The new US national security strategy, which the Trump administration published in the first week of December 2025, caused shock in Europe. The document captures what represents a fundamental shift in transatlantic relations.
As for Asia, the strategy appears consistent with previous policies and includes themes that emphasize the importance of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific and working with a “network of alliances” to contain and manage China.
One change that Strategy 2025 reveals is the way the second Trump administration is handling the rivalry between the United States and China.as it defines the “fundamental challenges” for the future of Asia around trade agreements, the security of trade routes and “maintaining economic supremacy”.
Even though Trump’s chaotic tariff policies have unsettled America’s partners in Asia, the new security document argues that economic stability with the US at the helm is the best basis for deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.
The strategy describes how the United States can use its commercial, technological and military power to align both its allies and adversaries with American interests. The text is full of “America First” rhetoric.
The democratic agenda
The document removed the emphasis on “great power competition” in Trump’s first security strategy in 2017, in which he warned that both China and Russia were trying to “create a world at odds with American values and interests.” The usual portrayal of China as a systemic rival pushing an alternative world order has also disappeared.
Instead, the report is full of praise for Trump, claiming that the US president has “single-handedly” reversed decades of “false American assumptions” about China, particularly the idea that free trade would lead Beijing to embrace liberal values.
The United States will avoid “imposing democratic or social changes” on other countries while pursuing “good and peaceful trade relations.” “The enormous influence of the largest, richest and strongest nations is a timeless truth of international relations,” the document adds.
Its tone is markedly different from the 2017 strategy, which criticized China for “expanding its power at the expense of others’ sovereignty.” “The Democratic agenda is clearly over,” writes Emily Harding, director of the Intelligence, National Security and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, in her analysis of the document.
“Beijing will appreciate the explicit statement that the United States prefers not to interfere in the affairs of other nations and the clear statement about respect for state sovereignty,” he says.
The Taiwan question
The document devotes a lot of space to Taiwan, which Beijing wants to “reunify” with mainland China, and describes the importance of the island, which has a strategic position in the South China Sea. Although it does not officially recognize Taiwan, Washington is the island’s main security promoter.
Given Taiwan’s strategically critical location in southern China’s sea lanes, which has a “significant impact on the U.S. economy,” the report warns that a “likely hostile power” could “impose a toll system” on the waterway or even “close and reopen it at will.”
Here the strategy calls on America’s partners in Asia to “increase their spending and, more importantly, do much more on collective defense.”
Japan and South Korea are briefly mentioned in the context of increasing defense spending and capacity to “deter adversaries and protect the first island chain,” a strategic term that describes Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines as a barrier preventing the Chinese navy from accessing the Pacific.
However, the document omits the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs to Japan and South Korea. The only mention of India in the document also falls under Indo-Pacific deterrence through economic cooperation. By improving trade (and other relations) with India, the United States wants to encourage New Delhi to contribute to security in the Indo-Pacific.
No big surprises for most people
Huong Le Thu, deputy Asia director of the International Crisis Group, told DW News last week that the document makes clear that the Trump administration believes that “maintaining an economic advantage is the best way to deter conflict in the Indo-Pacific.”
According to Le Thu, most of Washington’s Asian allies are generally “ambivalent” about the document because it contains no major surprises.
As for China, the point that should worry Beijing most is the central theme of the document: a strategic reorientation towards the Western Hemisphere with a commitment to curb the activities of “non-hemispheric competitors”, i.e. the Asian giant.
(ct/ms)
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