National Security Strategy

of the United States of America

November 2025

I. Introduction – What Is American Strategy?1
1. How American "Strategy" Went Astray.............................................1
2. President Trump's Necessary, Welcome Correction...............................	2
II. What Should the United States Want?	3
1. What Do We Want Overall?	3
2. What Do We Want In and From the World?5
III. What Are America's Available Means to Get What We Want?	6
IV. The Strategy...............................................................................8
1. Principles..............................................................................8
2. Priorities..............................................................................	11
3. The Regions............................................................................15
A. The Western Hemisphere.......................................................15
B. Asia..............................................................................	19
C. Europe...........................................................................25
D. The Middle East...............................................................27
E. Africa...........................................................................	29

I. Introduction – What Is American Strategy?

1. How American "Strategy" Went Astray

To ensure that America remains the world's strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come, our country needs a coherent, focused strategy for how we interact with the world. And to get that right, all Americans need to know what, exactly, it is we are trying to do and why.

A "strategy" is a concrete, realistic plan that explains the essential connection between ends and means : it begins from an accurate assessment of what is desired and what tools are available, or can realistically be created, to achieve the desired outcomes.

A strategy must evaluate, sort, and prioritize. Not every country, region, issue, or cause—however worthy—can be the focus of American strategy. The purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests; that is the sole focus of this strategy.

American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short—they have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes; and have often misjudged what we should want.

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. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.

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 welfareregulatory-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" that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend. 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 a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty. In sum, not only did our elites pursue a fundamentally undesirable and impossible goal, in doing so they undermined the very means necessary to achieve that goal: the character of our nation upon which its power, wealth, and decency were built.

2. President Trump's Necessary, Welcome Correction

None of this was inevitable. President Trump's first administration proved that with the right leadership making the right choices, all of the above could—and should—have been avoided, and much else achieved. He and his team successfully marshaled America's great strengths to correct course and begin ushering in a new golden age for our country. To continue the United States on that path is the overarching purpose of President Trump's second administration, and of this document.

The questions before us now are: 1) What should the United States want? 2) What are our available means to get it? and 3) How can we connect ends and means into a viable National Security Strategy?

II. What Should the United States Want?

1. What Do We Want Overall?

First and foremost, we want the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God-given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well-being and interests.

We want to protect this country, its people, its territory, its economy, and its way of life from military attack and hostile foreign influence, whether espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, cultural subversion, or any other threat to our nation.

We want full control over our borders, over our immigration system, and over transportation networks through which people come into our country—legally and illegally. We want a world in which migration is not merely "orderly" but one in which sovereign countries work together to stop rather than facilitate destabilizing population flows, and have full control over whom they do and do not admit.

We want a resilient national infrastructure that can withstand natural disasters, resist and thwart foreign threats, and prevent or mitigate any events that might harm the American people or disrupt the American economy. No adversary or danger should be able to hold America at risk.

We want to recruit, train, equip, and field the world's most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and—if necessary—win them quickly and decisively, with the lowest possible casualties to our forces. And we want a military in which every single servicemember is proud of their country and confident in their mission.

We want the world's most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent, plus next-generation missile defenses—including a Golden Dome for the American homeland—to protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies.

We want the world's strongest, most dynamic, most innovative, and most advanced economy. The U.S. economy is the bedrock of the American way of life, which promises and delivers widespread and broad-based prosperity, creates upward

mobility, and rewards hard work. Our economy is also the bedrock of our global position and the necessary foundation of our military.

We want the world's most robust industrial base. American national power depends on a strong industrial sector capable of meeting both peacetime and wartime production demands. That requires not only direct defense industrial production capacity but also defense-related production capacity. Cultivating American industrial strength must become the highest priority of national economic policy.

We want the world's most robust, productive, and innovative energy sector—one capable not just of fueling American economic growth but of being one of America's leading export industries in its own right.

We want to remain the world's most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country, and to build on these strengths. And we want to protect our intellectual property from foreign theft. America's pioneering spirit is a key pillar of our continued economic dominance and military superiority; it must be preserved.

We want to maintain the United States' unrivaled "soft power" through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests. In doing so, we will be unapologetic about our country's past and present while respectful of other countries' differing religions, cultures, and governing systems. "Soft power" that serves America's true national interest is effective only if we believe in our country's inherent greatness and decency.

