The White House is heralding a new approach to national security and foreign policy under President Donald Trump, leaving behind decades of policy that the president characterized as “weakness.” According to the National Security Strategy (NSS) published last week, America’s national security and foreign policy priorities no longer include foreign intervention, regime change in the name of democracy, unqualified coalition-building, or global expansion of the “free market,” but have instead shifted to economic protectionism, burden-sharing with allies, international deal-making, and eschewing foreign military entanglements.

“Over the past nine months, we have brought our nation — and the world — back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster,” the president wrote in a letter introducing the new policy shifts. “After four years of weakness, extremism, and deadly failures, my administration has moved with urgency and historic speed to restore American strength at home and abroad, and bring peace and stability to our world.”

“This document is a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth,” the president continued. “The purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests; that is the sole focus of this strategy,” the White House clarified. “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,” the White House policy document asserted. “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.”

The White House faulted foreign policy “elites” over the past several decades for overburdening the U.S. economically with commitments to foreign nations that were not always in the interest of the American people, exposing American workers and families to the predatory trade practices of foreign nations, while simultaneously sapping the nation’s economy for the sake of “a massive welfare-regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex,” and ultimately involving the nation in a host of foreign conflicts in which the U.S. had little or no stake, costing billions of dollars and thousand of American lives. “None of this was inevitable,” the White House lamented, asserting that “with the right leadership making the right choices, all of the above could — and should — have been avoided, and much else achieved.”

So what is the new White House approach to foreign policy, and how does it differ from that of previous administrations?

‘America First’

The president’s new approach to foreign policy rejects both the progressive ideological colonialism of Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s administrations as well as the economic globalism, nation-building, and enforced democracy pursued by presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. “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 … almost no issue or endeavor is considered outside its scope,” the Trump White House observed. “But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America’s core national security interests shall be our focus,” it continued. The Trump administration’s foreign policy was described in the NSS document as “not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America — or, in two words, ‘America First.’”

“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,” the Trump White House declared. The administration’s goal of protecting the U.S. “from military attack and hostile foreign influence” does not initially seem to differ from the stated goals of prior presidents, but the Trump White House also lists “espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, [and] cultural subversion” as threats not just to the U.S. as a country but to “its people, its territory, its economy, and its way of life…”

Furthermore, while immigration — both legal and illegal — progressively increased starting with Clinton’s administration in 1993, the Trump White House identified immigration as a national security threat. “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,” the Trump White House stated. “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.”

Key principles the Trump White House will advance include “peace through strength” and a “predisposition to non-interventionism.” The president touted military and economic strength as “the best deterrent,” preventing other nations from taking hostile action against the U.S. “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,” the Trump White House proclaimed. This preference for brokering peace deals between foreign entities in conflict dovetails with the administration’s “predisposition to non-interventionism,” a stark departure from the foreign policy stances adopted by prior Republican presidents. Citing America’s Founding Fathers, the president’s NSS stated that “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.”

However, the Trump White House avoided embracing a blanket isolationist policy. “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.”

In another departure from the typical policies held by other Republican presidents, the Trump administration also insisted on “being treated fairly by other countries,” both in matters of defense and trade. “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,” the president’s foreign policy declaration charged. “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,” it continued.

Alongside immigration policy and “fairness” in international trade and economics, the Trump administration also made clear that it will favor American workers over corporate interests. “American policy will be pro-worker, not merely pro-growth, and it will prioritize our own workers,” the Trump White House announced. “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.”

First Things First

Presidents like the elder Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden adopted significantly different priorities than the Trump administration. While H.W. Bush and Clinton both laid substantial emphasis on market-opening and global trade in their foreign policies, Clinton would later be joined by Obama and Biden in shifting U.S. focus to non-military threats, chiefly climate change theories, although the Biden administration also numbered so-called disinformation among the national security threats it would seek to address. The Trump White House instead emphasized economic protectionism and the reshoring of American jobs and, with them, critical infrastructure, in contrast to the first Bush and Clinton administrations, and rejected the “net zero” climate policies embraced by Obama and Biden, which the Trump administration contends have crippled U.S. energy dominance.

