NSS 2025: Redefining American Global Engagement

Dr Attiq-ur-Rehman

The recently launched US National Security Strategy (NSS) 2025 has refreshed the ongoing debates on American global engagement and its changing patterns according to the evolving power dynamics of the international system. This twenty-nine-page document explained the scope of American foreign policy, cemented in specific multilayered behaviours to serve US core national interests, representing President Trump’s vision.

Akin to the previous versions of NSS, the newly released document presented a concise account of mainstream guiding principles for updating leading American foreign relations with the outside world. It defined the significance of global power politics in shaping specific US national security priorities and their further transformations in forming alliances and signing partnerships around the world.

NSS 2025 reframes US global engagement around core national interests rather than expansive post–Cold War commitments.

The introductory message of President Donald Trump in the NSS 2025 recalled the American spirit of restoring its strength at the domestic and international levels. The aspired strengths of the nation are aligned with Washington’s support for global peace and stability, which could strengthen the American standing in the world while protecting its sovereign borders against the probabilities of external interventions.

In this setting, the remarkable performance of the US military was highlighted by the President in the document in appreciating tune. With the announcement of increasing $1 trillion military investment, President Trump’s initial remarks recapped the significant role of the multilateral framework of NATO in the world based on the common defence aspirations of its members. Along with underlining the purpose of protecting American domestic industries briefly, the imposition of tariffs on critical industries is mentioned positively by the President in the document.

While explicitly citing the milestone achievements of the current US Administration in preventing the interstate armed conflicts, the settlements of eight conflicts – Cambodia-Thailand, Kosovo-Serbia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)-Rwanda, Pakistan-India, Israel-Iran, Egypt-Ethiopia, and Armenia-Azerbaijan – are highlighted in the NSS 2025 document in an appreciating manner. It validated the American mission of establishing peace and stability in the present global world order, where the primary focus of the United States is on ending the Gaza war and carrying out specific rehabilitation efforts.

These efforts legitimised the American robust global position and its inseparable affiliations with its commitments to making peace around the world. The President’s reminiscence of such achievement in the document is further associated with the Trump Administration’s slogans of putting America First, with the US’s active role in the world.

Based on these descriptions concerning the exceptional standing of the United States in the global power politics, the present version of NSS was called a roadmap to support American formal objectives of becoming the “greatest and successful nation in human history.” The President’s words further reiterated his commitment to making “America safer, richer, freer, greater, and more powerful than ever before.” To rationalise this thinking, the NSS 2025 shows a vivid departure of American global geopolitical designs from their traditional domains of the post-Cold War era.

Military strength and economic dominance are positioned as the twin pillars of American security.

The Trump Administration dubs the post-Cold War American global engagements as the miscalculation of the country’s foreign policy decision-makers, which put the burden on others on American shoulders. Rather than realising the connotation of global burdens on American core national interest pragmatically, the prevalence of a historically developed globalised approach to US foreign relations is translated in the present NSS document as the misguided and destructive pronouncements of foreign relations.

Based on these descriptions, the NSS 2025 raised three questions about American aspired goals, available means to achieve these goals, and constructing a robust connection between ends and means to formulate a comprehensive National Security Strategy on pragmatic lines. The combination of the first two questions develops favourable grounds for the revision of the existing national security paradigm, which is strictly connected with the global power politics, requiring American active participation.

Under these circumstances, Trump’s version of NSS recalled the peaceful approach of foreign policy in resolving the eight conflicts in eight months, parallel to forming constructive grounds for the expansion and validation of the historical Abraham Accords in the Middle Eastern region. These peace efforts labelled President Trump as “The President of Peace”.

Further articulated updates in the NSS presented the America-centred foreign relations for pursuing core national interests of the United States rather than following the conventional ways of maintaining global standing through traditional approaches. In this way, the justification for the American desired goals focused on the protection of American citizens, territory, and economy while addressing the multilayered security threats of a non-traditional nature.

These threats include the “espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, cultural subversion”, or any other potential security threat capable of menacing the America nation. Moreover, the NSS 2025 document mentioned the future areas requiring Washington’s formal concentration on the US immigration system, covering legal or illegal migrants, natural disasters, foreign threats to the economy, industrial developments, energy sector upgrading, and promotion of soft power in the world to serve true American national interest.

Peace through strength and burden-sharing replace intervention-heavy foreign policy models.

