Opinion by Barry Healy

On December 4, the White House published the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS) to replace the one issued by Joe Biden in October 2022.

Donald Trump’s version is considerably different and spells out the brutally transactional way that US imperialism will operate under his leadership. The difference is not in the overall intentions of the US ruling class; it is in its ideological justification and logic.

Previous administrations have been brazenly hypocritical; Trump is astonishingly brazen.

A gospel of blood and profits and nothing else

The Statement elevates the pursuit of profits, market share, and resource control to the level of national gospel. It is a masterclass in reactionary politics. For activists it lays out political challenges that will confront us for years to come.

Whereas the Biden NSS said the “climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time” the Trump NSS rejects “the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that…threaten the United States.” No more mention of it is made.

As a “roadmap for American greatness” the NSS speaks of the complete integration of US trade, commercial, diplomatic and military activities into a vertically integrated system to “pressure” and incentivise “partner countries”.

There is no mistaking that this is Trump’s doctrine. His foreword is characteristically narcissistic and the Statement, seemingly channelling Führerkult (the cult of the Führer), references his name 27 times within its 33 pages.

The most important strategic change is that the era of what it calls “permanent American domination of the entire world” is over. That is labelled “a fundamentally undesirable and impossible goal”. Instead, the NSS promises, there is to be “a Golden Dome for the American homeland,” effectively a fortress.

But that does not mean that the US will not be interfering across the planet; the age of US imperialism has not ended but is mutating. As long as the US controls key node points of the world economy, both militarily and economically, then all will be well in Trump World.

While loudly rejecting the role of global hegemon, the NSS positions the US as the planet’s apex predator.

Strengthening the military-industrial complex

The NSS envisages an endless military procurement cycle. But prioritizing AI, quantum computing and supercomputing in general is not just about military capability. It’s about underwriting the research and development costs for technologies that will inevitably spill over into the private sector.

The idea is to subsidise the costs of defence and tech firms. The US state acts as the guaranteed buyer for the most expensive, cutting-edge and high-risk products, insulating these firms from typical market vagaries. This ensures that the US military is always equipped to project power, guaranteeing the safety of US foreign investments and market access.

The NSS says US industrial strength is the “highest priority” and says the state will use its budgetary power to re-shore production (critical minerals, semiconductors). This will not benefit of American workers but will secure the profitability and independence of US defence and tech corporations against foreign rivals.

The NSS is a declaration of economic nationalism driven by imperialist competition, ensuring that the primary tools of US state power are reliably produced domestically.

Latin America: The ‘Trump Corollary’ and Neocolonial Control

Latin America is in the firing line as part of what the NSS calls a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine is an 1823 US foreign policy principle. It declared the Western Hemisphere closed to further European colonisation or intervention, while promising that the United States would not interfere in European affairs.

Trump’s “Corollary” is not a quaint historical reference; it is a statement of neocolonial ambition. It is the explicit declaration of geographical control and the prevention of any rival power from challenging the US as the hegemonic imperialist power in the Western Hemisphere.

The NSS says this is a necessary component for maintaining its world-system dominance.

The Western Hemisphere, rich in strategic minerals, labour reserves and crucial transit routes, is now to be the exclusive preserve of US capital. The explicit goal is to “restore American preeminence” by three primary means: controlling migration, combating cartels, and, most tellingly, rooting out “hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets.”

This final point is the crux of the matter: the NSS amounts to a declaration of economic war against rival powers, particularly China, whose growing investments threaten the long-established hegemony of US finance and extractive capital in its Latin American backyard. It even refers to “economic battlegrounds.”

“The choice all countries should face,” the Strategy states “is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world.”

Every U.S. government official, including ambassadors and diplomats, is tasked with serving as a champion for American business. This means their job includes helping American companies compete and succeed in foreign markets. All embassies are to seek out major business opportunities in their host countries. Diplomatic efforts will influence foreign governments to allow US corporations to control strategic resources, critical materials and supply chains.

They will be achieving this by “simultaneously applying pressure and offering incentives to partner countries”. If that fails, there will be “the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy.”

While the US military pressure on Venezuela began months before the Statement was released, it clearly follows its blueprint.

Ironically, this whole-of-government approach to projecting US economic power is because China is, according to the Trump worldview, guilty of state-directed international dealings.

Inter-Imperialist Contradictions and US interventions in Europe

Past US strategy documents focused on an almost monolithic Western alliance. The Biden NSS said: “Europe has been, and will continue to be, our foundational partner in addressing the full range of global challenges.”

Trump’s document rips into those long-standing European partners. The critique is that Europe is weakening itself through “immigration policies,” “declining birthrates” and a “loss of national identities.”

Beneath the jingoistic and cultural moralising, the actual contradiction at play is one of inter-imperialist rivalry: the U.S. bourgeoisie is no longer willing to fully subsidise the defence of its wealthy European competitors in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The NSS demands a massive increase in European defence spending (to 5% of GDP). This amounts to a forced subsidy from European capital to the US arms industry. Immense profits are guaranteed for the US military industrial complex.

By directing insulting language at longtime allies in Europe the Strategy is clearly trying to sow discord within the European Union (EU). Weakening the collective power of the EU apparatus would allow US capital to force favourable, bilateral, “America First” terms with individual European nations, exploiting existing fault lines for US corporations’ gain.

