Yusuf Bangura
I’ve now read the 29-page White House document titled “National Security Strategy of the United States of America’’ released in November 2025, which distils the numerous, often controversial, global policies Donald Trump has pursued since his return to power in January.
The document jettisons liberal internationalism, the West’s strategic policy in the last thirty years that extolled the virtues of global free markets, multilateralism, a rights-based international order, and democracy.
The U.S. was the sole superpower when liberal internationalism was propounded. The Soviet Union had collapsed and China was still a poor country trying to open up to the world. With the support of its Western allies, the U.S.believed it could intervene in all corners of the world and impose a global order that reflected Western values and interests. Facing no peer competitor, it allowed international institutions to thrive as platforms for ushering in a brand new world of liberal values, global development and peace.
Non-governmental organisations and UN summits for solving critical global problems blossomed. Indeed, twelve key UN summits were convened in the 1990s as part of efforts to set a new global order for the post-Cold War era. Many analysts, institutions and activists believed that globalisation would render nation states redundant and transnational institutions would rule the world. The UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), where I worked, even concluded its influential report States of Disarray: The Social Effects of Globalisation, prepared for the World Summit for Social Development in 1995, with a call for global citizenship.
As is widely known, the US and its allies did not often live up to the tenets of multilateralism, human rights and democracy in the actual conduct of their foreign policies. In their book titled Dying by the Sword: The Militarization of Foreign Policy, Monica Duffy Tuft and Sidita Kushi (2023), report that the US fought more wars after the Cold War, or the period of liberal internationalism, than in any other period since its independence in 1776. Of the roughly 400 military interventions it conducted, 25 percent occurred after the Cold War. The most well-known interventions were the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where the US tried to do nation-building and democracy—two classic cases of combining core strategic interests and the ideology of liberal internationalism with disastrous results.
Trump’s new national security strategy has dumped the ideology of an open, norms-based global order in favour of old-fashioned realpolitik or realism, in which nation states are the drivers of global politics; states selfishly pursue their core interests without being held to account by value-based metrics; international institutions are passive actors or, at best, enablers of state interests; and the U.S. only intervenes to solve global problems when they directly affect America’s core interests.
Here are a few paragraphs from the document that clearly underscore the radical shift in policy:
“After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country…..Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest.
They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare-regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex. They placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called “free trade”.….
They allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people, and sometimes to suck us into conflicts and controversies central to their interests but peripheral or irrelevant to our own. And they lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty’’.
Let me clarify one issue: Trump did not single-handedly end liberal internationalism. That doctrine was already headed for oblivion with the extraordinary rise of China as a global economic and technological superpower and Russia’s rediscovery of its historical identity as a great power. Both China and Russia are authoritarian states that see the world in clear-eyed, hard-headed realist terms.
However, even when liberal internationalism was being effectively challenged by China, Russia and a host of other countries, Joe Biden, as president, still held on to it as a framework for pursuing U.S. foreign policy. Biden even convened a virtual Summit for Democracy in December 2021 “to renew democracy at home and confront autocracies abroad’’. Trump has simply recognised the limitations of US power and removed the mask of liberal internationalism that disguised US interests and forced the US to overstretch itscommitments.
Flexible realism
The White House document does not propound any single doctrine that describes the US’s new strategic posture. Here’s how the document explains the new policy:
“Trump’s foreign policy is pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist’, realistic without being ‘realist’, principled without being ‘idealistic’, muscular without being ‘hawkish’, and restrained without being ‘dovish’. It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words, ‘America First’ ”.
This, surely, is a wordplay that obfuscates more than it explains. We come close to a two-word doctrine in the section on basic principles that adopts a narrow definition of US interests, predisposition to non-intervention, and commitment to ‘flexible realism’. The document affirms that, as a basic principle, the U.S. will not spread itself thinly or intervene in all global conflicts. And the US will “seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories’’.
The document divides the world into five geopolitical areas: the Americas, Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The U.S. will minimise its activities in the Middle East, which is of no core strategic value anymore to the U.S., since the U.S. is now a net exporter of oil and, in Trump’s view, the Middle East crisis has been solved. It will also adopt a posture of strategic restraint in Europe and allow Europeans to assume the primary burden of defending their region. With the end of communism as a global movement, the U.S. does not see Russia anymore as a threat to U.S. interests. It, therefore, urges Europe to maintain stable relations withRussia and peacefully resolve the war in Ukraine.
While exercising strategic restraint in Europe and the Middle East, the document on the other hand affirms that the U.S.’s strategic policy will now prioritise the Western Hemisphere, where it will be aggressive in preventing non-Western Hemispheric powers from getting entrenched and threatening U.S. interests; and the Indo-Pacific, where it faces a global peer competitor in China, and is determined to protect Taiwan’s autonomy and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
The Africa region receives only three paragraphs, which focus on that region’s valuable mineral resources and need to move US engagement with the continent from aid to trade and investments. In short, there is no geopolitical strategy for Africa—just economic transactions.