Finally, we want the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible. We want an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age. We want a people who are proud, happy, and optimistic that they will leave their country to the next generation better than they found it. We want a gainfully employed citizenry—with no one sitting on the sidelines—who take satisfaction from knowing that their work is essential to the prosperity of our nation and to the well-being of individuals and families. This cannot be accomplished without growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.

2. What Do We Want In and From the World?

Achieving these goals requires marshaling every resource of our national power. Yet this strategy's focus is foreign policy. What are America's core foreign policy interests? What do we want in and from the world?

We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine;
We want to halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy while 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 materials;
We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe's civilizational self-confidence and Western identity;
We want 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 us down in that region at great cost; and
We want to ensure that U.S. technology and U.S. standards—particularly in AI, biotech, and quantum computing—drive the world forward.

These are the United States' core, vital national interests. While we also have others, these are the interests we must focus on above all others, and that we ignore or neglect at our peril.

III. What Are America's Available Means to Get What We Want?

America retains the world's most enviable position, with world-leading assets, resources, and advantages, including:

A still nimble political system that can course correct;
The world's single largest and most innovative economy, which both generates wealth we can invest in strategic interests and provides leverage over countries that want access to our markets;
The world's leading financial system and capital markets, including the dollar's global reserve currency status;
The world's most advanced, most innovative, and most profitable technology sector, which undergirds our economy, provides a qualitative edge to our military, and strengthens our global influence;
The world's most powerful and capable military;
A broad network of alliances, with treaty allies and partners in the world's most strategically important regions;
An enviable geography with abundant natural resources, no competing powers physically dominant in our Hemisphere, borders at no risk of military invasion, and other great powers separated by vast oceans;
Unmatched "soft power" and cultural influence; and
The courage, willpower, and patriotism of the American people.

In addition, through President Trump's robust domestic agenda, the United States is:

Re-instilling a culture of competence, rooting out so-called "DEI" and other discriminatory and anti-competitive practices that degrade our institutions and hold us back;
Unleashing our enormous energy production capacity as a strategic priority to fuel growth and innovation, and to bolster and rebuild the middle class;
Reindustrializing our economy, again to further support the middle class and control our own supply chains and production capacities;

Returning economic freedom to our citizens via historic tax cuts and deregulatory efforts, making the United States the premier place to do business and invest capital; and
Investing in emerging technologies and basic science, to ensure our continued prosperity, competitive advantage, and military dominance for future generations.

The goal of this strategy is to tie together all of these world-leading assets, and others, to strengthen American power and preeminence and make our country even greater than it ever has been.

IV. The Strategy

1. Principles

President 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."

President Trump has cemented his legacy as The President of Peace. In addition to the remarkable success achieved during his first term with the historic Abraham Accords, President Trump has leveraged his dealmaking ability to secure unprecedented peace in eight conflicts throughout the world over the course of just eight months of his second term. He negotiated peace between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the DRC and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and ended the war in Gaza with all living hostages returned to their families.

Stopping regional conflicts before they spiral into global wars that drag down whole continents is worthy of the Commander-in-Chief's attention, and a priority for this administration. A world on fire, where wars come to our shores, is bad for American interests. President Trump uses unconventional diplomacy, America's military might, and economic leverage to surgically extinguish embers of division between nuclear-capable nations and violent wars caused by centuries-long hatred.

President Trump has proven that American foreign, defense, and intelligence policies must be driven by the following basic principles:

Focused Definition of the National Interest Since at least the end of the Cold War, administrations have often published National Security Strategies that seek to expand the definition of America's "national interest" such that that almost no issue or endeavor is considered outside its scope. But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America's core national security interests shall be our focus.
Peace Through Strength Strength is the best deterrent. Countries or other actors sufficiently deterred from threatening American interests will not do

so. In addition, strength can enable us to achieve peace, because parties that respect our strength often seek our help and are receptive to our efforts to resolve conflicts and maintain peace. Therefore, the United States must maintain the strongest economy, develop the most advanced technologies, bolster our society's cultural health, and field the world's most capable military.