The NSS document’s most interesting point appears in the President’s description of US strategic capabilities, profoundly relying on nuclear deterrence, which could be robust, credible, and modern, with the support of advanced generation missile defence systems such as Golden Dome. It is further elaborated as the most suitable way of protecting US citizens, American overseas assets, and Washington’s mainstream allies located at different locations.

Thus, the combination of economic dominance and military superiority is treated as the Key pillars of NSS 2025, and are treated as the future paths of Washington’s foreign relations structured in a more America-centric approach. The formal acknowledgement of this approach seeks to restore and reinvigorate the social prosperity and economic welfare for future American generations.

Additionally, the NSS 2025 document enlists concisely the five core and vital interests of the American nation, where the notion of Trump’s corollary of the Monroe Doctrine is observed regarding the security of the Western Hemisphere. On a parallel basis, the document underlined the significance of the Middle East for Washington’s national security priorities, where the likelihood of intervention by a rival power is an undesired scenario. The American quest to achieve momentous progress in modern technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), biotech, and quantum computing, are further considered the most anticipated goals by the President in the NSS 2025.

The document’s focus on the existing US enviable status in the world, along with leading assets and available resources, refers to the American nimble political system, fascinating economic potential consisting of multidimensional markets, and the leading financial structure related to the global standing of the dollar currency.

Furthermore, the attractive technology sector, powerful military capabilities, a worldwide broad network of allies and their varying positions at the geographically significant areas, the wealth of natural resources, culturally-equipped soft power, and exceptional patriotic sentiment of society are considered substantial factors making the United States prominent in the world. Based on these descriptions, the revised principles of strategy refer to a pragmatic policy, instead of pragmatist, and realistic without being realist beyond the conventional standards of specific political ideology.

It deals with the core ideas working for America or supporting the slogans of America First. In this way, the President’s vision of improving the mainstream patterns of American foreign, defence, and intelligence policies is based on specific principles, like the expanded conception of US national interest, strictly aligning with the consensual theme of national security.

Moreover, developing peace through strength, which could be an appropriate deterring tool to protect American leading interests, upholding the idea of non-intervention as described in the Declaration of Independence by the nation’s founding fathers, espousing flexible realism depending on the possible and desirable scenario of dealing with the outside world, and putting American own interests first in its broader global agenda are treated the important points in the NSS 2025.

Additionally, the protection of sovereignty and maintaining national respect against the threats of foreign interferences, supporting the balance of power rather than pursuing an ill-fated conception of global dominance, adopting a policy of pro-worker, pursuing fair relations with other nations, and promotion of competence are measured ad the significant future directions. The subsequent part of the NSS 2025 document listed a few priorities, mainly emphasising the unregulated and unchecked migration growth, fastened with the transnational threats of terrorism, drugs, espionage, and human trafficking.

Protecting core rights and liberties, preferring a burden-sharing and burden-shifting policy in strategic and economic domains, implementing realignment through peace, and maintaining a multileveled economic security connected with the fundamental values of national security are translated as the Key priorities of the revised version of NSS under Trump’s leadership. While dealing with the specific regions, the pursuit of national security policy reiterated the objective of securing the primacy of national interest in dealings with the protuberant issues of different regions.

The strategy signals a paradigm shift toward pragmatic realism under an America First framework.

The Trump Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine regarding the Western Hemisphere, safeguarding economic interests in Asia, parallel to preventing unsolicited armed conflicts, upholding the European actual spirit of greatness, preferring to build peace through sharing burdens in the Middle East, and transforming American-African engagement from aid-centric ties to an investment-specific relations are observed as the region-specific policy orientations of Washington in the NSS 2025.

In this way, these narrations of the Trump Administration’s framework of national security could be considered as an explicit paradigm shift from a traditional pattern of global engagement to a pragmatic transformation beyond the shadows of Washington’s post-Cold War policy orientations. It revisited the significance of domestic values and core national interests in the newly adopted national security framework of United States while believing that the actual national strength emerges from the indigenous progress, inseparable associated with the external engagements.

Now, the subsequent developments in transforming the drafted concept of NSS 2025 into practical measures will determine the envisioned national security framework of the Trump Administration which could not be spared from certain future challenges. These challenges, originating from the counterbalancing forces, will enable further the Washington-based policy makers to keep upgrading their strategic wisdom.

The author is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad. He served as a Research Fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies (SAM), Baku, Azerbaijan, and has worked with esteemed institutions such as the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and the NATO International School of Azerbaijan (NISA). As a prolific writer, He regularly publishes in leading research journals and magazines while actively presenting his scholarly insights at national and international academic forums.