The sweeping strategy is typically released within the first year of a new administration, explaining the president's foreign policy focus and offering guidance on where money is likely to be spent.
The 33-page document builds on Trump's "America First" ideology but also provides the first explicit reference to the president replicating the Monroe Doctrine, calling for U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
"After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region," the document states.
The document doesn't explicitly lay out a U.S. retreat from the globe, but it does call for increasing burden sharing among allies, elevating American economic interests and access to critical supply chains, and "unleashing" American energy production.
The document points to Trump's more than two-month military operation against suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, which is likely to receive greater support as the NSS calls for the U.S. to readjust its global military presence to the Americas "and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years."
Trump has framed U.S. military operations in the Caribbean as "armed conflict" with drug cartels and has singled out Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, indicted in the U.S. for drug trafficking, as a primary threat and said the U.S. could soon launch "land operations."
While Venezuela is not named specifically, the NSS calls for "targeted deployments" to secure the U.S. border and "defeat cartels."
The NSS also criticizes Europe's "lack of self-confidence" in contributing to a deteriorating relationship with Russia — but does not address Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 or its campaign of sabotage, election interference and fomenting instability on the continent.
The NSS says the U.S. is the only power able to mediate between Europe and Russia to "reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states."
In addition, the NSS's explicit recognition of protecting Taiwan's sovereignty and security from external influence was welcomed by the foreign ministry in Taipei and likely reassures China hawks in Washington that the administration is not looking to abandon the island to Beijing.
Read the full report at thehill.com.
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