The new U.S. National Security Strategy is the clearest and boldest statement of President Donald Trump’s global vision. It reveals U.S. plans to dominate Latin America, transform politics in Europe, and seize commercial opportunities in Asia. Leaders around the world are closely studying this document.
Transcript
Note: this is an AI-generated transcript and may contain errors
Introduction: They thought that this document confirmed the world will irrevocably change under Trump. And it also offers kind of a preview of what potentially a Vance presidency might try to do. And Russia and China are not necessarily portrayed as partners to the United States, but they are not mortal enemies either by any stretch, it explicitly calls for America to somehow intervene in European politics. So that's a real sea change in US foreign policy things.
Jon Bateman: Stephen Wertheim, welcome to the World Unpacked. I'm very pleased to be here. So, Donald Trump has just published the official national security strategy of his second term. It's a document that has gotten very little attention in the mainstream press, but foreign policy experts around the world are obsessing over, pouring over. It's essentially his blueprint for where he wants to take the world. So, I can't think of anyone better guide us through this and dissect the document than you, Stephen. You literally wrote the book on the history of American grand strategy and how past presidents have dealt with historic junctures like this one. And you're not a bystander in these debates either. You regularly write at outlets like the New York Times and The Guardian. So, we're going to talk about every part of the world here: China, Europe, the Middle East, Russia. But before we give that tour, I'd love to just hear your quick take on this document.
Stephen Wertheim: You said that, Donald Trump released his national security strategy. Probably want to qualify that. Yeah. He did sign a cover letter, but I'm not sure that he's read it. In fact, I rather doubt he has. If he has read it, I rather doubt he'll feel compelled to follow it for the rest of his presidency. So, let's take it with more than a grain of salt, like a pretty big spoonful. That said, his administration did put this document together. It reflects some considerable thought, definitely some brokering among different factions of the administration. We have from the Trump administration the best attempt by the people who staff it and may go on to staff future administrations, what they think America's role in the world should be. And it also offers kind of a preview of what potentially a Vance presidency might try to do.
Jon Bateman: Yeah, Donald Trump, he's not a man of the long form document, right? He's a tweeter, he's a speech of fire, he's instinctual, he's practical. So, I think you're right, he probably hasn't read this document. But it is an earnest attempt, as far as I can tell, to intellectualize the Trumpian strain of foreign policy and to try to set down some mile markers for where these things are headed. And I think part of why so many people in the foreign policy community have been almost bowled over by this document is the boldness and candor with which it is articulating Trumpian perspectives on Europe, on the Western Hemisphere, on Asia, that are still shocking to some people, but now are being put out very explicitly in Times New Roman font. What most surprised you when you read this document? I mean, we've had Donald Trump as commander in chief for almost five years in total now. What did you learn when you read this?
Stephen Wertheim: So there's a couple contrasts from Trump's first national security strategy, which is almost a decade ago. That strategy was actually quite in line with the US grand strategy after the Cold War. It's also quite similar to the Biden national security strategy. The you know, headline of that one was that the U.S. Is in great power competition against revisionist, expansionist, authoritarian powers, namely China and Russia. This one is something truly different. The idea that the US is in a long term structural, intense geostrategic competition with China or Russia is you could say maybe implicit in parts of the document, but it's not there explained.
Jon Bateman: Recently. Yeah, the term great power competition is not in this document. That's been the defining phraseology of Washington, DC for most of the past decade. Also omitted here, rules-based international order. Again, one of the bromides, the pieties of Washington gone. Actually, let me correct myself, it's used in scare quotes, the so-called rules-based international order. So, a jab there. Authoritarianism not mentioned. A defining aspect of Biden's foreign policy rhetoric was we've got the democratic world versus the authoritarian world. He would often try to moralize, sometimes to ill effect. That word is not even in this document.
Stephen Wertheim: Yeah, that's out, that's gone. That's gone. What we have is, I think, a more pure distillation of where I think Trump's instincts have been for a long time, actually. First of all, the main threats to American security are things that flow across American borders and in Trump's mind subvert the country from within. So migrants, drugs, and that explains this emphasis on the Western hemisphere, on the US policing it and also keeping out extra hemispheric state influence. Mm-hmm. And then when you come overseas, it's not clear what the larger stakes are for the United States. The clearest emphasis is getting allies and partners to do more, much more for their security, which again suggests the stakes for the United States are not intrinsically necessarily very high. And Russia and China are not necessarily portrayed as partners to the United States, but they are not mortal enemies either by any stretch. Yeah. So that's a real sea change in US foreign policy thinking.