Predisposition to Non-Interventionism In the Declaration of Independence, America's founders laid down a clear preference for noninterventionism in the affairs of other nations and made clear the basis: just as all human beings possess God-given equal natural rights, all nations are entitled by "the laws of nature and nature's God" to a "separate and equal station" with respect to one another. For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible. Yet this predisposition should set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention.
Flexible Realism U.S. policy will be realistic about what is possible and desirable to seek in its dealings with other nations. We 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. We recognize and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours even as we push like-minded friends to uphold our shared norms, furthering our interests as we do so.
Primacy of Nations The world's fundamental political unit is and will remain the nation-state. It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty. The world works best when nations prioritize their interests. The United States will put our own interests first and, in our relations with other nations, encourage them to prioritize their own interests as well. We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests.

Sovereignty and Respect The United States will unapologetically protect our own sovereignty. This includes preventing its erosion by transnational and international organizations, attempts by foreign powers or entities to censor our discourse or curtail our citizens' free speech rights, lobbying and influence operations that seek to steer our policies or involve us in foreign conflicts, and the cynical manipulation of our immigration system to build up voting blocs loyal to foreign interests within our country. The United States will chart our own course in the world and determine our own destiny, free of outside interference.
Balance of Power The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries. As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others. This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world's great and middle powers. The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.
Pro-American Worker American policy will be pro-worker, not merely pro-growth, and it will prioritize our own workers. We must rebuild an economy in which prosperity is broadly based and widely shared, not concentrated at the top or localized in certain industries or a few parts of our country.
Fairness From military alliances to trade relations and beyond, the United States will insist on being treated fairly by other countries. We will no longer tolerate, and can no longer afford, free-riding, trade imbalances, predatory economic practices, and other impositions on our nation's historic goodwill that disadvantage our interests. As we want our allies to be rich and capable, so must our allies see that it is in their interest that the United States also remain rich and capable. In particular, we expect our allies to spend far more of their national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on their own defense, to start to make up for the enormous imbalances accrued over decades of much greater spending by the United States.

• Competence and Merit – American prosperity and security depend on the development and promotion of competence. Competence and merit are among our greatest civilizational advantages: where the best Americans are hired, promoted, and honored, innovation and prosperity follow. Should competence be destroyed or systematically discouraged, complex systems that we take for granted—from infrastructure to national security to education and research—will cease to function. Should merit be smothered, America's historic advantages in science, technology, industry, defense, and innovation will evaporate. The success of radical ideologies that seek to replace competence and merit with favored group status would render America unrecognizable and unable to defend itself. At the same time, we cannot allow meritocracy to be used as a justification to open America's labor market to the world in the name of finding "global talent" that undercuts American workers. In our every principle and action, America and Americans must always come first.

2. Priorities

• The Era of Mass Migration Is Over – Who a country admits into its borders—in what numbers and from where—will inevitably define the future of that nation. Any country that considers itself sovereign has the right and duty to define its future. Throughout history, sovereign nations prohibited uncontrolled migration and granted citizenship only rarely to foreigners, who also had to meet demanding criteria. The West's experience over the past decades vindicates this enduring wisdom. In countries throughout the world, mass migration has strained domestic resources, increased violence and other crime, weakened social cohesion, distorted labor markets, and undermined national security. The era of mass migration must end. Border security is the primary element of national security. We must protect our country from invasion, not just from unchecked migration but from cross-border threats such as terrorism, drugs, espionage, and human trafficking. A border controlled by the will of the American people as implemented by their government is fundamental to the survival of the United States as a sovereign republic.

Protection of Core Rights and Liberties The purpose of the American government is to secure the God-given natural rights of American citizens. To this end, departments and agencies of the United States Government have been granted fearsome powers. Those powers must never be abused, whether under the guise of "deradicalization," "protecting our democracy," or any other pretext. When and where those powers are abused, abusers must be held accountable. In particular, the rights of free speech, freedom of religion and of conscience, and the right to choose and steer our common government are core rights that must never be infringed. Regarding countries that share, or say they share, these principles, the United States will advocate strongly that they be upheld in letter and spirit. We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies.
Burden-Sharing and Burden-Shifting The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over. We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense. President Trump has set a new global standard with the Hague Commitment, which pledges NATO countries to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense and which our NATO allies have endorsed and must now meet. Continuing President Trump's approach of asking allies to assume primary responsibility for their regions, the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter. This approach ensures that burdens are shared and that all such efforts benefit from broader legitimacy. The model will be targeted partnerships that use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability. This strategic clarity will allow the United States to counter hostile and subversive influences efficiently while avoiding the overextension and diffuse focus that undermined past efforts. The United States will stand ready to help potentially through more favorable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, and defense procurement—those counties that willingly take more responsibility for security in their neighborhoods and align their export controls with ours.

