After months of internal debate and numerous rounds of revisions, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy is finally out. The 29-page document is designed to provide the American people, allies, and adversaries alike an idea of what the United States seeks to accomplish in the foreign policy space, how it intends to go about achieving the goals it sets out for itself, and what the White House will and will not tolerate. As one might expect, the Washington foreign policy circle’s heartbeat went up a few dozen beats a minute the moment the document was posted on the White House website.
Overall, Trump’s second National Security Strategy is less a strategy than a guidepost of what the administration intends to do. Indeed, the term “strategy” is somewhat of a misnomer; the real purpose of these efforts is to cobble together a series of general frameworks and concepts, region-by-region, that all of the different stakeholders in the executive branch—the National Security Council, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Treasury Department, etc.—can rally around. That’s precisely why the drafting process took so long—everybody needs to be on board, and any one principal or department can hold up the product if they don’t think their equities are being defended.
With all this being said, there’s plenty in Trump’s strategy that is uncontroversial, right, and frankly refreshing. Unlike the national security strategies of yesteryear, when the phrase “rules-based international order” was sprinkled throughout the pages like confetti at a parade, Trump only uses the phrase once (on page 19)—and in a mocking tone. This will spark histrionics from the liberal internationalists among us, but the phrase has long since outlived its usefulness and is one of the world’s most prevalent myths anyway. Any rules in place are easily broken by the major powers, including the United States, whose history before, during, and after the Cold War is riddled with regime change wars of various stripes, covert operations against adversarial governments, and sanctions regimes against a slew of states (Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Nicaragua to name just a few) that aim to cause economic implosion. U.S. officials tend to get on their soapboxes and preach about universal values but frequently don’t practice their own gospel. At least we’re no longer pretending.
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