Every few years Washington releases a National Security Strategy document that is supposed to tell the world, and its own bureaucracy, what really matters to America. Most of the time these things are full of the usual diplomatic boilerplate and get skimmed by a handful of think-tank interns before being quietly archived.
This time feels different. I was drinking my morning coffee, half-reading the latest version, when a couple of sentences made me actually stop scrolling. The United States, the document says in surprisingly blunt language, is going to “assert and enforce a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” Yes, you read that right. The Monroe Doctrine. The 1823 thing we all vaguely remember from high school history class is apparently back from the retirement home.
And that is only the beginning of the surprises.
The Hemisphere Comes First – Really First
For almost thirty years American strategic documents have opened with some version of “China represents the pacing challenge” or “the most consequential geopolitical threat of the century.” Not anymore.
The new strategy still talks about China at length, but the hierarchy is crystal clear from the table of contents alone. The very first substantive section after the usual introductory pleasantries is about securing the homeland and the broader Western Hemisphere. Only after that do we get to the Indo-Pacific discussion. That sequencing is deliberate. In Washington speak, what comes first is what matters most.
Perhaps the most eye-opening line concerns actual military posture:
“…a readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere, and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years.”
Let that sink in. The Pentagon is openly contemplating pulling forces out of regions it spent blood and trillions defending since 1945 because those regions suddenly matter less than keeping cartels, migration routes, and unfriendly influence out of the Americas. That is not a minor recalibration; that is a tectonic shift.
What Happened to the “Pacing Threat”?
Gone are the phrases that dominated Biden-era documents: “acute,” “existential,” “systemic challenge,” “revisionist power seeking to displace the United States.” Instead, China is described in strikingly pragmatic terms:
- An economic competitor we need to out-innovate and out-produce
- A source of supply-chain vulnerability we must reduce
- A major trading partner we would rather keep trading with peacefully
- A regional power whose dominance in Asia would be economically inconvenient, but apparently not worth general war to prevent
Notice what is missing: any mention of democracy versus autocracy, any talk of defending the “rules-based international order,” any suggestion that the Chinese political system itself is an affront that must be confronted. The entire ideological dimension that colored every China speech from 2018 to 2024 has simply vanished.
In its place is an almost Realpolitik tone I cannot remember seeing in an official American document since maybe the Nixon years. One passage even states explicitly that U.S. policy is “not grounded in traditional, political ideology” and that Washington now seeks “good relations with nations whose governing systems differ from ours.” If someone had shown me that sentence five years ago I would have assumed it was satire.
Taiwan: From Red Line to “A Priority”
The Taiwan section is probably the most carefully lawyered few paragraphs in the entire document, which makes the careful wording even more revealing.
Deterring conflict over Taiwan remains “a priority” – note the indefinite article – and ideally by “preserving military overmatch.” The little word “ideally” does a lot of work there. For the first time in any public U.S. strategy document I can recall, Washington is openly contemplating the possibility that it might not enjoy military overmatch in a Taiwan scenario for much longer.
There is also a remarkably candid passage putting the onus on First Island Chain allies (Japan, Philippines, presumably South Korea) to “step up and spend – and more importantly do – much more for collective defense.” If they don’t, the document warns, the balance of forces could become “so unfavorable to us as to make defending that island impossible.”
Translation: America is no longer prepared to bear almost the entire military burden of deterring China in Asia if regional allies continue free-riding. That is a message Tokyo and Seoul are almost certainly reading very, very carefully right now.
The Economic Competition Nobody Wants to Admit Is Already Lost
Perhaps the most humbling admission comes in the trade section. The document essentially concedes that the tariff-heavy approach that began in 2017 largely failed in its strategic objective:
“China adapted and has strengthened its hold on critical supply chains.”
That is diplomatic language for “we tried to decouple with tariffs and they called our bluff.” The new plan is to build a broader economic coalition that can exert leverage greater than the U.S. economy alone – a tacit acknowledgment that America no longer possesses the unilateral economic weight it once did.
Yet the strategy offers no convincing answer to the obvious contradiction: how do you persuade allies to join an economic coalition against their largest trading partner when you are simultaneously waging trade wars against those same allies, demanding they pay dramatically more for their own defense, and treating every alliance as a transactional deal to be constantly renegotiated?
At some point Berlin, Paris, Seoul, and Tokyo are going to ask the question out loud: why sacrifice our prosperity to prop up a hegemon that increasingly cannot compete on its own and offers diminishing security guarantees in return?
The Return of the Monroe Doctrine – What Does It Actually Mean?
Reviving the Monroe Doctrine in 2025 is not just rhetorical flair. The document ties it directly to contemporary threats: cartel influence, mass migration, Chinese and Chinese economic inroads in Latin America (ports, mines, space facilities, etc.).
In practice this probably means:
- Increased U.S. military and intelligence presence in Central and South America
- More aggressive use of sanctions and law-enforcement tools against cartels and their financial networks
- Direct pressure on Latin American governments to cancel or renegotiate Chinese infrastructure contracts
- Possibly even limited kinetic operations inside Mexico if cartel violence continues spilling over the border
None of that will be popular in the region, of course. Latin America has spent decades trying to escape the shadow of Yanqui imperialism. But popularity has never been a requirement for American policy when core interests are at stake.
Why This Shift Matters More Than Most People Realize
The United States is not abandoning Asia tomorrow, and there will still be aircraft carriers in the Pacific for years to come. But priorities are zero-sum. Every dollar and soldier redirected toward the Western Hemisphere is one not available for deterring China or reassuring European allies.
More importantly, the intellectual bandwidth is also zero-sum. When the national security establishment starts thinking of China primarily as an economic competitor rather than an existential ideological foe, the whole conversation changes. Military planners begin asking “can we actually win?” instead of “how do we win?” Diplomats start exploring off-ramps rather than confrontation.
In my view – and I’ve been reading these documents for longer than I care to admit – this strategy marks the moment when America quietly lowered the temperature on great-power confrontation from “boiling” to “simmer.” Whether that simmer eventually cools further or flares up again will depend on countless variables we cannot predict today.
But the direction of travel is now clear. After three decades of forward-leaning global primacy, the United States is turning its gaze homeward. The era of trying to run the entire world is ending, not with a dramatic announcement, but with a few carefully chosen paragraphs in an official strategy almost no one will read cover to cover.
Sometimes the biggest revolutions in foreign policy are the quietest ones.