Realignment Through Peace Seeking peace deals at the President's direction, even in regions and countries peripheral to our immediate core interests, is an effective way to increase stability, strengthen America's global influence, realign countries and regions toward our interests, and open new markets. The resources required boil down to presidential diplomacy, which our great nation can embrace only with competent leadership. The dividends—an end to longstanding conflicts, lives saved, new friends made—can vastly outweigh the relatively minor costs of time and attention.
Economic Security Finally, because economic security is fundamental to national security, we will work to further strengthen the American economy, with emphases on:
- o Balanced Trade The United States will prioritize rebalancing our trade relations, reducing trade deficits, opposing barriers to our exports, and ending dumping and other anti-competitive practices that hurt American industries and workers. We seek fair, reciprocal trade deals with nations that want to trade with us on a basis of mutual benefit and respect. But our priorities must and will be our own workers, our own industries, and our own national security.
- o Securing Access to Critical Supply Chains and Materials As Alexander Hamilton argued in our republic's earliest days, the United States must never be dependent on any outside power for core components—from raw materials to parts to finished products necessary to the nation's defense or economy. We must re-secure our own independent and reliable access to the goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life. This will require expanding American access to critical minerals and materials while countering predatory economic practices. Moreover, the Intelligence Community will monitor key supply chains and technological advances around the world to ensure we understand and mitigate vulnerabilities and threats to American security and prosperity.
- o Reindustrialization The future belongs to makers. The United States will reindustrialize its economy, "re-shore" industrial production, and encourage and attract investment in our economy and our workforce, with a focus on the critical and emerging technology

sectors that will define the future. We will do so through the strategic use of tariffs and new technologies that favor widespread industrial production in every corner of our nation, raise living standards for American workers, and ensure that our country is never again reliant on any adversary, present or potential, for critical products or components.

o Reviving our Defense Industrial Base A strong, capable military cannot exist without a strong, capable defense industrial base. The huge gap, demonstrated in recent conflicts, between low-cost drones and missiles versus the expensive systems required to defend against them has laid bare our need to change and adapt. America requires a national mobilization to innovate powerful defenses at low cost, to produce the most capable and modern systems and munitions at scale, and to re-shore our defense industrial supply chains. In particular, we must provide our warfighters with the full range of capabilities, ranging from low-cost weapons that can defeat most adversaries up to the most capable high-end systems necessary for a conflict with a sophisticated enemy. And to realize President Trump's vision of peace through strength, we must do so quickly. We will also encourage the revitalization of the industrial bases of all our allies and partners to strengthen collective defense.
o Energy Dominance Restoring American energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear) and reshoring the necessary key energy components is a top strategic priority. Cheap and abundant energy will produce well-paying jobs in the United States, reduce costs for American consumers and businesses, fuel reindustrialization, and help maintain our advantage in cutting-edge technologies such as AI. Expanding our net energy exports will also deepen relationships with allies while curtailing the influence of adversaries, protect our ability to defend our shores, and—when and where necessary—enables us to project power. We reject the disastrous "climate change" and "Net Zero" ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.
o Preserving and Growing America's Financial Sector Dominance The United States boasts the world's leading financial and capital

markets, which are pillars of American influence that afford policymakers significant leverage and tools to advance America's national security priorities. But our leadership position cannot be taken for granted. Preserving and growing our dominance entails leveraging our dynamic free market system and our leadership in digital finance and innovation to ensure that our markets continue to be the most dynamic, liquid, and secure and remain the envy of the world.

3. The Regions

It has become customary for documents such as this to mention every part of the world and issue, on the assumption that any oversight signifies a blind spot or a snub. As a result, such documents become bloated and unfocused—the opposite of what a strategy should be.

To focus and prioritize is to choose—to acknowledge that not everything matters equally, to everyone. It is not to assert that any peoples, regions, or countries are somehow intrinsically unimportant. The United States is by every measure the most generous nation in history—yet we cannot afford to be equally attentive to every region and every problem in the world.

The purpose of national security policy is the protection of core national interests—some priorities transcend regional confines. For instance, terrorist activity in an otherwise less consequential area might force our urgent attention. But leaping from that necessity to sustained attention to the periphery is a mistake.