Jon Bateman: Yeah, you've just given us a survey of how in each region almost there's something decisively different about the Trump approach. And we should just hit all of those in turn, starting with the Western hemisphere, which is amazingly where this strategy starts. Now I served in the intelligence community, the Defense Department. Everyone knows US foreign policy is oriented around the big four adversaries China, Russia, North Korea, Iran. North Korea is not even mentioned in this document. And so in the past, a major strategy document from the White House or the Defense Department, you would almost do control F, those four countries, and that would be the orienting factor. And in the Intel world, places like Latin America would sometimes be derisively referred to by the acronym ROW, rest of world, right? It would just be like in an annex somewhere. This is different. In this document, befitting Trump's own political instincts, the Western hemisphere is where he begins. And it's all about, in many ways, like you said, drugs, people flowing across the border, corroding the United States within. So What are security threats?
Stephen Wertheim: Right. That question raises the question of what is integral to the United States. And for Trump, according to the strategy, first of all, the territorial security of the United States, pretty good. Talks about the US having a favorable geographic position in North America. We're gonna build this Golden Dome missile defense in theory, and that's gonna make us even more in impregnable. Plus, we're gonna assert the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere and keep foreign major powers out of our sphere of influence. So, in terms of what most of us who've studied international relations would define as a security threat, this document actually is pretty confident about the American position. Where it's not confident, right, verging on maybe paranoid, deeply insecure for sure, is this sense that the country is being undermined in a kind of cultural sense by immigration. We see this coming out in a big way in the Europe section where the document makes these claims about European civilization being hollowed out and risking quote unquote civilizational erasure, and that seems to be a at a minimum a projection of fears about what might happen to the United States or maybe would have happened were Donald J. Trump Not put in the White happen.
Jon Bateman: It's interesting to compare to how ideas of national security, what's included in that bucket, what's excluded in that bucket, they have been kind of wandering and morphing and being more heavily debated recently. I mean, under Biden, climate security was national security, food security was national security. We started hearing more about supply chain security. That has remained, right? But it almost feels like national security, which has always been debated in this country, even during the great unified eras like the Cold War, there's now almost a democratic version of national security and a Republican version of national security. This document to me seems to go farther than we've ever seen before to have a differentiated GOP national security heavily bound up with the domestic political grievances that MAGA has, you know, DEI, changing race race and ethnicity, you know, the Anglosphere is mentioned, you know, concerns about the ethnic composition of Europe, censorship and wokeness, that all kind of is through lines here. Are we past the point where foreign policy stops at the water's edge? And can we expect in the future wilder and wilder swings between what presidents of each party? Define as our national security, which once upon a time was meant to be the common cause that everyone can agree on.
Stephen Wertheim: It sure does seem like the parties are diverging in their basic predisposition to about what the United States should do in the world, even about what the United States is and what threatens the United States. I'd actually say, so I think to kind of play with your setup, there's maybe three positions at play conceptually. There's like a continuing centrist view, which is well represented in Congress, including in the GOP, right, which continues to center on a kind of primacist security role for the United States overseas. And that was very much in evidence in the Biden administration as well, plus the first Trump administration. But then on the flanks, there are different ways of conceiving of US national security that go in different directions. So Trump has a version of you know, the U.S. Is threatened by basically flows of globalization. But for him, migrants is first and foremost. For Democrats, you know, Trump has got the threats totally wrong, right? The threats are climate change, pandemic disease, things like that. Yeah, right.
Jon Bateman: Pandemic is another word that is not represent this document whatsoever.
Stephen Wertheim: Not there, we just actually had a pandemic. I don't know if you heard about it.
Jon Bateman: Somewhat memorable, had something to do with Trump's first term and his failure to initially achieve re-election. I do want to come back to the pandemic a little bit later because at one time, Trump's references to the China virus, this was actually a big part of him being one of the major political figures to actually try to radicalize the American people around China threats and bring China more into the political conversation as a country of concern. In many ways, this document shows those days are behind us, and Trump is actually becoming more of a peacemaker or accommodating figure with China in some unexpected ways. Want to put a pin in that. Stick with the Western hemisphere for a moment. So you mentioned the Monroe Doctrine, something that folks may have read about in social studies class. We have now learned from Trump's national security strategy that he is co-branding this. There's now something we call a Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. What is any of this talking about? And I think it has something to do with very serious military measures that are taking place right now. Tell us about that.