The Trump administration’s goal of achieving and facilitating global peace aligns with the same goal advanced by the younger Bush but is to be achieved in a radically different way. Where the W. Bush administration aggressively deployed U.S. military forces and carried out regime change operations, predominantly in the Middle East, the Trump administration prefers brokering deals to bring an end to international conflicts, without necessitating the costly use of U.S. military forces.

The first “priority” named by the Trump White House centered on immigration. “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,” the Trump NSS averred. “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,” the Trump White House continued. Describing border security as “fundamental to the survival of the United States as a sovereign republic,” it continued, “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.”

The Trump administration also took aim at both the Obama and Biden administrations and their abuse of constitutional authorities and government resources, affirming a dedication to the “core rights and liberties” of the American people. “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,” the Trump White House affirmed. “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,” it continued. The Trump administration also warned “countries that share, or say they share, these principles” that the U.S. “will advocate strongly that they be upheld in letter and spirit” and “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.”

Another priority enumerated by the Trump White House was that of “burden-sharing and burden-shifting” among allies, particularly the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). “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,” the Trump administration asserted. One aspect of achieving this priority is found in the president’s Hague Commitment, which commits NATO member states to spending 5% of their annual GDP on defense. “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,” the NSS announced.

The network will rely on “targeted partnerships” that “use economic tools to align incentives,” sharing economic burdens among allies and subsequently achieving accountability and necessary reforms to prevent the abuse of defense funds. Under the new policy, the U.S. will reward participating nations with preferential trade and commercial treatment, technology sharing, and defense procurement. “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 Trump administration also touted a priority of “realignment through peace,” positing that U.S. influence in brokering international peace deals and treaties “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 strategy, the White House warned, relies almost solely on “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.”

The final priority delineated by the Trump White House was “economic security,” a key aspect of the president’s successful 2024 campaign, alongside his immigration policy. Achieving economic security, the Trump White House suggested, necessitates a handful of core components: balanced trade, securing access to critical supply chains and materials, reindustrialization and the reshoring of American manufacturing jobs in particular, reviving the defense industry, energy dominance (namely “in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear” energy), and “preserving and growing” U.S. financial sector dominance.

‘The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine’

In 1823, when the U.S. as a nation was less than 50 years old, President James Monroe articulated a foreign policy strategy that would, in later years, come to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. This imperative held that political or military interventions into the Western Hemisphere ought to be considered a potential threat to U.S. sovereignty and national security. Monroe’s declaration came at a time when the Spanish Empire still held dominion over a handful of colonies in what is today considered Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine has been named as a key element of successful foreign policy by presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.

In his administration’s new NSS, Trump declared, “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.” This self-described “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” 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.” Enforcing the Trump Corollary will require “enlisting” Western Hemisphere allies to “control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea,” as well as “cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice.”

Regarding China, the president departed slightly from the position he adopted in his 2017 NSS, positioning the communist-run superpower primarily as an economic rival, rather than an ideological enemy. U.S. policy centered on China will focus on incentivizing other nations to rebalance international trade in favor of the U.S. over China, forming an economic coalition to prevent the Eastern superpower from dominating the world economy, coupled with deterring Chinese military threats.

While the Trump administration has been critical of China for repeatedly committing espionage and intellectual property (I.P.) theft against the U.S., the new NSS made no mention of China’s numerous human rights violations, including the internment and mass execution of Uyghur Muslims in China, forced abortions and sterilizations, and repeated religious liberty violations. Interestingly, the Trump administration’s treatment of China in the new NSS is more in line with the policies of previous presidential administrations and less in line with the first Trump administration’s China policy in 2017.

Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, President George H.W. Bush imposed sanctions on China, although he attempted to maintain a relationship with the Asian superpower, sending envoys to Beijing and vetoing bills that would have revoked China’s most-favored nation (MFN) trade status. In 1993, the Clinton administration initially predicated China’s MFN on human rights improvements, demanding the release of political prisoners, an end to forced labor and religious freedom violations, and an adherence to international standards; however, he abandoned the policy in 1994, arguing that change could be better effected via open trade with China than via sanctions which China repeatedly ignored. The second Bush spoke out more vocally against China’s human right violations, particularly raising concerns over the state of religious freedom, but critics argued that the Bush White House did not back the concerns with policy threats. The Obama White House likewise relied heavily on diplomatic measures to pressure China to improve its human rights situation, but still maintained strong economic and security ties to the country.