A. Western Hemisphere: The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.

Our goals for the Western Hemisphere can be summarized as "Enlist and Expand." We will enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea. We will expand by cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation's appeal as the Hemisphere's economic and security partner of choice.

Enlist

American policy should focus on enlisting regional champions that can help create tolerable stability in the region, even beyond those partners' borders. These nations would help us stop illegal and destabilizing migration, neutralize cartels, nearshore manufacturing, and develop local private economies, among other things. We will reward and encourage the region's governments, political parties, and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy. But we must not overlook governments with different outlooks with whom we nonetheless share interests and who want to work with us.

The United States must reconsider our military presence in the Western Hemisphere. This means four obvious things:

A readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere, especially the missions identified in this strategy, and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years;
A more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis;
Targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades; and
Establishing or expanding access in strategically important locations.

The United States will prioritize commercial diplomacy, to strengthen our own economy and industries, using tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements as powerful tools. The goal is for our partner nations to build up their domestic economies, while an economically stronger and more sophisticated Western Hemisphere becomes an increasingly attractive market for American commerce and investment.

Strengthening critical supply chains in this Hemisphere will reduce dependencies and increase American economic resilience. The linkages created between America and our partners will benefit both sides while making it harder for non-Hemispheric competitors to increase their influence in the region. And even as we prioritize commercial diplomacy, we will work to strengthen our security partnerships—from weapons sales to intelligence sharing to joint exercises.

Expand

As we deepen our partnerships with countries with whom America presently has strong relations, we must look to expand our network in the region. We want other nations to see us as their partner of first choice, and we will (through various means) discourage their collaboration with others.

The Western Hemisphere is home to many strategic resources that America should partner with regional allies to develop, to make neighboring countries as well as our own more prosperous. The National Security Council will immediately begin a robust interagency process to task agencies, supported by our Intelligence Community's analytical arm, to identify strategic points and resources in the Western Hemisphere with a view to their protection and joint development with regional partners.

Non-Hemispheric competitors have made major inroads into our Hemisphere, both to disadvantage us economically in the present, and in ways that may harm us strategically in the future. Allowing these incursions without serious pushback is another great American strategic mistake of recent decades.

The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity—a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region. The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence—from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.

Some foreign influence will be hard to reverse, given the political alignments between certain Latin American governments and certain foreign actors. However, many governments are not ideologically aligned with foreign powers but are instead attracted to doing business with them for other reasons, including low costs

and fewer regulatory hurdles. The United States has achieved success in rolling back outside influence in the Western Hemisphere by demonstrating, with specificity, how many hidden costs—in espionage, cybersecurity, debt-traps, and other ways—are embedded in allegedly "low cost" foreign assistance. We should accelerate these efforts, including by utilizing U.S. leverage in finance and technology to induce countries to reject such assistance.

In the Western Hemisphere—and everywhere in the world—the United States should make clear that American goods, services, and technologies are a far better buy in the long run, because they are higher quality and do not come with the same kind of strings as other countries' assistance. That said, we will reform our own system to expedite approvals and licensing—again, to make ourselves the partner of first choice. The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world.

Every U.S. official working in or on the region must be up to speed on the full picture of detrimental outside influence while simultaneously applying pressure and offering incentives to partner countries to protect our Hemisphere.

Successfully protecting our Hemisphere also requires closer collaboration between the U.S. Government and the American private sector. All our embassies must be aware of major business opportunities in their country, especially major government contracts. Every U.S. Government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.

The U.S. Government will identify strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region and present these opportunities for assessment by every U.S. Government financing program, including but not limited to those within the Departments of State, War, and Energy; the Small Business Administration; the International Development Finance Corporation; the Export-Import Bank; and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. We should also partner with regional governments and businesses to build scalable and resilient energy infrastructure, invest in critical mineral access, and harden existing and future cyber communications networks that take full advantage of American

encryption and security potential. The aforementioned U.S. Government entities should be used to finance some of the costs of purchasing U.S. goods abroad.

The United States must also resist and reverse measures such as targeted taxation, unfair regulation, and expropriation that disadvantage U.S. businesses. The terms of our agreements, especially with those countries that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage, must be sole-source contracts for our companies. At the same time, we should make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region.

