The last time President Donald Trump Eight years ago, he unveiled a national security strategy when he announced the return of the superpower duel, describing China and Russia as “revisionist” powers seeking to end U.S. dominance worldwide.
“China and Russia threaten the power, interests and influence of the United States and seek to undermine America’s security and prosperity,” he wrote at the time in a document that reflected the influence of his first-term advisers. “These countries have chosen to close their economies and make them less equitable, increase their armed forces and control information and data in order to oppress their people and expand their influence.”
Eight years later, that diagnosis seems truer than ever. During this time, both of the United States’ rivals have deepened and even exaggerated the “unlimited partnership” that binds them. Since publishing this strategy in 2017 China’s nuclear force It has more than doubled in size, and its cyberattacks have penetrated telecommunications and private and government infrastructure in the United States.
Russia is mentioned in only four paragraphs and never in a tone condemning the invasion of a neighboring state.
Russia has been waging a nearly four-year war in Ukraine and a covert war against U.S. allies across Europe.
However, when we read Trump’s 2025 strategy, none of this appears. Although the newspapers have focused on the point that the European allies must end mass migration and elect “patriotic” parties or risk “disappearance as a civilization.” But the most surprising thing about this 33-page document is what it leaves out.
Russia is mentioned in just four paragraphs and never in the tone of condemnation of its invasion of a neighboring state, a war that has already claimed more than 1.5 million lives. On the contrary, the document portrays the United States as a kind of neutral negotiator that can ease tensions between Russia and Europe and “restore strategic stability” with Moscow.
It also says virtually nothing about the daily battle waged in cyberspace against state-sponsored Chinese hackers, after the government warned last week of another deep intrusion into private and public computer networks in the United States. But these aren’t the only direct threats to U.S. security that seem strange to omit.
In 2017, Trump threatened “fire and fury.” North Koreawhich at the time had between one and two dozen nuclear weapons. The 2017 strategy states that the country is “seeking the ability to kill millions of Americans with nuclear weapons” and deepening its chemical, biological and cyber warfare capabilities. Today, after years of failed diplomacy, North Korea has 60 or more nuclear weapons…
And yet North Korea is not mentioned once in the new strategy. TO Iran It is barely mentioned and in contradictory terms. In the introduction, Trump boasts that in June we “destroyed Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability.” Then, on the second-to-last page of the report, a more detailed assessment states that the United States has “significantly downgraded Iran’s nuclear program.”
“The document says nothing about how the administration plans to prevent Iran from rebuilding its program,” he said Saturday. Scott D SaganProfessor at Stanford University and author of numerous articles on nuclear strategy.
The text does not address the struggle between superpowers or possible containment strategies.
Of course, no strategy can address all of the threats facing the United States, and those that attempt to do so often resemble an endless list of challenges. The opening paragraphs of the new report make it clear that it focuses on some serious threats to national security and that the goal is to “ensure that the United States remains the strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country in the world for decades to come.”
“Not all countries, regions, issues or causes, no matter how valuable, can be the focus of the North American strategy,” the document says, before prioritizing the Western Hemisphere. This largely implies an update of the Monroe Doctrine – which declared that the American continent and surrounding waters were under Washington’s dominion – with a “Trump-like implication.” And it’s no surprise that it focuses on limiting migration and drug trafficking.
Still, it is shocking that it diverges from the debate about competition between the world’s two largest economies and the world’s three largest nuclear powers, always and now.
The text does not address the struggle between superpowers or possible containment strategies. He argues for a quick end to the war in Ukraine and on terms that preserve a Ukrainian state to achieve that vague “strategic stability” with the United States. And although more pages of the document are devoted to China than any other country, it all focuses much more on trade relations than strategic competition.
China’s nuclear expansion, which has kept the Pentagon and strategic planners vigilant for years, is mentioned in passing, and the surprisingly sophisticated and extensive cyberattacks that have infiltrated the United States’ telecommunications systems and public services and remain there despite years of efforts to eliminate them are barely mentioned.
Strangely and incorrectly, the report contains more condemnations of the United States’ European allies than of its opponents China and Russia.
“The most striking thing is the section on Asia,” says Peter D. Feaver, a professor at Duke University and director of the American Grand Strategy program. “When it comes to economic competition, China is mentioned explicitly and in detail, but when it comes to military threats in the Indo-Pacific, everything is vague.”
And he adds: “Unlike Trump’s initial security strategy, China is now not mentioned by name as a country that poses a military threat, and that is perhaps the most notable omission in the entire document.”
However, this is not the only area where competition with China is being minimized, at least compared to Trump’s strategy in his first term and that of the subsequent Biden administration.
“Think about the list of challenges where China will pose the greatest threat to the United States in the coming decades,” he says. R. Nicholas Burnsformer American ambassador to China until January and former NATO ambassador as a career foreign service officer. “This is about who will emerge victorious in the areas of technology: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, cybersecurity. These questions are related to the intense military competition we endure daily with China across the Indo-Pacific.”
In fact, the report strangely and incorrectly contains more condemnations of the United States’ European allies than of its opponents China and Russia. The text does not condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine or the evidence for it Putin considered using tactical nuclear weapons against that country.
We must remember that the last major nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, known as New START, expires in two months, but the document contains no provisions to prevent a renewed, costly and destabilizing arms race. On the contrary, he praises missile defense, “including a golden dome for the territory of the United States,” a project Trump announced a few months after taking office.
Translation by Jaime Arrambide
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