The new National Security Strategy (NSS) released last Thursday by the Trump administration sent shockwaves across Europe, marking what is expected to be a fundamental shift in transatlantic relations.
On Asia, the strategy looks more consistent with previous policies, and includes familiar tropes emphasizing the importance of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific and working with a “network of alliances” to contain and manage China.
But 2025 nss President Donald Trump’s second administration marks a shift in how the U.S. views the U.S.-China rivalry, laying out the “ultimate bet” for Asia’s future focused on striking trade deals, securing trade routes and “maintaining economic primacy.”
Even as Trump’s chaotic tariff policy has unsettled US partners in Asia, the new security document argues that economic stability, led by the US, is the best basis for deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.
It added, “We will rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence… Our ultimate goal is to lay the foundation for long-term economic vitality.”
The strategy outlines leveraging American trade, technological, and military power to bring both allies and adversaries into line with American interests, and is replete with the terminology of “America First.”
Who needs democracy?
Trump’s power is over First security strategy in 2017 On “great power competition,” which warned China and Russia were both “trying to shape the world contrary to American values and interests.” Also missing from the new 29-page document is the long-standing portrayal of China as a systemic rival pursuing an alternative world order.
Instead the document is full of praise for Trump, claiming that the US president reversed decades of “misconceived American assumptions” about China “alone”, namely the idea that free trade would lead Beijing to embrace liberal values.
It is also full of extreme right-wing rhetoric against the “sovereignty-threatening intrusions” of “intrusive international organizations.”
It said, “It is natural and appropriate for all countries to put their interests first and protect their sovereignty.”
The US will avoid “imposing democratic or other social changes” on other countries while pursuing “good and peaceful commercial relations”.
“The external influence of larger, richer and stronger countries is a timeless truth of international relations,” the document states.
This is a completely different tone from the 2017 NSS which held China responsible for “expanding its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others”.
“The democracy agenda is clearly over,” Emily Harding, director of the Intelligence, National Security and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, wrote in her letter. Analysis of document.
She writes, “Beijing would love a clear declaration that the US priority is non-interference in the affairs of other countries and respecting the sovereignty of states.”
Taiwan’s microchips on an island chain
When China talks about sovereignty, it is often in the context of Taiwan, a democratic island claimed by Beijing, which has vowed to “reunify” Taiwan with the mainland, using force if necessary.
The NSS devotes a considerable amount of space to Taiwan. And although the new US security document highlights Taiwan’s importance as a floating semiconductor factory with a strategic position in the South China Sea, Taipei was still happy to see the US saying it would prevent cross-Strait conflict.
“Preventing conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military surplus, is a priority,” the document said. “We will also maintain our long-standing declaratory policy on Taiwan, which means that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.”
Although the US does not formally recognize Taiwan, Washington is the island’s main security beneficiary.
There is some trepidation among experts that the new security strategy has softened its tone, saying Washington “does not support” the unilateral change rather than “oppose” it, as previously written. However, this is a far cry from speculation that the Trump administration would bow to Beijing’s wishes and declare “opposition” to Taiwan independence.
Taiwan’s Defense Minister Wellington Kuo welcomed the NSS on Saturday, saying it was “strongly promoting that countries in the Indo-Pacific region work together to establish an effective form of mass deterrence.”
“The US side should handle the Taiwan question with utmost prudence and stop involving and supporting ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces in demanding independence by force or opposing reunification by force,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Monday.
Pay and Join
With Taiwan’s strategically important position on the South China Sea shipping lanes having “major implications for the US economy”, the NSS warned that a “potentially hostile power” could “impose a toll system” on the waterway or even “close and reopen it at will.”
This is where the strategy calls on U.S. partners in Asia to “step up and spend, and more importantly, do more, for collective defense.”
Japan and South Korea are mentioned briefly here in the context of increased spending and defense capabilities to “deter adversaries and defend the first island chain,” a strategic term that describes Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines as deterring China’s navy from the open Pacific.
However, the threat posed to Japan and South Korea by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program is excluded from the document.
Also missing is the Philippines’ role as a major strategic partner, which frequently hosts US military assets and has a decades-old mutual defense treaty with the US.
The only mention of India in the document also comes in the context of Indo-Pacific deterrence through economic cooperation. The US aims to “encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security” by improving “commercial (and other) relations with India”. This also includes India’s continued participation in the US-led regional strategic forum “Quad” which includes Japan and Australia.
In one of several apparently contradictory statements found in the NSS, as the Trump administration has avoided multilateral fora, the document also called on the US to strengthen its “alliance system into an economic bloc”, even if through “private sector-led economic partnerships”.
Huong Le Thu, deputy director for Asia at the International Crisis Group, told DW News last week that the document makes it clear that the Trump administration believes “maintaining an economic edge is the way to prevent conflicts in the Indo Pacific.”
He said most U.S. Asian allies are “ambivalent” about the document because it comes as no major surprise.
writing for council on foreign relationsChina expert David Sachs criticized the Indo-Pacific strategy as “China-centric”.
“Other countries in the region are valued only insofar as they can help the United States win economic competition with China and prevent conflict with Beijing.”
“US treaty ally the Philippines is not even mentioned. Nor are the Pacific Islands or most of the countries in Southeast Asia. A strategy that plays to US forces would make US allies and partners the starting point and nest China within a broader Indo-Pacific strategy,” he writes.
Trump’s ‘Monroe Doctrine’
However, perhaps of more concern to Beijing than Washington’s continued Indo-Pacific deterrence should be the central theme of the security document, a strategic reorientation towards the Western Hemisphere, accompanied by a pledge to curb the activities of “non-hemispheric competitors”, i.e. China.
It emphasizes that the US will leverage its power to build alliances in Latin America based on “everything from control of military installations, ports and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets – eliminating adverse external influence”.
“This makes clear the long-standing reality of America’s competition with China: Beijing seeks to distract the United States from maintaining the status quo in the Indo-Pacific by carrying out adversarial activities in the Western Hemisphere,” writes Alexander B. Gray, a nonresident senior fellow at the GeoStrategy Initiative. at the atlantic council,
The NSS is not a legally binding document, and serves more as a signal to domestic audiences, allies, and adversaries than as a prediction of action. Still, it shows where American foreign policy is headed.
Harding from CSIS writes that although Trump was elected on such promises, “today’s selfish choices could lead to a much lonelier, weaker, and more fragmented future.”
Edited by: Keith Walker