B. Asia: Win the Economic Future, Prevent Military Confrontation

Leading from a Position of Strength

President Trump single-handedly reversed more than three decades of mistaken American assumptions about China: namely, that by opening our markets to China, encouraging American business to invest in China, and outsourcing our manufacturing to China, we would facilitate China's entry into the so-called "rulesbased international order." This did not happen. China got rich and powerful, and used its wealth and power to its considerable advantage. American elites—over four successive administrations of both political parties—were either willing enablers of China's strategy or in denial.

The Indo-Pacific is already the source of almost half the world's GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), and one third based on nominal GDP. That share is certain to grow over the 21st century. Which means that the Indo-Pacific is already and will continue to be among the next century's key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds. To thrive at home, we must successfully compete there—and we are. President Trump signed major agreements during his October 2025 travels that further deepen our powerful ties of commerce, culture, technology, and defense, and reaffirm our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

America retains tremendous assets—the world's strongest economy and military, world-beating innovation, unrivaled "soft power," and a historic record of benefiting our allies and partners—that enable us to compete successfully. President Trump is building alliances and strengthening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific that will be the bedrock of security and prosperity long into the future.

Economics: The Ultimate Stakes

Since the Chinese economy reopened to the world in 1979, commercial relations between our two countries have been and remain fundamentally unbalanced. What began as a relationship between a mature, wealthy economy and one of the world's poorest countries has transformed into one between near-peers, even as, until very recently, America's posture remained rooted in those past assumptions.

China adapted to the shift in U.S. tariff policy that began in 2017 in part by strengthening its hold on supply chains, especially in the world's low- and middleincome (i.e., per capita GDP $13,800 or less) countries—among the greatest economic battlegrounds of the coming decades. China's exports to low-income countries doubled between 2020 and 2024. The United States imports Chinese goods indirectly from middlemen and Chinese-built factories in a dozen countries, including Mexico. China's exports to low-income countries are today nearly four times its exports to the United States. When President Trump first took office in 2017, China's exports to the United States stood at 4 percent of its GDP but have since fallen to slightly over 2 percent of its GDP. China continues, however, to export to the United States through other proxy countries.

Going forward, we will rebalance America's economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence. Trade with China should be balanced and focused on non-sensitive factors. If America remains on a growth path—and can sustain that while maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing—we should be headed from our present $30 trillion economy in 2025 to $40 trillion in the 2030s, putting our country in an enviable position to maintain our status as the world's leading economy. Our ultimate goal is to lay the foundation for long-term economic vitality.

Importantly, this must be accompanied by a robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific. This combined approach can become a virtuous cycle as strong American deterrence opens up space for more disciplined economic action, while more disciplined economic action leads to greater American resources to sustain deterrence in the long term.

To accomplish this, several things are essential.

First, the United States must protect and defend our economy and our people from harm, from any country or source. This means ending (among other things):

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.

Second, the United States must work with our treaty allies and partners—who together add another $35 trillion in economic power to our own $30 trillion national economy (together constituting more than half the world economy)—to counteract predatory economic practices and use our combined economic power to help safeguard our prime position in the world economy and ensure that allied economies do not become subordinate to any competing power. We must continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through continued quadrilateral cooperation with Australia, Japan, and the United States ("the Quad"). Moreover, we will also work to align the actions of our allies and partners with our joint interest in preventing domination by any single competitor nation.

The United States must at the same time invest in research to preserve and advance our advantage in cutting-edge military and dual-use technology, with emphasis on the domains where U.S. advantages are strongest. These include undersea, space, and nuclear, as well as others that will decide the future of military power, such as AI, quantum computing, and autonomous systems, plus the energy necessary to fuel these domains.

Additionally, the U.S. Government's critical relationships with the American private sector help maintain surveillance of persistent threats to U.S. networks, including critical infrastructure. This in turn enables the U.S. Government's ability to conduct real-time discovery, attribution, and response (i.e., network defense and

offensive cyber operations) while protecting the competitiveness of the U.S. economy and bolstering the resilience of the American technology sector. Improving these capabilities will also require considerable deregulation to further improve our competitiveness, spur innovation, and increase access to America's natural resources. In doing so, we should aim to restore a military balance favorable to the United States and to our allies in the region.

In addition to maintaining economic preeminence and consolidating our alliance system into an economic group, the United States must execute robust diplomatic and private sector-led economic engagement in those countries where the majority of global economic growth is likely to occur over the coming decades.