Stephen Wertheim: So the document twice references this new Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the Monroe Doctrine being issued by the United States 1823. And at that time it was about expressing a US interest in an expectation that European colonial powers would be gradually over time leaving the Western hemisphere so that Americans could be paramount in their own hemisphere. It then turned into a warrant for US military intervention in the hemisphere under Theodore Roosevelt, who issued his own Roosevelt corollary, interestingly not mentioned in this document. So, it's as if we've jumped from Monroe to Trump. Okay. And yeah, this Trump corollary, it's not totally clear what the corollary itself consists of.
Jon Bateman: Like what's being added to the Monroe Doctor. I mean, there's references in there about not only being the dominant power, not having any external power dominate Latin America, but also somehow securing like vital assets or infrastructure. That's right.
Stephen Wertheim: That's right. I think that would be the novel part of this. That and I think it comes from Trump's demands to get Chinese companies out of the Panama Canal or and his threats to take over the Panama Canal. That the United States wants to extend the Monroe Doctrine to you know, vital infrastructure, strategic assets in the hemisphere. And this is now opening the door. It's not well defined, but it's opening the door to be better defined.
Jon Bateman: Yeah. It goes back to your point about whether this document is expressing a certain style of persuasion or maybe a defiant statement that we're not trying to persuade. I mean, the Monroe Doctrine, it's 200 years old. It's got more than a whiff of imperialism or neocolonialism about it. I think you might go so far as to say, as the kids might say, it's edgy, right? It it strikes me that there's a little bit of kind of trollishness in self-consciously embracing this phrase and saying we are going to own a dominant position in Latin America. It's probably not going to make you many friends in Latin America per se, but it might put the scare into a Maduro or Xi Jinping or others who might want to be active there. What really is going on here? How can we explain this extraordinary surge of interest in Latin America, not just in the hobby horses that Trump has been campaigning on for 10 years, but even taking this to a level of regime change or almost like a new war on terror, defining terms like narco-terrorists and creating incredibly ambitious new objectives for the United States to be seeking in Latin America.
Stephen Wertheim: The strange thing is that you wouldn't know much of that from reading the National Security Strategy. So yes, it privileges, prioritizes Western hemisphere security, but it doesn't actually talk about a, you know, new war on narco terror.
Jon Bateman: Yeah.
Stephen Wertheim: It doesn't mention Venezuela at all. It actually doesn't say that much about specific players in the region. It's very abstract. Right. I think part of what's going on is that competing factions in the administration can all agree that the US should be more robust in the Western hemisphere. Then they disagree about how and even maybe to what end to do that. So there's a lot of internal disagreement over what to do about Maduro. You know, so I I think in a way, a lot of the emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, like the boat strikes themselves, it's meant to sort of perform, you know, the United States means business. We really care about this, and we're doing new and bolder things.
Jon Bateman: Yeah.
Stephen Wertheim: And what else might we do? Well, Mexico should think about whether we'll then take the war on the boats it to Mexican territory and make it a war on cartels. Maduro should think about whether we're gonna go on land in Venezuela. And the American people, maybe just as important as any of that, can see the Trump administration is, you know, standing up and trying to Fight the drugs.
Jon Bateman: Problem and Yeah, yeah.
Stephen Wertheim: Ways.
Jon Bateman: Yeah, you know, there's deep tensions and contradictions here. The National Security Strategy has a big song and dance about how finally we will be narrowing, cabining, prioritizing US strategic objectives, not trying to be everywhere, everything all at once. And yet, at least in this one major way, and there are others, there are new, very ambitious missions being taken on here. But at a minimum, you could say that Trump, through this document and through his behavior, is telling a clear story to the American people about how your national security is threatened by these specific things, immigration, drugs, and the like. It's coming from these specific countries or at least a region that we can point to, and I'm aggressively going after it.
Jon Bateman: Right.I think a question for us to just contemplate, and maybe this is for the future episode, is do the Democrats have a story like that that is as clear and concrete about the changing nature of the world and how what Jake Sullivan once called a foreign policy for the middle class might unfold?
