Now that the much awaited National Security Strategy (NSS) December 2025 is out, it is interesting to compare the present version with the NSS dated December 2017 which was published by the first Trump administration. A broad-brush assessment is given below. Analysts will no doubt pore over the 33-page document of the NSS 2025 ( the NSS 2017 was 68 pages long!) and give their detailed assessment in the days and weeks ahead.
America First: Both the NSS 2017 and the NSS 2025 put “America First” and this manifests itself through the core foreign policy interest which is protection of homeland security. The 2017 document is clear: The fundamental responsibility is to protect the American people, the homeland and the American way of life. The 2025 document goes one step further and talks of “full control over borders, over immigration system and over transportation networks through which people come into the country – legally (emphasis mine) and illegally.” By clubbing legal and illegal immigration together, the NSS 2025 makes its intentions clear – to stop “destabilizing population flows” and allow the US full and sovereign control over who is admitted and who is not. The NSS 2025 proclaims that the era of mass migration is over and that a border controlled by the will of the American people as implemented by their government is fundamental to the survival of the US as a sovereign republic.
Western Hemisphere: The big change in emphasis between the two documents relates to the Western Hemisphere. In the 2017 document Western Hemisphere barely got a mention and figured before Africa and well after Indo-Pacific, Europe and even South and Central Asia. The NSS 2025 mentions this region first and foremost, stating categorically that the US will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine Goals for the Hemisphere. This region is categorised as America’s core foreign policy interest. The objective is to ensure that the Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the US. The US wants a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with it against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations, a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets. The NSS 2025 proudly states the US will assert and enforce a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.
Indo-Pacific: The NSS 2017 began the section under regions with Indo-Pacific. In the same edition of the NSS, it must be admitted that India found pride of place ahead of other countries in the region. For instance it stated: We welcome India’s emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defense partner. It also added that the US will expand its defence and security cooperation with India, a major defense partner of the US and support India’s growing relationships throughout the region. The NSS 2025 document of course calls the Indo-Pacific a core foreign policy interest – keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical minerals. While maintaining the importance of Asia and Indo-Pacific, the NSS 2025 has one reference to India: “We must continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through Quad.” US will also work to align the actions of its allies and partners with the joint interest in preventing domination by any single competitor nation – presumably a reference to China. No mention of ASEAN, much less its centrality.
China: The most difficult thing to do is in determining how the two NSS documents differ when it comes to China. The NSS 2017 document bluntly referred to China as a revisionist power (along with Russia) which wanted to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests. The NSS 2017 also said China sought to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor. The NSS 2025, it must be said, takes a different tack altogether. It focuses exclusively on the economic and trade dimensions of the ties between US and China. It thus says that the US will rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence. It adds that trade with China should be balanced and focused on non-sensitive factors. It expresses the hope that if America remains on a growth path—and can sustain that while maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing—the US should be headed from its present $30 trillion economy in 2025 to $40 trillion in the 2030s, putting the country in an enviable position to maintain its status as the world’s leading economy. The NSS 2025 also notes that the following must be tackled from any source, without naming China:
Predatory, state-directed subsidies and industrial strategies;
Unfair trading practices;
Job destruction and deindustrialization;
Grand-scale intellectual property theft and industrial espionage;
Threats against our supply chains that risk U.S. access to critical resources,
including minerals and rare earth elements;
Exports of fentanyl precursors that fuel America’s opioid epidemic; and
Propaganda, influence operations, and other forms of cultural subversion.
All in all, China is seen as an economic, trade and technological challenge, not a “pacing challenge” as characterised previously by Biden Administration officials. Also, the NSS 2025 is careful in eschewing characterisation of China as an ideological threat or a revisionist power, perhaps keeping in mind the forthcoming Xi-Trump meeting in China in April.