America First diplomacy seeks to rebalance global trade relationships. We have made clear to our allies that America's current account deficit is unsustainable. We must encourage Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and other prominent nations in adopting trade policies that help rebalance China's economy toward household consumption, because Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East cannot alone absorb China's enormous excess capacity. The exporting nations of Europe and Asia can also look to middle-income countries as a limited but growing market for their exports.

China's state-led and state-backed companies excel in building physical and digital infrastructure, and China has recycled perhaps $1.3 trillion of its trade surpluses into loans to its trading partners. America and its allies have not yet formulated, much less executed, a joint plan for the so-called "Global South," but together possess tremendous resources. Europe, Japan, South Korea, and others hold net foreign assets of $7 trillion. International financial institutions, including the multilateral development banks, possess combined assets of $1.5 trillion. While mission creep has undermined some of these institutions' effectiveness, this administration is dedicated to using its leadership position to implement reforms that ensure they serve American interests.

What differentiates America from the rest of the world—our openness, transparency, trustworthiness, commitment to freedom and innovation, and free market capitalism—will continue to make us the global partner of first choice. America still holds the dominant position in the key technologies that the world needs. We should present partners with a suite of inducements—for instance, high-

tech cooperation, defense purchases, and access to our capital markets—that tip decisions in our favor.

President Trump's May 2025 state visits to Persian Gulf countries demonstrated the power and appeal of American technology. There, the President won the Gulf States' support for America's superior AI technology, deepening our partnerships. America should similarly enlist our European and Asian allies and partners, including India, to cement and improve our joint positions in the Western Hemisphere and, with regard to critical minerals, in Africa. We should form coalitions that use our comparative advantages in finance and technology to build export markets with cooperating countries. America's economic partners should no longer expect to earn income from the United States through overcapacity and structural imbalances but instead pursue growth through managed cooperation tied to strategic alignment and by receiving long-term U.S. investment.

With the world's deepest and most efficient capital markets, America can help lowincome countries develop their own capital markets and bind their currencies more closely to the dollar, ensuring the dollar's future as the world's reserve currency.

Our greatest advantages remain our system of government and dynamic free market economy. Yet we cannot assume that our system's advantages will prevail by default. A national security strategy is, therefore, essential.

Deterring Military Threats

In the long term, maintaining American economic and technological preeminence is the surest way to deter and prevent a large-scale military conflict.

A favorable conventional military balance remains an essential component of strategic competition. 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. We 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.

We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain. But the American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone. Our allies must step up and spend—and more importantly do —much more for collective defense. America's diplomatic efforts should focus on pressing our First Island Chain allies and partners to allow the U.S. military greater access to their ports and other facilities, to spend more on their own defense, and most importantly to invest in capabilities aimed at deterring aggression. This will interlink maritime security issues along the First Island Chain while reinforcing U.S. and allies' capacity to deny any attempt to seize Taiwan or achieve a balance of forces so unfavorable to us as to make defending that island impossible.

A related security challenge is the potential for any competitor to control the South China Sea. This could allow a potentially hostile power to impose a toll system over one of the world's most vital lanes of commerce or—worse—to close and reopen it at will. Either of those two outcomes would be harmful to the U.S. economy and broader U.S. interests. Strong measures must be developed along with the deterrence necessary to keep those lanes open, free of "tolls," and not subject to arbitrary closure by one country. This will require not just further investment in our military—especially naval—capabilities, but also strong cooperation with every nation that stands to suffer, from India to Japan and beyond, if this problem is not addressed.

Given President Trump's insistence on increased burden-sharing from Japan and South Korea, we must urge these countries to increase defense spending, with a focus on the capabilities—including new capabilities—necessary to deter adversaries and protect the First Island Chain. We will also harden and strengthen our military presence in the Western Pacific, while in our dealings with Taiwan and Australia we maintain our determined rhetoric on increased defense spending.

Preventing conflict requires a vigilant posture in the Indo-Pacific, a renewed defense industrial base, greater military investment from ourselves and from allies and partners, and winning the economic and technological competition over the long term.

C. Promoting European Greatness

American officials have become used to thinking about European problems in terms of insufficient military spending and economic stagnation. There is truth to this, but Europe's real problems are even deeper.

Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness.

But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.

Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.

This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe's relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia's war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.

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 reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.

The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe's, especially Germany's, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world's largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments' subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis.

