THE LATEST | CANADACNN: The White House quietly released President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy late Thursday, a 33-page document that elevates his “America First” doctrine and sets out the administration’s realignment of US foreign policy, from shifting military resources in the Western Hemisphere to taking an unprecedentedly confrontational posture toward Europe…
New York Times: President Trump’s new National Security Strategy describes a country that is focused on doing business and reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians…
Bloomberg: President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy codifies the disruptive foreign policies he’s pursued since taking office — including railing against allies as often as traditional foes — but also veers inward with an emphasis on domestic and culture war issues…
NPR: The document released Friday by the White House is sure to roil long-standing U.S. allies in Europe for its scathing critiques of their migration and free speech policies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners…
The Guardian: Billed as “a roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history and the home of freedom on earth”, the US National Security Strategy makes explicit Washington’s support for Europe’s nationalist far-right parties…
Politico: The National Security Strategy spends a fair amount of time on China, though it often doesn’t mention Beijing directly. Many U.S. lawmakers — on a bipartisan basis — consider an increasingly assertive China the gravest long-term threat to America’s global power. But while the language the Trump strategy uses is tough, it is careful and far from inflammatory…
Wall Street Journal: White House document maintains some tough talk on Taiwan but drops references to Beijing as America’s main challenger…
The Economist: For the most part, the new NSS rejects the decades-old insight that a common set of values are what cement America’s alliances. It declares that it is “not grounded in traditional, political ideology” but is motivated by “what works for America”. Instead, it embraces what it calls “flexible realism”. That means being “pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist’, realistic without being ‘realist’, principled without being ‘idealistic’, muscular without being ‘hawkish’, and restrained without being ‘dovish’.”
If that sounds like a dog’s breakfast, that is because it is. Shorn of the enlightened values that have long anchored foreign policy, America First becomes a naked assertion of power that owes more to the 19th century than the world that America built after the second world war. And that leads to a document riven by contradictions…
The Atlantic: The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy has landed, with not so much a thud as a kind of greasy flutter. Most of the document consists of bombast, sycophancy, lies, inconsistencies, and grotesque self-contradictions. But it also—and this is something missed by the deservedly contemptuous reviews it has received—clarifies some policy preferences and touches on real problems. Like the babble of a thrashing sleeper who alternates between fantasy-laden dreams and cold-sweat nightmares, it is a window into disturbing encounters with the world’s realities…
CSIS: This National Security Strategy (NSS) marks an ideological and substantive shift in U.S. foreign policy. The administration is attempting to define a new “America First” foreign policy doctrine that is deeply pragmatic, and perhaps short-sighted. For example, the democracy agenda is clearly over. Foreign policy choices will be made based on what makes the United States more powerful and prosperous. That’s fair, and clearly what the American people voted for, but today’s self-interested choices may lead to a far lonelier, weaker, more fractured future. This is a truly pivotal moment in the way the world works…
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