Stephen Wertheim: Yeah, I actually think the Democrats have moved away from that to some degree. So if you look over a two decade time span, it was Barack Obama who capitalized on the notion that the United States should be doing less nation building abroad and you know more nation building at home. And that's one of the single best phrases in foreign policy in terms of poll testing with the American public, right? The American, like one of the best things you can say as a national political figure when it comes to foreign policy, you know, time for nation building at home, enough of it over there. And so, Obama kind of owned that message during his presidency. Trump came in with a version of that in a right-wing Trump frame.
Jon Bateman: Yes.
Stephen Wertheim: Right. So, the challenges at home were different. The threats were different. But that was his sweet spot. The Biden team had their own version, which was the foreign policy for the middle class. We're gonna make America's international engagements, you know, work not just for the American people, but also for the the middle and working class. And yet by the end of the Biden administration, they were running on a very orthodox foreign policy. Yeah. The whole middle-class part seemed to have dropped out and the focus was on countering Russia and China.
Jon Bateman: Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, it seems like what people in both parties can agree on is that there needs to be some kind of re-legitimation of US foreign policy, that it's somehow strayed too far from the concrete interests of American people, voters, frankly. And we need to somehow re-route our behavior abroad in interests at home. On the other hand, it's kind of hard to figure out precisely what that looks like. And there are continual pressures overseas that keep pulling us back in, just like Michael Corleone and The Godfather Part 2. So again, we're gonna hit on some of the bad guys, some of the adversaries, Russia, China. But since we've been talking about the Western Hemisphere, that is probably the biggest change in this document. I would say the other headline that has just been shocking readers, particularly in Europe, is the treatment of Europe. This document does not primarily focus on Russia. It in many ways focuses on and tells a story of Europe. It describes a civilization in decline. You mentioned it earlier, civilizational erasure. And not only does it say that, it explicitly connects this to the changing ethnic composition in Europe, the fear that Europe may not be European in the future. And it's interwoven with classic MAGA concerns about. Censorship, wokeness and the like. Maybe the most surprising element of this is that it explicitly calls for America to somehow intervene in European politics, to somehow change their trajectory. It says, in so many words, that the United States should be aiding political entities that are trying to change the trajectory of Europe within nations, and to create what it calls healthy European societies. What do you make of this? What might that even look like? How do you pull this off within a NATO alliance, a trade relationship? I mean, this is just head spinning for many people.
Stephen Wertheim: Yeah. Head spinning for me too, I think. I think look, should we take these words literally that the United States is going to make a major effort, like its priority in transatlantic affairs will be to cultivate basically far right populist forces.
Jon Bateman: Yeah.
Stephen Wertheim: That will either destroy or transform the EU as an institution and implement a whole set of different policies. I don't think so. I have not seen that from this administration so far. The strategy says something very similar to what J.D. Vance said at the outset of the administration when he went to the Munich Security Conference and shocked everybody there. So it shouldn't be so shocking now. Right. I think it does reflect a real sort of intellectual current in the right. Yes that's in the Trump administration. Like I think it's sincere in that sense. But to me, the main importance is the effects that this language is intended to have and may indeed have. So the Trump administration would like to reduce the US security commitment in Europe. It's had a lot of trouble actually kind of getting its act together and making actual decisions about how military assets should be moved, should they be removed. It's had trouble ending the war in Ukraine, for God's sakes. So one thing that can be done to spur Europe investing much more in its defense. Is to say a whole bunch of shocking, nasty things to the Europeans that prove that this is not an alliance based on shared values. And so arguably that effect is getting some traction, right? Okay
Jon Bateman: Okay. So this is the three D chess version of Trump, right? That it's like a bank shot to, you know, scare and offend the Europeans such that they'll realize they're on their own they have to invest. I guess a potential contradiction there is that the right wing populist parties in European countries whom Trump is saying he wants to ally with, promote, they don't want to invest that much in their defense. They're more ushering a lot more friendly to Russia. So there does seem to be a potential contradiction there.
Stephen Wertheim: Yeah, I I think there's a contradiction. And I think this is a real problem because I do want to see burden shifting onto Europeans. I do think it's past time for European countries to be able to collectively defend themselves with a minimum of US support. So I like that direction. I think it needs to be done, you know, in a responsible, kind of medium to long term way. And I'm not actually sure that the Trump administration, such as it is, disagrees with that kind of sense of a long term, but yeah, we will see. We'll see.
Jon Bateman: A report the other day from I think Reuters saying that some kind of message had been sent that twenty twenty seven is the deadline for Europe essentially owning its self defense.
