“The era when the United States single-handedly upheld the world order like Atlas is over.”

Through the National Security Strategy (NSS) released on the 5th (local time), the second Trump administration drove home once again the claims it has repeatedly made. The NSS is the U.S. administration's comprehensive strategic guideline for diplomacy, the economy, and the military, shaping policy priorities and the allocation of budgets.

The second Trump term's national strategy is summed up as ‘isolationism’ and ‘transactionalism’. The NSS formalized the ‘Donroe Doctrine’, which hands regional security responsibilities to wealthy and capable U.S. allies and partners while the United States now concentrates on the Western Hemisphere. As for authoritarian states such as China, Russia, and North Korea, it either offered no mention at all or addressed them through a transactional lens.

Demands on allies are expected to grow louder. Arguing that stability in the Taiwan Strait is necessary for the U.S. economy, the NSS urged South Korea to expand its role and increase defense spending to help defend the first island chain (Okinawa~Taiwan~the Philippines~the Malacca Strait). With Seoul and Washington currently negotiating defense cost-sharing and other aspects of ‘alliance modernization’, discussions on strategic flexibility, including possible redeployment of U.S. Forces Korea, are expected to accelerate.

Introducing the Western Hemisphere as the top strategic region, the new NSS formalized ‘Donroe Doctrine’, aiming to establish the United States as the unrivaled hegemon of the Americas. The term ‘Donroe’ refers to a new Monroe Doctrine named after President Trump. The administration stated, “We will restore our primacy in the Western Hemisphere after years of neglect,” adding, “We respect the sovereignty of Western Hemisphere nations, but we will not tolerate hostile outside powers exploiting the hemisphere's resources or exercising military influence in it.” Here, ‘hostile outside powers’ is interpreted as referring to China, which has expanded its influence in Latin America through the Belt and Road Initiative.

The Trump administration also said, “We want the Western Hemisphere to be governed stably so that it prevents large-scale migration toward the United States,” and, “We want a hemisphere where governments cooperate with the United States to stop drug cartels.” This signals that the United States intends to expand political and military involvement in Western Hemisphere countries such as Venezuela under the banners of eradicating drug cartels and blocking illegal immigration. To that end, the NSS said it will redeploy U.S. forces from other regions to Latin America and increase Coast Guard and Navy deployments. This also hints at a desire to secure control over Latin America's abundant resources, after the United States exposed vulnerabilities in rare earths and critical minerals during its trade war with China.

China, which was the highest-priority strategic region in the first Trump term, was pushed to second place after the Western Hemisphere in this NSS. Still, Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow at the think tank Defense Priorities, told the Kyunghyang Shinmun, “Although the Western Hemisphere is mentioned first, I do not think it was prioritized over Asia,” adding, “Discussion of the China strategy still takes up the most pages in the NSS.” She noted, however, that “This NSS explains U.S. actions in the Indo-Pacific more through an economic lens than a military one, marking a change from previous China strategies.”

In practice, the second Trump administration's Indo-Pacific strategy focuses far more than before on preventing China from changing the status quo, especially an invasion of Taiwan, but not for reasons like “defending Taiwan's democracy” or “blocking China's regional hegemony.” It is “because one-third of global maritime trade passes through the South China Sea each year, so a change to the status quo by China would have a significant impact on the U.S. economy.” The NSS stated that China and the United States “hope to have an economic relationship that is mutually beneficial.”

Caroline Costello, deputy director for China at the think tank Atlantic Council, said, “Making clear that U.S.-China competition is an interest-based rivalry rather than a clash of values is a very big shift in how the competition is defined,” noting, “The new NSS does not even mention China's authoritarianism. It is the first time since the 1988 NSS, when optimism about China's opening was spreading.” David Sacks, a research fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), said, “The era of great-power competition has now drawn to a close,” and, “The Trump administration's new national strategy demotes geopolitics to a supporting role and defines the economy as the ‘ultimate interest’.”

What has filled the void left by democratic values in U.S. foreign policy is America First. The NSS warned that Europe's acceptance of large-scale immigration raises concerns of ‘civilizational extinction’ due to the loss of national identity. It contained not a single line of criticism of Russia, and instead claimed that some European countries “have unrealistic expectations (regarding the war in Ukraine).” It also expressed support for “patriotic European parties” that champion anti-immigration. Liana Fix, a senior fellow for Europe at CFR, pointed out, “The ideological views of part of the MAGA camp have now become the Trump administration's official policy.”

To deter a ‘Taiwan contingency’ that implicates U.S. economic interests, the Trump administration said, “Maintaining military superiority is the highest priority,” adding, “We will build a military capable of deterring aggression anywhere along the first island chain.” However, it stressed, “This cannot and should not be done by the United States alone,” and, “Allies must increase defense spending and do much more for collective defense.”

The NSS continued, “U.S. diplomatic efforts should focus on pressing first island chain allies and partners to expand access for U.S. forces to ports and other facilities, increase their own defense outlays, and invest in capabilities that strengthen deterrence of invasion.” It added, “As President Trump strongly presses Japan and South Korea to increase cost-sharing, we should urge these countries to expand defense spending focused on the capabilities needed to deter adversaries and defend the first island chain.”

This underscores an expanded South Korean role in defending Taiwan and is not unrelated to comments by U.S. officials, following President Trump's recent ‘approval’ of South Korea building nuclear-powered submarines, that South Korea's nuclear subs could be used to check China. Senior fellow Kavanagh said, “Through this, the United States wants to redeploy U.S. Forces Korea resources to other regions and flexibly use U.S. bases in South Korea (in the event of a Taiwan contingency).”

James Kim, director of the Korea Program at the Stimson Center, told the Kyunghyang Shinmun, “The fact that the new NSS specifies that allies must take responsibility for their own regional security aligns in some respects with the Lee Jae-myung administration's push for self-reliant defense and the return of wartime operational control.” In a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum on the 6th, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likewise said, “We will reward ‘model allies’ like South Korea, Israel, and Poland that take more responsibility for their self-defense, but allies that do not increase defense spending or do their part will have to face the consequences.”

Assessments in the United States of the new NSS are mixed. Dan Caldwell, who served as a senior adviser to Secretary Hegseth, told the New York Times, “For far too long, U.S. foreign policy has rested on a ‘delusion’ about the role of America,” calling the NSS “a true break with the failed bipartisan foreign policy since the Cold War.” By contrast, the military outlet War on the Rocks criticized it by saying, “Rather than striving to present the United States as a cohesive whole and bracket domestic politics, the new NSS has placed President Trump at center stage,” and, “When the NSS elevates the president rather than the country as the protagonist, the line between institutional strategy and political messaging blurs, reducing the trust of allies in the United States and making sustained assessments of adversaries more difficult.”

The New York Times even relayed views from some analysts urging that the NSS not be given too much weight, noting that “(the national strategy) could change at any time because President Trump is fickle.”