Opinion: Trump’s National Security Strategy is more of a MAGA rant than foreign-policy playbook

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U.S. President Donald Trump has a lot of personal gripes when it comes to Europe and the EU.ERIC VIDAL/Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) shares many features with earlier versions issued under previous administrations, including its hubristic language, self-serving declarations and political talking points.

What most distinguishes Mr. Trump’s second attempt at articulating a coherent national security philosophy – he issued his inaugural NSS during his first term in the White House in 2017 – is just how much attention it is getting from people who should know better.

For almost four decades, U.S. presidents have been required by law to periodically report to Congress on their overarching foreign-policy priorities and how they intend to go about pursuing them. The usefulness of this exercise is debatable. The NSS has never been a reliable predictor of the future actions of any administration. The foreign-policy doctrines of most U.S. presidents only tend to emerge when they are in the throes of international security crises.

Former president Joe Biden’s NSS was already out-of-date when it was published in late 2022. While it talked about standing up to authoritarian regimes, Mr. Biden’s piecemeal approach to arming Ukraine spoke volumes about the limits of his pro-democracy agenda. Mr. Biden’s NSS insisted the U.S. would “hold states accountable for violations and abuses of human rights.” But amid surging inflation, he made a beeline to Saudi Arabia to plead for more oil production, leading to his infamous fist-bump with the very dictator he had previously vowed to ostracize.

So, all the hyperventilating over Mr. Trump’s latest NSS is overdone. This is much more a MAGA rant than a serious foreign-policy blueprint. Nothing in it should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Mr. Trump’s disdain of convention and everything in it should be taken with massive grain of salt.

Opinion: Trump’s National Security Strategy is hostile to Canada – and the democratic world

Mind you, it is easy to see why the document might make some European leaders feel uneasy. It levels a frontal attack on their continent’s insufficient military spending, economic stagnation and censorship of free speech. Europe, it warns, is facing “civilizational erasure” as national identities are subsumed by migration and European Union regulations.

“Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” the Trump NSS says, suggesting the U.S. should intervene on behalf of “patriotic European parties” to do so.

Mr. Trump has a lot of personal gripes when it comes to Europe. He resents the moralizing of European leaders who resist his methods for ending the Russia-Ukraine war, but at the same time are politically unwilling or unable to make good on their NATO spending commitments. It is actually a good thing for NATO that Mr. Trump seeks to hold their feet to the fire. The NSS does that, at least.

To be sure, the latest NSS is shockingly nonchalant about the military threat posed by China and Russia. But this is likely a deliberate choice dictated by the Trump administration’s attempts to engineer a ceasefire in Ukraine and reach a new trade deal with China. Antagonizing Moscow or Beijing would not serve either purpose.

The Trump administration, the NSS says, seeks to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia” and enable Ukraine’s “survival as a viable state.” But as the world has already witnessed multiple times now, Mr. Trump goes from hawkish to dovish and back again with alacrity. He is above all interested in deals.

U.S. President Donald Trump said ‘we’ll work it out’ when asked about the state of trade discussions with Canada on Sunday after he met with the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Friday.

Reuters

This is another reason why the alarm some experts have expressed over the NSS’s section on restoring American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere is overblown. The section, in part at least, appears to be an attempt to justify the Trump administration’s current military actions aimed at destabilizing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and its financial backstops in support of Argentinian President Javier Milei’s pro-market (and pro-MAGA) reform government.

Besides, there is nothing surprising or condemnable about Washington wanting to limit the influence of non-Hemispheric competitors – read China – in its own backyard. Would this revival of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which the NSS repackages as the “Trump Corollary,” constrain Canada’s ability to forge its own trade relationships and military partnerships? Maybe. But it is in Canada’s interests to align with Washington on hemispheric security and in keeping our critical minerals and advanced technologies out of Chinese hands. Ottawa had already begun largely following this playbook under Mr. Biden, anyway.

Mr. Trump’s repeated threats against Canada’s sovereignty – though now fewer and farther between – have understandably rattled members of this country’s foreign-policy and security establishment. But the NSS is neither hostile toward Canada – it makes no mention of making Canada the 51st state – nor are its stated goals antithetical to this country’s own interests.

Then again, nor can one take any of its contents too seriously. Mr. Trump bores easily and rarely telegraphs his behaviour in foreign-policy matters beforehand.