which he defined and defended shared civilizational values that Western society represents. This was generously interpreted as a reassurance that his administration is committed to NATO and shared underlying values. As eight years ago, Poland and others in Central Europe are looking for any further changes in US troop presence, grasping for hope that those boots on the ground will be enough to soothe fears of an abrupt American turn inwards. Still, the NSS is clear step away from unity in the face of Russian aggression, leaving US allies closest to Russia’s war wondering how to navigate Washington’s briskly softening stance toward Moscow, whose leadership has nothing in common with democratic Western values. 

Italy

Ideological alignment but policy friction.

By Emiliano Alessandri in Rome

The US National Security Strategy (NSS) neither shocked nor surprised Rome. In fact, conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni could have written some sections of the document herself. She shares perspectives with the Trump administration on Europe’s alleged predicament. She may not talk lightly of “civilization erasure”, as the strategy does, but she has thrived on the specter of ethno-cultural decline.

Alignment fades, however, as the NSS transitions from ideology to policy. There may be consonance on migration policy (although Meloni has backtracked on some of the more restrictive policies she had promised), but the prime minister would have liked to see a firmer US commitment to European security and a less transactional approach to NATO. On Ukraine, for example, she continues to hew closely to Europe’s approach for a just and sustainable peace while trying to balance the Trump administration's desire for an "expeditious cessation of hostilities", as the NSS puts it. And she is no fan of the NSS’s mercantilist posture: US tariffs are and will remain a significant problem for Italian companies.

Romania

Time to broaden cooperation.

By Dr. Clara Voluntiru in Bucharest

Romania, facing military and hybrid threats from Russia, has long relied for its national security on a strategic partnership with the United States. With the new US National Security Strategy (NSS), Romania must clearly develop concrete action plans to expand significantly its economic diplomacy and to conclude a joint economic security framework with the United States as part of that partnership. Energy production, defense industrial cooperation, and logistics and connectivity through the Black Sea harbor at Constanta will be primary points of collaboration.

Romania's own new National Defense Strategy is aligned well here as it directs investment toward societal resilience, cyberdefense, and supply chain security. It is also helpful that the Trump administration’s NSS indicates opportunities for Bucharest to leverage its military and intelligence presence, and contributions to conflict resolution and stabilization, in other regions of mutual interest such as the Middle East and Africa.

India

Do words translate into action?

By Dr. Garima Mohan in Brussels

India should be heartened to see policy continuity in the US National Security Strategy (NSS). It reaffirms the importance of the Indo-Pacific for Washington, highlights competition with China as the key driving factor, and underlines the need for "building alliances and strengthening partnerships". However, New Delhi will contrast this to recent events that have sent US-Indian relations to a new low; seen Sino-American ties improve; and relegated minilaterals such as the Quad, which were created to counter China's influence in the Indo-Pacific, to the sidelines.

India will now be watching to see if priorities set out in the NSS actually prevail over other trends in Washington. 

The Economic Aspect

Tough love for Europe.

By Penny Naas in Washington, DC

The new US National Security Strategy makes clear that economic strength is national security. “America First” means bringing critical industries home, securing supply chains, and protecting US jobs. Tariffs, trade deals, and defending US innovation are the weapons of choice while allies are told to open their markets further. But even the United States cannot go it alone. Interdependence is not optional; it is strategy, and Washington may find that “America First” creates different risks.

Europe gets a dose of tough love: reform fast, buy American, and embrace deregulation or risk being left behind in a fast-changing, artificial intelligence-drive world. The harsh truth may push Europe to undertake economic reforms, faster and with more urgency, and strengthen their foundational alliances with other US partners receiving the same treatment.

Technology

An export for US global Influence?

By Lindsay Gorman in Washington, DC

The Trump administration views technology as a core component of great-power competition, undergirding the US economy and military strength. In that respect, the White House echoes the views of previous administrations and a consensus in Washington. Yet the new US National Security Strategy (NSS) narrows the aperture for promoting and leveraging tech.

The document names high-tech sales, along with defense purchases, as transactional foreign policy tools, inducements to tip the scales of global influence in the United States’ favor, while ensuring American innovation in artificial intelligence (AI), biotech, and quantum tech backed by US standards drives the world. To the extent collaboration with Europe on technology can occur, the NSS focuses on combating the risks of cyber espionage and intellectual property theft to innovation, while pushing deregulation as essential. And to sustain American technological leadership toward these foreign policy goals, the strategy emphasizes basic and dual-use research of AI, quantum, autonomous systems, space, undersea capabilities, and nuclear technology as central to US strength, This signals a reorienting and narrowing of scientific research priorities in the face of large cuts to basic science.