Stephen Wertheim: Well, but it yeah, but it it's not the de it's the deadline according to sources in the Pentagon, which is our whole administration, right? So they could be overruled. It's the deadline for the US to try to turn over defense planning leadership to Europeans. That doesn't mean that the US would withdraw from Europe.
Jon Bateman: Okay.
Stephen Wertheim: Or would leave NATO or anything like that.
Jon Bateman: Okay.
Stephen Wertheim: Okay.
Jon Bateman: A mild reassurance perhaps to folks in you know Berlin, Paris, elsewhere. It sounds like you're a little skeptical that there will be a direct effort by Washington to substantially change the course of European politics. I don't exactly know how I would do it if I were them. But I I do just want to say though, there is a playbook somewhat. We saw in Brazil, Trump was very offended that Jair Bolsonaro, the previous right-wing populist president who perpetrated an attempted Trumpian coup, has been prosecuted, sentenced, and jailed. Trump then reacted to that by saying, I will defend democracy in Brazil as I see it by imposing an extraordinary 50% tariff on Brazil. By my mind, this was the first time that a broad-based economic pressure tool like that, Trump's favorite pressure tool, was used against a fellow democracy on these grounds. Now we see very explicitly in this national security strategy the claim that we will be tougher on our fellow democracies than on the authoritarians. I think it uses some kind of language like if a country is constituted on political terms too widely variant from ours, we will kind of leave them alone and just have commerce. But if they're part of what we consider to be our civilization. We will be monkeying from monkeying with them. Do you think there is a world in which Trump could use tariffs, travel bans, sanctions, even covert action to actually try to concretely stimulate and support right wing populism in Europe? I guess it's possible. Oh.
Stephen Wertheim: We haven't really seen it yet. Actually, I think what we've seen is Trump be more pleased with his European allies after the NATO summit, in which allies agreed to spend five percent, but it's really three and a half percent on their militaries. So are those tools available to the United States? 100%. We've got them. The CIA was you know, influential in European elections after the in the early years of the Cold War.
Jon Bateman: Yeah.
Stephen Wertheim: And beyond, right? Look at what the United States is doing to put pressure on Maduro right now. You mentioned the tariffs. So the tools are there, but I I'm skeptical that we'll see them deployed much beyond what you might call and what the document intriguingly calls soft power. The document is like pretty bullish on soft power. So I think it's like, you know, speeches from the vice president at the Munich Security Conference. Maybe diplomats meet with members of the political opposition in France, Germany and so forth. So that there's kind of a signal maybe during an election, possibly Trump will suggest as he has in before the election in Argentina that, you know, if a certain side does well, then there could be benefits.
Jon Bateman: Yes, from the United States. That's the play that he's running in Honduras right now. So he's, you know, uncorking this, you know. He's increasingly interested in staking a claim in foreign elections. I will say there's a NATO story here, too. Both sides of this debate are raising questions about how Trump's flag planting in European politics can exist side by side with a unified NATO alliance. Not that long ago, the European Union imposed a fine on Elon Musk's X platform for what it called commercial deception and different digital regulatory violations. In response, there was a torrent of criticism from the Trump administration, including one senior official who said this is incompatible with a NATO alliance. We cannot be upholding your defense while at the same time you supposedly are censoring American tech platforms and therefore Americans. NATO is not given a place of pride in this national security strategy. Some of us remember in the first Trump term, there was a harrowing several week period where the president contemplated withdrawing from NATO. I was working in the Pentagon at the time. I remember this very vividly. What's going to happen to NATO here? And what is Trump's vision for it?
Stephen Wertheim: Yeah, we don't learn that much, I think, from the document. The document talks about ending the perception and also the reality of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance. It's kind of strange phrasing that almost puts the perception above the prior the reality. But you know, I think that what we don't see in this document is an expression that European security doesn't really matter to the United States and the US is ready to walk away or ready to withdraw military assets. Okay. Right? I think that's important. It is not out of the realm of possibility that those things could happen, but like that's not what this document says. And in this very strange way, bear with me for a minute. Expressing this like identification with European civilization is kind of a way of explaining why the United States has a stake in Europe and needs to remain influential. It gives the United States something to do on the continent. Whereas if the view were just look, Europeans are wealthy, Russia's not that big of a threat to them, or maybe Russia is a decent threat, but they they're wealthy enough, they should be taking care of this. Doesn't really matter the United States, then why are we still in NATO?
