The Trump Administration’s radical new National Security Strategy.

In 40 years observing U.S. foreign policy, I have seen only a handful of major pivots to its basic contours. After Vietnam, the USA switched from confronting Communism directly to indirectly, via proxy wars, detente, and arms control. After 9/11, President Bush invented a new "preventative war" doctrine, which basically declared a U.S. right to go to war not preemptively to stop an imminent/near future attack, but to prevent any nation from arming itself to challenge us in the future. Preventative War doctrine was used to justify the Iraq war. Arguably, there were 1-2 other radical changes in our foreign policy since WWII.

Last December 8th, the Trump Administration released its first "National Security Strategy." The document and the ideology that clearly lies behind it are just astounding. If it is not meant mainly as performative verbiage, then it is the most radical, shocking reordering of America's place and role in the world...ever, to my knowledge.

If it is real. This administration's policies are famously erratic, contradictory, and temporary. They often get ignored or reversed later, sometimes not much later. The NSS reads like Stephen Miller wrote it, but it apparently was penned by a little-known aid, Michael Anton, who has since left the govt. Regardless, right now it is official policy for Hegseth at DOD, Rubio at State, DHS, the intelligence community, our trade negotiators, and every other part of our foreign policy apparatus. Including the President! Maybe he signed off on it based only on a brief description of the 29pp document. Still, he signed it and it's official.

And it is being implemented. Our war with Venezuela, threats against Latin America, and anti-Europe policy tilts all fit nicely into the NSS framework. So does Greenland and the recent announcement that the USG will create a strategic rare earth stockpile. The rest of the word, especially Europe, which the NSS insults and dismisses, sure takes it all seriously.

Yet at home the new NSS has received almost no public attention. The links below rectify are intended to rectify that, and to explain how truly radical the change in U.S. foreign policy direction is.

Optional Backgrounders –

America's new National Security Strategy -
-- As neutral a description of the new NSS as I could find. Derelict in its duty, IMO. Recommended. The 29pp NSS itself is here, but I wouldn’t bother, since so much is empty verbiage/boilerplate.
-- Or try Experts react: What Trump’s National Security Strategy means for US foreign policy. Brief comments by experts - some are fairly positive on at least some aspects of the new strategy, or at least not uniformly negative.

What the NSS really is -
-- A historian tries to stay calm, but she calls NSS out for what it is.
-- Two months later, she noted that SecState Rubio’s trip to Europe to try to soothe their fear/anger did not go well. Both are must-reads.
-- Krugman makes clear how radical a change this is.

NSS In practice -
-- Venezuela fits in perfectly with new NSS,
-- US will not be easily forgiven, even after Trump. Recommended.
-- On the “bright” side, they have hollowed out U.S. foreign policy apparatus so that such a radical new direction will be hard to implement.

On 3/16 we will discuss the huge influence White Nationalist ideology has within this White House and Republican Party leadership. It was not always so.