The first Trump administration took a more stringent approach, officially declaring China’s actions in the Xinjiang region against the Uyghurs to be genocide and crimes against humanity, imposing sanctions on more Chinese officials than any previous administration had, consistently ranking China the top human rights abuser in the world, ended Hong Kong’s special trade status over totalitarian concerns, and barred certain imports due to concerns that they were produced via forced labor. However, as in the new NSS, Trump himself rarely spoke about China’s human rights abuses, preferring action over rhetoric. The second Trump administration may pursue a similar approach and has already used the sweeping authorities of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to rapidly impose steep tariff rates against China, although the administration has linked these economic actions to trade imbalances and national security, rather than human rights abuses.

The Trump administration also pledged to make Europe great again. “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,” the White House noted. Europe’s “economic decline,” largely spurred be repressive regulations that the Trump administration argues stifle innovation, “is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” The Trump administration charged the European Union with implementing policies that “undermine political liberty and sovereignty” and enforcing “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.”

“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the Trump administration affirmed, warning that if “present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” rendering EU member states too financially and militarily weak to “remain reliable allies.” Noting that Russia’s nuclear capabilities make the country appear to be an “existential threat” to European states, the Trump administration pledged to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, partly to prevent escalation in the region and “stabiliz[e] European economies.”

“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,” the Trump administration declared, touting “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” as a “cause for great optimism.” The goal of the U.S. “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.”

Regarding the Middle East, the Trump administration once again departed from the policies of previous presidential administrations, rejecting regime change and nation-building efforts in favor of strategic trade partnerships and economic opportunity. “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,” the White House policy position clarified. But with the U.S. maintaining a position as the world’s leading superpower and further bolstering its own energy production dominance, conflict has become the chief issue of the Middle East.

The Trump administration therefore reasserted its preference for brokering peace deals — touting successful efforts in the region, such as securing a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine and weakening Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons — and announced an intention to expand the Abraham Accords to include more Middle Eastern states. However, favorable trade deals brokered with Muslim-majority nations have rarely been linked to human rights abuses, raising concerns over the marginalization and persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The White House confirmed that “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.”

The Trump administration also charged that previous administrations have focused excessively on “providing, and later on spreading, liberal ideology” in Africa, rather than making an effort to alleviate conflicts and hardships in the region. Rather than continue to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into foreign aid programs in Africa, the Trump administration will shift to “an investment and growth paradigm capable of harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential.” Again, no mention was made of human rights abuses, particularly religious liberty violations, by African nations, although the Trump administration has taken a firm stance against the Nigerian slaughter of Christians and the president has even floated the possibility of military intervention.

America’s Golden Age?

As a significant departure from the foreign policy stances of the past 35 years of presidents, the Trump administration’s new approach to managing the world has drawn significant reactions, with some expressing concern over the president’s seemingly restrained treatment of Russia and China, long considered the gravest threats to U.S. national security by the “foreign policy elites” derided by the administration, and others, even some typically critical of the president, defending his new foreign policy against accusations of isolationism. Yet the president’s landmark foreign policy directive is not a surprise: he’s spoken about the very principles expounded in the NSS before.

In a speech delivered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, early this summer, the president championed his policy of non-interventionism and building trade partnerships. Praising the emerging generation of Middle Eastern leaders for setting aside age-old conflicts and pursuing both peace and prosperity, the president insisted:

“It’s crucial for the wider world to note this great transformation has not come from Western interventionalists or flying people in beautiful planes, giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. No. The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities. Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives — developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies in your own way. It’s really incredible what you’ve done. In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.”

The Trump administration’s foreign policy is neither isolationist nor interventionist, neither dovish nor hawkish, neither idealistic nor purely pragmatist. As the NSS stated, “It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America — or, in two words, ‘America First.’”