Jon Bateman: Yeah. So we're back to back to the data. We're back to the 3D chess here. And it's a fascinating point because if you look at this national security strategy, that's pr precisely the opposite move was made with the Middle East. The document essentially says the Middle East is going well. There's some threats there, there's some terrorism, but it's on a very positive trajectory. We no longer need to be obsessed with the Middle East. So it's complementary toward our new friends in the Middle East and our old friends, you know, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE. But then it also seems to be saying that the price of that goodwill is perhaps a military deleveraging. In this case, what I sa what I hear you saying is there's tough love for the Europeans, but it's better to be loved than ignored. And the harder time that we're giving them about their so called civilizational erasure, maybe that means that we'll still have a stake in their defense. Is that the theory?
Stephen Wertheim: I think it's different different people in this administration will have different yeah theories in mind. So but I you know, I think I could see why different factions can line up behind this civilizational criticism.
Jon Bateman: Of Europeans, right? Yeah. And in a way, you know, what's not said in this strategy is almost as important as what is said. We know that factions are battling over this. It was publicly reported recently that Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary, was privately agitating to water down the China discussion because he's in charge of trade talks with China, and he didn't want to spoil those. So let's go to China now. Let's go to Asia. Asia for almost my entire career in foreign policy has been the future, the place where the US v interests are steadily growing. We need to famously pivot to Asia, as Obama suggested. And we're still trying to figure out how to do that, what that looks like. Are we actually pivoting? So Trump's strategy has a clear view on this, I would say. Ums are the main lens through which this region is perceived. It's a locus of GDP and growth and trade. Surprisingly, this includes China. The strategy says that we hope that we can achieve, quote, genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with China. So this is fascinating, right? I think the blob in DC, the kind of centrist middle that often dominates the foreign policy company commentariat. It's been very hostile to China for a long time. They've had a long, long list of grievances. Everything from human rights, which is totally dropped here, to economic coercion, military pressure, espionage, foreign influence. It's almost become such a big ball of wax that I think most people in DC simply want to weaken and suppress China however they can. Trump's strategy is articulating, I think, a very different view. The view is that we have one primary issue with China, and that's trade. And we think that we can manage that. We see a way to fix it. And then there's a secondary issue having to do with Taiwan. Do I have that right? And what do you make of the fact that Trump seems to be swimming so far out of what I see as the mainstream of thinking amongst elites in this in this capital? So I
Stephen Wertheim: I think you're right. I think it's just to reflect on where we've been in our conversation, this strategy almost presents in qualitatively different concerns with the regions that it prioritizes, right? So the Western Hemisphere is the realm of threats to American national security. Europe is the realm of civilizational identification. And Asia is the realm of economics.
Jon Bateman: Yes.
Stephen Wertheim: Which presents opportunities and also some challenges. And then there is this geostrategic competition with the US and China that's not really mentioned, but it is there in the background. And a very specific passage about the stakes of Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Stephen Wertheim: And almost nothing else about Asia as a region. So it's a kind of vertiginous experience to read through this document, which moves quickly through the regions and almost be confronted with a completely different set of concerns wherever we go. One similarity that you're pointing to is that although a traditional policy of deterrence or even containment vis-a-vis Russia and China is not what this strategy says it's doing, it is also evasive about what the United States will do less of in these regions, despite its call for strategic discipline and you know, the essence of strategy lying in, you know, specifying what you're not doing and setting clear priorities, right? So we've talked about how like we are not necessarily getting out of Europe or withdrawing forces from Europe. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't, but that's not really specified in the strategy. And with respect to Asia, yes, Trump, according to the document, is like looking to make deals with China, and is not all that concerned. With Chinese you know military activities except in these really specific areas and then we want allies to do more in their regions. But you know why exactly the US is there in the first place besides needing to protect its commercial interests Not clear.
Jon Bateman: That's really the essence of it, I would say, on reading this document. It's the commercial interests. And you know, I I often think of Trump, this is at least my pet theory of him in China. He's an eccentric when it comes to China. He has very individual views that are very uncommon across the US elite, which actually raises an important question about the durability of his China policy.