Taiwan: The NSS 2017 document proclaimed that the US will maintain strong ties with Taiwan in accordance with the “One China” policy including its commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide for Taiwan’s legitimate defense needs and deter coercion. The NSS 2025 says the following: There is, rightly, much focus on Taiwan, partly because of
Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production, but mostly because Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters. Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the U.S. economy. Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority. The US will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
One interesting interpretation of the above is that the NSS 2025 goes somewhat further than the NSS 2017 in spelling out the American redlines on Taiwan. The mention of military overmatch may be a red flag for China. Conversely, this may have reassured people in Taiwan that the US is not about to abandon it altogether. China experts will note that the NSS 2025 does not contain the formulation “the US does not support Taiwan independence”, something which used to be in the State Department’s fact sheet on Taiwan, but was quietly dropped in February 2025. This omission at the time drew protests from China. No mention of “One China” policy in NSS 2025 either as was the case in NSS 2017. The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry has welcomed the NSS 2025.
Russia: The NSS 2017 document bunched Russia along with China and called them revisionist powers out to get the US. A big and noticeable shift in the NSS 2025 is discernible with regard to Russia. The NSS 2025 states the following: It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and re-establish strategic stability with Russia (emphasis mine), as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state. The key phrase is “re-establishing strategic stability with Russia”. This is precisely what Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are trying to do in talks with Russian negotiators Yuri Ushakov and in particular, Kirill Dimitriev. I see it as code language for full-spectrum normalisation that the US Seeks with Russia, in the medium term, if not in the short term.
NATO and Europe: The difference between NSS 2017 and NSS 2025 with regard to NATO could not be starker. The former said: The NATO alliance of free and sovereign states is one of US’s great advantages over its competitors and the US remains committed to Article V of the Washington Treaty. On the other hand, the NSS 2025 does not mention NATO at all when it talks of core foreign policy interests. It merely says the US wants to support allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity. Specifically with regard to NATO, the NSS 2025 has this to say: 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. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter. The NSS 2025 also calls for an end to the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.
The NSS 2025 serves notice on Europe by saying the US will enable Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by Europe taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power. A far cry from the NSS 2017 which stated upfront that a strong and free Europe was of vital importance to the US.
Middle East: There is little doubt that Middle East occupies a lower priority in the current NSS 2025. The NSS 2017 stated that the US will retain the necessary American military presence in the region to protect itself and its allies. The latest NSS while noting the Middle East as a core foreign policy interest, states that the US wants to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass while avoiding the “forever wars” that bogged the US down in that region at great cost. Interestingly, no separate and substantive mention of Israel as an iron-clad ally.
Pakistan: Pakistan finds no mention at all in the NSS 2025 document, except in the context of President Trump having solved eight raging conflicts, one of them being the Indo-Pak one. In contrast, the NSS 2017 had references to Pakistan, for instance, as a country from which the US faces transnational terrorists and militants operating in its soil.
Tech Talk: The NSS 2025 identifies Tech as a core foreign policy interest and wishes to ensure that US Technology and US standards – particularly in AI, Biotech and Quantum computing – drive the world forward.
Multilateralism: There was a separate chapter in NSS 2017 on advancing American influence through diplomacy and achieving better outcomes in multilateral forums by exercising American leadership in the UN, WTO and even the IMF/ WB. No such thing at all in the current NSS 2025. This should hardly surprise anyone.
Conclusion: The NSS 2017 had a chapter entitled “conclusion”; the NSS 2025 ends abruptly without one, following the last section on Africa.
In conclusion, the NSS 2017 still had identifiable threads of continuity with previous American administrations. The NSS 2025, on the other hand, is a marked departure in terms of strategic priorities and represents unquestionable American foreign policy retrenchment from regions and institutions, both of which will have profound ramifications for countries around the world.
Ambassador Dr Mohan Kumar is Director General of the Motwani Jadeja Institute for American Studies at the O.P. Jindal Global University. Views expressed are personal.
Diplomacy and Geopolitics 