Two Cheers for the National Security Strategy

But claims that U.S. President Donald Trump is abandoning the liberal international order focus heavily on values and give inadequate attention to the order’s security and economic foundations. By promising to revitalize American “economic and military preeminence,” the NSS correctly doubles down on many of the key pillars of the United States’ successful 80-year grand strategy, updating them with practical answers to new challenges, such as emerging technology, and legitimate populist concerns with the excesses of globalization.

Last week, the Trump administration published a new National Security Strategy (NSS), and critics panned the document as a “moral and strategic disaster.”

But claims that U.S. President Donald Trump is abandoning the liberal international order focus heavily on values and give inadequate attention to the order’s security and economic foundations. By promising to revitalize American “economic and military preeminence,” the NSS correctly doubles down on many of the key pillars of the United States’ successful 80-year grand strategy, updating them with practical answers to new challenges, such as emerging technology, and legitimate populist concerns with the excesses of globalization.

The strategy does err, however, in failing to properly frame the challenge posed by the “axis of aggressors” and in disavowing the pragmatic promotion of democracy and human rights.

This is, of course, only a strategy document, and whether it matches the president’s actual thinking or the administration’s policy is beyond the scope of this essay. Still, the text of the NSS matters.