Stephen Wertheim: Can I actually yeah. Let me flip that around. So yeah, Trump has these centric views compared to the foreign policy community. Trump is actually a decent reflection of the public at large and what they care about. Like what does Trump care about? With respect to China. He cares about trade. And that is overwhelmingly the main concern that the American public has with China. He cares a bit about drugs, fentanyl. Also something that Americans experience in their communities and care about. He doesn't seem to care that much about you know, the military competition in the Western Pacific. And in fact, the you know, headline of the Asia section in the national security strategy is something about sort of like economic competition and avoiding confrontation, a military confrontation. And that is something avoiding a military confrontation with China is pulls very highly in what Americans want to see vis-a-vis China. So you you are right that he's an eccentric in terms of the national security community, but he's at least giving, I think, a version of where.
Jon Bateman: The public writ large stands. You asked earlier, what are we not going to be doing vis-a-vis China and Russia and others? Where are we actually narrowing and stripping down? I mean, I think with China, maybe what you could read between the lines and say is what are we going to care less about? I think it's everything other than trade and to a secondary degree Taiwan. I my reading of this is that yes, we're going to continue to investigate and prosecute Chinese spies when we find them. But we're not going to make a big deal about that to the point where it's, you know, used against or kind of disrupting of this commercial relationship that we're trying to develop. We're certainly not going to be talking about human rights, whether it's surveillance and suppression of China's people writ large or the Uyghurs, Tibet, Hong Kong, these other kind of special interest populations within China. Just in general, my sense is they have a one track mind here. And you could say that is in fact the essence of strategy. They have identified at least one and maybe two vital interests of the United States. Number one, trade and commerce with China and in the Western Pacific generally. And number two, deterring preventing a war vis-a-vis Taiwan.
Stephen Wertheim: So the problem I have with that is that the documents all over the place as to what we want in our economic relationship with China. Sometimes we want to get together with our allies and partners and use our combined GDP to pressure China, not just to sort of protect our allied countries economies, their supply chains, but also to force China to change its economic model in in favor of more household consumption. Yeah. Okay. That's actually explicitly there. Sometimes I seem like we just want to make a deal and get to mutually advantageous trade with China. We want balanced trade with China. Sometimes we're reindustrializing the United States. So th you know, these are contending factions in the administration. So yeah, of course, like figuring out our economic relationship with China is a big deal. But we can't matter, that's no small matter.
Jon Bateman: No, I know, I know. It's not like it's like, you know, fixed China relationship, check, you know, and then we're off to the races. I will say though, in defense of this administration's approach to China, including in this strategy, the economic aspect of the US-China relationship, it's filled with grievances and very, very deep set structural conflicts. It's not even clear that the US and China are compatible trading partners, certainly in the way that they used to be. But it's at least one thing in this panoply of grievances that we have with China that is in principle negotiable, right? I mean, economic relationship is about dollars and cents, and you can give in one area, get in another, and somehow find your way toward a non-zero sum outcome. That is just not true in a lot of things that we fight with China about. So if Trump is serious about this strategy and about his general instincts toward China, he could be the person to radically reset and try to stabilize the relationship. I think that's at least his his dream, his fantasy. Now, if you're Xi Jinping, maybe you wonder if any of this lasts beyond Trump. That brings us to JD Vance, that brings us to Gavin Newsom, whoever else in 28, 32, 36.
Stephen Wertheim: Yeah, that's that's right. It it is interesting that the document doesn't really suggest any openings for negotiating geopolitical aspects. Where I think Trump himself seems to be open to that. Now the Taiwan section has a pretty boilerplate statement about the US not supporting unilateral changes to the status quo across the strait. That is extremely limited as a statement and maybe suggests that this is an area that Trump and Chi may bring up over the coming months, as they have their state visits. Yeah. We will see. But actually the language about military competition is pretty specific. And if I were in Taipei, I think I'd be pleased with it relative to the status quo ante of the beginning of the the last week when we didn't have the national security strategy. I mean, Taiwan, unlike any other place in the world really, is specified as having, you know, real importance for the United States. The document says it even gives reasons for that, right? Semiconductors and the strategic location of Taiwan, You know, which, if under Chinese control, would give China greater access to the second island chain. It talks about denying aggression anywhere in the first island chain. That's very specific. It even talks about ideally having military overmatch in a Taiwan contingency. Odd language, ideally, as if to suggest like, well, maybe we won't
Jon Bateman: Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. We're playing against the bluster that we usually get from this administration on military matters.
Stephen Wertheim: Right. So nevertheless, you've right, that that was this was unusually strong and specific language about a geographical portion of the world that the United States does not want to see fall under the control of other adversary.
