America’s national security strategy forces Australia to take a cold shower

share_windows This article appeared in Crikey on December 8 2025.

The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America, released last Friday Australian time, might have ruined the weekend for many Europeans. Some are interpreting the statement as saying that America sees Europe as its ‘enemy’ and will do whatever it can to prop up what it calls ‘patriotic European parties’ in order to save Europe from the ‘stark prospect of civilisational erasure’.

Responses from Australia will be more complex. Those suffering from ‘fear of abandonment’ and believing that the US will keep Australia safe from a Chinese invasion may find the US’ pivot to the Western Hemisphere deeply disturbing. And while the US still sees the Indo-Pacific and Taiwan as crucial to safeguarding America’s national security, it wants its perceived partners, such as Taiwan, Australia and Japan, to do the heavy lifting:

The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over. We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defence.

In other words, don’t count on us; instead, we’ll count on you.

On the other hand, those who are keen to see more enmeshment with the US on military and security fronts may be assured the White House will makes it a strategic priority to grow its own defence industrial base:

America requires … the most capable and modern systems and munitions at scale, and to re-shore our defence industrial supply chains.

This bodes well for the AUKUS deal, which was initiated by Australia and is injecting much of its $375 billion budget into US defence industry capability in the years to come. AUKUS dovetails extremely well with the US’ domestic imperatives. No wonder President Trump wants it to go ‘full-steam ahead’. After all, Trump knows a good deal when he sees it.

At first glance, NSS 2025 reads like the essay penned by a second-year policy studies student struggling with contradictions. The text seems to be animated by grievance and nostalgia. For instance, it complains that the globalism of the ‘elites’, referring to the Biden administration and the Democrats, has put the world first instead of the US. Consequently, America’s partners and allies have done little more than freeload on the US, while allowing China to develop in leaps and bounds, catching America by surprise.

The document also harks back to the good old days when Europe was racially pure, and the US had ‘strong, traditional families that raise healthy children’.

In a perverse way, the NSS document goes a long way towards vindicating some Australian analysts who have been arguing all along that Australia needs to forge its own independent foreign policy. To analysts such as Hugh White, James Curran and Emma Shortis, the take-aways from this White House missive will confirm their views.

The NSS seems to imply the following: first, the current US administration neither wants democracy nor cares about human rights – for itself or for the world; second, foreign interference is acceptable as long as it is instigated by the US; third, the US considers allies and partners a drain on its resources and national comprehensive power, so we’re really not much more useful than America’s enemies. And fourth, from now on the world needs to know that it’s every nation for itself, but all must cooperate with the US, or else.

We will wait to see to what extent this NSS vision will be implemented, and how faithfully a somewhat unpredictable and often impulsive president may execute it. But to international relations boffins, the 2025 statement does provide by far the clearest and the most official statement about the Trump administration’s position.

First, the statement signals a clear departure from the previous NSS regarding America’s global role. It puts forward a vision that is more realistic than the post-Cold War consensus, and acknowledges the limits the US faces in a changing world order. This is a recalibrated and much more narrow interpretation of America’s ‘national interest’:

Since at least the end of the Cold War, administrations have often published National Security Strategies that seek to expand the definition of America’s ‘national interest’ such that … almost no issue or endeavour is considered outside its scope. But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America’s core national security interests shall be our focus.

Second, while confirming China as America’s arch competitor and potential adversary, the document signals an approach to China that is more pragmatic and less ideological than both Biden’s strategy statement and Trump’s first administration. Rather than ‘seeking competition as an end in itself’, this administration seems to recognise the need to deal with China simultaneously as a partner, a competitor and a potential enemy, and in a number of different policy domains: economic reciprocity, supply-chain resilience, and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. What also stands out is the acknowledgement of the need to rebuild ‘a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship’ between the US and China, a posture that would strike Beijing as more constructive and less zero-sum than America’s previous rhetoric regarding competition with China.

Third, the document might be read as the possible start of a broader intellectual shift in US foreign policy: a move from liberal internationalism – expecting China to abide by the US-dominated rule-based order in the hope of shaping China into a more liberal regime – towards a strong, great power approach in a multipolar world.

Asserting and enforcing a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, the Trump administration is declaring the Western Hemisphere to be the US sphere of influence. By implication, this could mean that China, while still a strategic rival and competitor, may no longer be front and centre of the US’ strategic focus. Of course, one would be ill advised to bank on that possibility. And it is still not clear if the US is prepared to see China assuming dominance in Asia.

As recently as last month, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said that ‘American leadership in our region remains indispensable — it is the great builder of alliances and networks, essential for balance in a multipolar region’. And because of this, ‘Australians should be confident in our ability to navigate changes that were foreshadowed by the new US administration’.

For the government, and many liberal-internationalist policy thinkers in Australia, reading the NSS 2025 may be tantamount to taking a cold shower.