Neo-imperialism
The document unabashedly resurrects the Monroe Doctrine as the basis for its engagement with countries in the Americas and foreign powers that seek to do business in that region. Propounded in the early 19th century, the Monroe Doctrine affirmed that the U.S. would not allow any European power to seize territory or dominate the geopolitical space of any country in the Americas.
Many American presidents used this doctrine to overthrow, bully, or subvert governments in Latin America for many years until John Kerry, Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, declared the doctrine dead in 2013. By one estimate (Coatsworth, 2004), there were 41 successful regime changes between 1898 and 1994.
The document refers to the administration’s policy in the Western Hemisphere as ‘Trump Corollary’. This mirrors the so-called ‘Roosevelt Corollary ’ of 1904—which was seen by many as a harsher version of the Monroe Doctrine that gave enormous powers to the U.S. to police Latin American countries and intervene in their domestic politics at will.
Latin American governments and societies have always loathed and resisted the Monroe Doctrine, which they identify as U.S. imperialism. Trump is resurrecting this doctrine at a time when Latin American countries have considerably diversified their economic relations, especially towards China.
By the end of 2024, China’s trade with Latin America had reached a record high of USD 518 billion—second only to the US’s trade with the region. Indeed, China is now South America’s largest trading partner—a position it has held since around 2010. China has also locked in a number of countries in its Belt and Roads Initiative—building ports, railways, airports, and power plants in countries as diverse as Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Nicaragua, Chile, and Argentina; and importing agricultural and energy resources from the region.
The assertion in the document that the U.S. “should make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region’’ is likely to face stiff resistance from Latina American countries and China, leading to regional conflicts and instability. Even the US’s traditional ally in the region, Canada, will view the “Trump Corollary’’ as provocative, given the silly threat to annex Canada as a 51st state. China and the US are currently locked in conflict over the US’s maritime blockade of Venezuela that threatens China’s access to Venzuela’s energy resources.
Contradictory logic on the Indo-Pacific region and the danger of war
While the Trump administration wants to be the biggest bully or hegemon in its own backyard, it does not want China to imitate the same behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region—China’s own backyard. Trump wants to be active in the Indo-Pacific region—maintaining military bases in several countries, crafting anti-China alliances, defending Taiwan, and preventing China from creating choke points in the South China Sea that will hurt U.S. interests. Indeed, the document forcefully asserts that the U.S. wants to defend its global status as the most powerful economic, technological and military power in the world.
Despite the cold reality of multipolarity and America’s relative decline on many power indices, the Trump administration does not believe it should have a peer competitor. Flexible realism or strategic restrain simply means deploying resources from regions that are no longer of strategic value, and transferring them to the Americas and the Indo-Pacific region–the possible new theatres for war, to maintain the US’s global dominance.
This policy, as John Measheimer, the leading advocate of ‘offensive realism’ has argued, is contradictory and untenable. It is highly unlikely that China would allow a strong US presence in the Indo-Pacific region while it is prevented from developing and maintaining strong ties, including at the military level, with countries in the Americas. Already, strategic and foreign policy analysts believe that China may use the US blockade of Venezuela to justify a future blockade of Taiwan.
The economic and military calculus of power is weighted heavily against the US in the Indo-Pacific region. China also has the added advantage of geographical propinquity. It is already the leading trading partner of most countries in the region. It will, indeed, be very difficult for the U.S. to decouple these countries from China and get them to fight a war in their own neighbourhood.
Furthermore, the U.S. cannot match the vast industrial output that underpins China’s military machine in the region. China’s shipbuilding capacity is reckoned, in a leaked US navy briefing, to be 200 times greater than that of the U.S. (Trevithick, 2023). This means it can replace losses much faster than the U.S. China is also far ahead of the U.S. in the production of hypersonic missiles, which strategists believe US defence systems struggle to intercept. It also has unmatched advantage in building and deploying mass-scale, low-cost drones, including super-large underwater drones.
Measheimer reckons that the U.S. is unlikely to win a war in the Indo-Pacific. Trump’s posturing may, instead, escalate tensions in the region and provide false security to Taiwan, which may fail to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate China, and suffer a similar fate as Ukraine. China even has far superior claims to Taiwan, which the UN recognises as a Province of China, than Russia has to Ukraine.
Strategic restraint in Europe and the Middle East
The two regions that Trump strategically wants to disengage from are the Middle East and Europe. Let me first say a few words about the Middle East, which is the easier of the two from a strategic viewpoint. The document’s assertion that the region is now at peace is, surely, hype since the fundamental interests of the Palestinians for self-determination have not been addressed. And when the next crisis erupts, the doctrine of strategic restraint will be tested by the Israel Lobby, which dictates what the U.S. does in the Middle East.