The document has a calculated ambiguity toward Russia, which could serve a tactical purpose towards the EU. The stated desire to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia” is not necessarily a call for peace but a pragmatic, transactional manoeuvre.

The Strategy says the US will cultivate “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” Does this mean European nations will be subjected to subversive internal interference like that which Latin American countries have long endured? That is not spelt out. However, the “growing influence of patriotic European parties” is a “cause for great optimism,” the Statement says.

This encouragement of right-wing nationalist movements (in direct contradiction of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine) is a cynical manipulation of reactionary forces, so long as they serve to destabilise the EU as a rival imperialist centre and redirect European defence spending toward US-approved companies.

The Global Reserve Army of Labour: Migration as a Security Threat

Perhaps the cruellest section of the NSS is its focus on migration. It declares that the “era of mass migration is over” and prioritises full control over US borders, revealing the US ruling class’s anxiety over the global reserve army of labour.

Capitalism requires a certain level of migration to keep a downward pressure on wages in the domestic market. But uncontrolled flows risk upsetting the equilibrium of the labour market and, crucially, threaten the ideological cohesion of the national identity the ruling class uses to control its domestic working class.

By framing mass migration as a core national security threat, equating it with “terrorism, drugs, espionage, and human trafficking” the NSS legitimises the militarisation of US borders. This ensures the US state’s violent control over the entry and exit of labour, deploying the mechanisms of fear and division to pit sections of the working class against the immigrant proletariat. 

This tactic is textbook and cynical: divide the working class and create an atmosphere of terror to ensure the power of the capitalist class remains unchallenged.

China

The NSS frames China as a competitor, but this competition is fundamentally a struggle over access to markets, control of global supply chains and the realisation of surplus value. China is a threat not because it challenges what the US calls “democracy,” but because it challenges the profit-making potential of American corporations.

What is at stake is economic and technological hegemony.

While referring at length to economic issues, the threat of military force is never far away, resting on “military overmatch”. Even though “American domination of the entire world” is over, there is to be an expansion of US Navy and Coast Guard presence in the South China Sea. This police force will ensure that any surplus value generated in the area primarily benefits US capital.

The NSS is fixated on the First Island Chain, the islands extending from Japan down to Taiwan and further south. It refers to “denying aggression anywhere” in that region, which means containing China.

Contradictorily, at the same time, the NSS commits to the long-standing status quo agreements regarding the People’s Republic of China and the break-away Republic of China administration on Taiwan. This status quo ensures that a major hub of commodity production remains safely within the orbit of US-led global capitalism.

The NSS concern over Taiwan is fundamentally a concern over capital accumulation. The focus is on preserving the crucial capitalist infrastructure of global semiconductor production and maritime trade, the arteries through which global capital flows.

The possibility of instability in the Taiwan Strait “has major implications for the U.S. economy”. The NSS demands that its rich allies in the region (Japan, South Korea, Australia) increase defence spending. This externalises the costs of maintaining the US security apparatus, which ultimately serves US corporate interests.

The NSS’s talk of rebalancing of the economic relationship between the US and China is a recognition that China has become an effective competitor to Western private monopoly capitalism. It says this focus is due to the “ultimate stakes being fundamentally economic”.

The US goal is to secure access to critical raw materials and dominate next-generation technology supply chains (semiconductors, clean technology) to ensure that the commanding heights of global production and innovation remain under the control of US capital, thereby guaranteeing the flow of economic rent back to the imperial core.

Africa and the Middle East

The NSS devotes half a page to Africa, which could mean that US interference there will be reduced. The NSS wants in Africa “capable, reliable states committed to opening their markets to U.S. goods and services.” Apart from that, the US is no longer interested in spreading “liberal ideology” to Africa.

It is much the same in the Middle East. The days when “the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over,” the NSS states. The area is “emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment” thanks to Donald Trump’s “ability to unite the Arab world.”

As long as Israel can “remain secure”, all is rosy in the garden.

The “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” warrants one sentence. It “remains thorny,” the NSS says “but thanks to the ceasefire and release of hostages President Trump negotiated, progress toward a more permanent peace has been made.”

The tens of thousands of Palestinian hostages suffering torture in Israeli prisons do not show up on Donald Trump’s radar and neither does Israeli’s genocidal violence.

The NSS – a recipe for imperialist plunder

The 2025 National Security Strategy is not a vision for world peace or even American security. It is a declaration that the United States is withdrawing from the pretence of global stewardship to openly engage in a more direct, aggressive and unilateral pursuit of capital accumulation at home and abroad.

The strategy promises a future of intensified global conflict, where the Western Hemisphere is policed for corporate exploitation, Europe is destabilised to benefit US arms dealers and the global South (particularly Latin America) remains a permanent source of cheap labour and resources. 

However, being a stark insight into the motives of Donald Trump, it shows the pain points that will be the focus of progressive politics in the future: solidarity with Latin America, conflict with US-fostered fascistic nationalists in imperialist countries, defence of migrants and refugees and building the peace movement in the Indo-Pacific.

Despite Trump’s boasting of “ending the war in Gaza with all living hostages returned to their families,” Palestine unfree will never be at peace and the international solidarity movement will still require mobilisation.