US national security strategies are usually evolutionary documents. The Trump administration’s 2025 version marks instead a radical rupture. It may be more a declaratory statement of intention than a policy document. But it is one in which China and Russia may find much to like — while for Europe, it is a stark warning. It dispels any illusion that the ideological, adversarial vision first set out by vice-president JD Vance in Munich in February was somehow an improvised intervention aimed at a domestic audience. That vision is now being framed as American doctrine.

The document signals that the US is walking away from the common values that underpinned its policy for eight decades. It portrays America’s previous commitment to defence of democracy and human rights, to globalism and to free trade — which many would see as the wellspring of US wealth and power — as encumbrances that have weakened it. The attachment to alliances that have undergirded a “rules-based” order that was fundamentally US-led is seen instead as having “undermined?.?.?.?the character of our nation”.

The new strategy envisages a world carved into spheres of interest by the big powers, with the US dominant in the western hemisphere. This is a worldview promoted by Vladimir Putin’s Russia for almost two decades. While the strategy says the US must prevent global or in some cases regional domination by others, it rejects “wasting blood and treasure” on too many such efforts.