Now to the European region. The Trump administration couches its sound policy of burden sharing in the military field in racist and authoritarian language that is likely to rile Europeans.
All students of European integration know that the U.S. was the military anchor that made European states that fought each other for centuries to put aside their historical ‘tribalism’ and create the largest and most successful supranational institution (the European Union) in history. Without the U.S. military, which provided collective security through NATO, there would have been no European Union.
The fatal mistake Europeans made at the end of the Cold War was the belief that U.S. and European strategic interests would always be aligned. But the U.S. is protected from Europe by a vast ocean. If communism, which had a transcontinental appeal and therefore threatened the U.S., has been defeated, Europeans will find it hard to explain why the U.S. should continue to shoulder the burden of their security other than for sentimental reasons. Russia is not a threat to the U.S. in the way the Soviet Union was.
The new Trump doctrine is likely to affect Europe in five substantial ways. First, there is no country in Europe that is powerful enough to step into the US’s shoes. The largest economy, Germany, is a military midget—having pursued a policy of demilitarisation since its defeat in World War Two. Second, the countries with nuclear weapons, the UK and France, are unlikely to share their nuclear deterrence with other countries. Indeed, even if they expressed willingness to do so, the commitment won’t be credible in times of crises when considerations of national security and survival will be at the top of national policy agendas.
Third, the process of European integration has slowed down. The idea of a European superstate seems to have lost its appeal in an era when immigration is being weaponised by far-right ethno-nationalist parties, which have greatly increased their vote shares in most countries.
Fourth, Trump sides with the ethno-nationalist parties against the liberal establishment parties that built the European Union. The document accuses the establishment parties of promoting policies that will lead to “civilizational erasure’’, or displacement of white people by ‘people of colour’. It opines that “Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European’’. And fifth, European economies have been sluggish, with an average GDP growth rate of about 1.6 percent in the last ten years, making it difficult to massively rearm without cutting welfare expenditures that have maintained relative peace and security in the region.
Unfettered transactionalism in Africa
The US has never had a distinct geopolitical strategy for Africa. During the Cold War, it heavily relied on former colonial powers (Britain, France, Portugal), apartheid South Africa, and the multilateral financial institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) to contain communism and deepen Western interests across the continent. Africa is the only region in which the White House document doesn’t articulate a geopolitical strategic policy. The focus on Africa, instead, is on its natural resources, including critical minerals, the need to end conflicts and Islamist terrorism “while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitment”, and shifting US-Africa relations from aid to trade and investments that can “generate profits for US business” and “help..in the competition for critical minerals and other resources”.
Trump, thus, sees Africa the way Western powers have always viewed the region—a site for extracting raw materials for industrial development in the West and a market for Western manufactured goods. He has repeatedly shown that he has an apocalyptic view of Africa, which, during his first term in office, he referred to as a continent of “shithole countries”. He has singled out the leaders of the two biggest economies south of the Sahara (South Africa and Nigeria) for bullying—accusing them of genocide, and threatening to invade Nigeria to save Christians.
US-Africa relations under Trump are likely to be volatile and infused with threats, coercion, and bullying. Trump’s art of deal-making mirrors the classic strategy of ‘escalation dominance’—he starts tough by making maximum demands, believing that his adversaries would be overawed by the might of US capabilities and cave. As the deals that have been made in his tariff war with various countries around the world have demonstrated, Trump revels in bullying the weak. Weak states have, thus, often made concessions to flatter him and forge ahead. But his record of confrontation with China also shows that he quickly climbs down when he is engaged in a conflict that he believes he cannot win.
It is unlikely that the US will dominate the current struggle for Africa’s resources and markets, given how far China has gone in dominating Africa’s trade, investments in mineral resources, and financing of infrastructure. What remains in doubt is Africa’s preparedness to be an active, self-interested and accountable party to the emerging scramble.
*References*
Coatsworth, J. H. 2004, “Liberalism and Big Sticks: The US Interventions in Latin America, 1898-2004”. Harvard University. file:///C:/Users/Bangali%20Bangura/Downloads/Liberalism_and_Big_Sticks_The_Politics_o.pdf
The White House 2025, National Security Strategy: of the United States. Washington: White House. Noember.
Threvithick, J. 2023, ‘Alarming Navy Intel Slide Warns Of China’s 200 Times Greater Shipbuilding Capacity’. The War Zone. July. https://www.twz.com/alarming-navy-intel-slide-warns-of-chinas-200-times-greater-shipbuilding-capacity.
Tuft, M.D. and Kusih, S 2023, Dying by the Sword: The Militarization of Foreign Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
UNRISD 1995, States of Disarray : The Social Effects of Globalisation. Geneva: UNRISD.