Jon Bateman: There's winners and losers in this blueprint for America's role in the world under Trump part two. Maybe Taiwan is one of the winners, oddly, even though at first glance it appears as though it's relatively status quo oriented language. If the rest of U.S. Foreign policy is just being shredded and reformed before our eyes, but there's some amount of continuity and even attention toward Taiwan that could be counted as a win. I want to close out by just looking toward the future and how we should understand this document in a broader debate about American grand strategy. I'll just say in the last few days I've heard diametrically opposed interpretations of this strategy. I had one senior person, former U.S. Ambassador say to me that they thought that this document confirmed the world will irrevocably change under Trump, that it was a kind of clarificatory moment. And as another person put it, maybe 20 to 30 years from now, historians will look back at the 2025 Trump national security strategy as some kind of foundational text for a huge pivot point in U.S. Foreign policy, similar to the pivot points that you've researched in the post World War II and the post Cold War era. And I've also heard another interpretation that Trump had nothing to do with this document. He's not going to be bound by it. It'll largely be forgotten In all of the chaos here, and who knows what the next three years will hold? Now, I'd love to know how you would answer this question, but more generally, if this is an intellectualization of the Trumpian impulse and it's going to start debates about how precisely the US government, Washington, others untangle the many contradictions we have in this era of flux and shifting foreign policy priorities and objectives. What are the debates that we should be having about this? How should we be reacting to this vision? How should people on the right and on the left be forging their own visions in response to this?
Stephen Wertheim: Give a couple thoughts, by no means exhaustive, because this document invites all sorts of different responses. So one thing that I think is historically significant about this document, if you look over several decades, it rejects the post-Cold War pursuit of a grand strategy of primacy. You know, the argument is not only has the world changed to make primacy more costly to pursue, but actually it was a mistake from the beginning.
Jon Bateman: And you mean global primacy here to become the complete global hegemon.
Stephen Wertheim: Correct, to be the dominant power in all strategically significant regions. So overseas, that would be Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. So there's a throwing down of the gauntlet in terms of like rejecting what I would say has been the kind of organizing principle with bipartisan consensus since the end of the Cold War. And I think the question going forward is do people who do not agree with this strategy want to try to bring primacy back? Is that something American allies and partners are willing to do at this point? Is that something that can be done at an acceptable level of cost and risk for the United States? I've been concerned about that for a long time. And once we're done with whatever the next three years bring with the Trump administration, what does the world look like? I mean, what's our relationship with China? What kind of where does how has AI changed things? Yeah. You know, is it even like possible to talk about the degree of you know, proto containment of China in particular, that people in Washington were talking about prior to Trump. Retaking office. I don't know. I have my doubts. But I this is a big question that looms for Democrats in particular or for a differently minded Republican who I guess still has a shot in trying to take the party. So another question I think is well I actually I I think this strategy is compacious in ways that remind me of the Biden national security strategy actually. The the Biden National Security Strategy did attempt to set priorities. It notably relegated the Middle East to a small number of words toward the back of the document. So there's a kind of hubris in thinking that you know we can sit here in Washington and say we prioritize this region. You know, we don't prioritize that region, but oh we still have tens of thousands of forces stationed in that region. And we have no plans to to change that. In many ways the the Trump administration is offering the same especially in the Middle East section where it it's a good news story according to the Trump administration. The Donald has gone into the region and made peace and really This does not seem like a region that is poised for long-term peace and stability. We've just got through a brutal war in Gaza. There was just a direct military confrontation between Iran and and Israel, and that story may well not be over. So I'm getting flashbacks to you know, Biden national security advisor Jake Sullivan saying, you know, just before October 7th, that the Middle East is quieter than it's been in decades. That's kind of what this national security strategy says too.
Jon Bateman: Trump has laid out his blueprint. The one thing that we can guarantee is that events will not unfold precisely as he is envisions. He will be buffeted by events for the next three years like every other president. But I think what you've pointed out, Stephen, is that this document is not only a provocation for many around the world, it's a challenge to see if anyone else has a better or a different vision. Are we going to go back to the old days of US global primacy? Or do Democrats or other Republicans have some alternate configuration, some other story they can tell the American people about who we are, where we're headed, and how we're gonna do it. If we do hear from those people, we're gonna have you back on, Stephen, to help us unpack it. Thanks so much for coming on The World Unpacked.
Stephen Wertheim: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks.
Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman
.jpg)