Yet Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States. Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity. European sectors from manufacturing to technology to energy remain among the world's most robust. Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.

American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations' individual character and history. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.

Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory. We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe.

America is, understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent and, of course, to Britain and Ireland. The character of these countries is also strategically important because we count upon creative, capable, confident, democratic allies to establish conditions of stability and security. We want to work with aligned countries that want to restore their former greatness.

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.

Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize:

Reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia;
Enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power;
Cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations;
Opening European markets to U.S. goods and services and ensuring fair treatment of U.S. workers and businesses;
Building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges;
Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance; and
Encouraging Europe to take action to combat mercantilist overcapacity, technological theft, cyber espionage, and other hostile economic practices.

D. The Middle East: Shift Burdens, Build Peace

For half a century at least, American foreign policy has prioritized the Middle East above all other regions. The reasons are obvious: the Middle East was for decades the world's most important supplier of energy, was a prime theater of superpower competition, and was rife with conflict that threatened to spill into the wider world and even to our own shores.

Today, at least two of those dynamics no longer hold. Energy supplies have diversified greatly, with the United States once again a net energy exporter. Superpower competition has given way to great power jockeying, in which the United States retains the most enviable position, reinforced by President Trump's

successful revitalization of our alliances in the Gulf, with other Arab partners, and with Israel.

Conflict remains the Middle East's most troublesome dynamic, but there is today less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe. Iran—the region's chief destabilizing force—has been greatly weakened by Israeli actions since October 7, 2023, and President Trump's June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer, which significantly degraded Iran's nuclear program. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains thorny, but thanks to the ceasefire and release of hostages President Trump negotiated, progress toward a more permanent peace has been made. Hamas's chief backers have been weakened or stepped away. Syria remains a potential problem, but with American, Arab, Israeli, and Turkish support may stabilize and reassume its rightful place as an integral, positive player in the region.

As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America's historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede. Instead, the region will increasingly become a source and destination of international investment, and in industries well beyond oil and gas including nuclear energy, AI, and defense technologies. We can also work with Middle East partners to advance other economic interests, from securing supply chains to bolstering opportunities to develop friendly and open markets in other parts of the world such as Africa.

Middle East partners are demonstrating their commitment to combatting radicalism, a trendline American policy should continue to encourage. But doing so will require dropping America's misguided experiment with hectoring these nations—especially the Gulf monarchies—into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government. We should encourage and applaud reform when and where it emerges organically, without trying to impose it from without. The key to successful relations with the Middle East is accepting the region, its leaders, and its nations as they are while working together on areas of common interest.

America will always have core interests in ensuring that Gulf energy supplies do not fall into the hands of an outright enemy, that the Strait of Hormuz remain open, that the Red Sea remain navigable, that the region not be an incubator or exporter of terror against American interests or the American homeland, and that Israel remain secure. We can and must address this threat ideologically and militarily

without decades of fruitless "nation-building" wars. We also have a clear interest in expanding the Abraham Accords to more nations in the region and to other countries in the Muslim world.

But the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over—not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was. It is rather emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment—a trend that should be welcomed and encouraged. In fact, President Trump's ability to unite the Arab world at Sharm el-Sheikh in pursuit of peace and normalization will allow the United States to finally prioritize American interests.

E. Africa

For far too long, American policy in Africa has focused on providing, and later on spreading, liberal ideology. The United States should instead look to partner with select countries to ameliorate conflict, foster mutually beneficial trade relationships, and transition from a foreign aid paradigm to an investment and growth paradigm capable of harnessing Africa's abundant natural resources and latent economic potential.

Opportunities for engagement could include negotiating settlements to ongoing conflicts (e.g., DRC-Rwanda, Sudan), and preventing new ones (e.g., Ethiopia-Eritrea-Somalia), as well as action to amend our approach to aid and investment (e.g., the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act). And we must remain wary of resurgent Islamist terrorist activity in parts of Africa while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitments.

The United States should transition from an aid-focused relationship with Africa to a trade- and investment-focused relationship, favoring partnerships with capable, reliable states committed to opening their markets to U.S. goods and services. An immediate area for U.S. investment in Africa, with prospects for a good return on investment, include the energy sector and critical mineral development. Development of U.S.-backed nuclear energy, liquid petroleum gas, and liquified natural gas technologies can generate profits for U.S. businesses and help us in the competition for critical minerals and other resources.