Costume parties--fancy dress balls--are always fun. They are even more fun as text--that is as a textual production that allows us to fancy dress our collective selves to suit an occasion. Either way, the opportunity to the trans-"vestment" are sometimes welcome, moments, for example, in which text can be dressed up as something other than itself--or perhaps the collective the text incarnates. . . one sometimes finds it virtually impossible to distinguish between costume and which is the costumed. The trans-vestments of fancy dress (that is the vestments understood in their old sense of liturgical garments, garments denoting public worship or service that operate on the physical and virtual planes, that goes beyond of going beyond, or crosses over (trans-) to something else), then, present an opportunity to be oneself and to project that self in ways that can be understood in certain ways by others. And in the process, one orders what is important through the signalling of the dress itself--it brings what is inside out and crams the outside in. The theater of the fancy dress is quite acutely felt within hegemonic political-economic orders in a number of respects. For what follows one in particular is may worth considering in a little more detail: the dressing up of national security as economic policy, or vice versa, the dressing up of economic policy as national security. The difference is important. That ordering suggests which of the concepts is a function of the other--which drives what, where. One either dresses up national security (what is inside) as economic policy (the fancy dress) or one dresses up economic policy (what is inside) as national security (what appears to the partygoers). These are the thoughts that may come, unbidden and unwelcome, as one
reads through the recently released, and much talked about, National Security Strategy of the United States for 2025 (November 2025) (hereafter the "NSS2025").
What emerges from NSS 2025, then, is quite helpful. It clarifies that for the Trump Administration, national security is the fancy dress that covers or is the existential core , the "identity" of the United States--economic policy. And that economic policy is bound up in the America Frost Project. That is to say, one might most usefully approach the NSS2025 as one of the clearest expressions of America First through the costuming (the lens, the fancy dress) of national security. In the process one begins to better understand the way in which AmericaFirst is constructed, not as as a recipe for foreign relations but as the identitarian core of the United States and its political-economic model, the consequences of which affect, in intimate form, its internal and external relations. And to understand America First, then, one must, at last, confront the nature and form of the cognitive cage from which it arises and through which it is shaped--the cognitive cage of that I have previously called the reality shaping premises of the merchant (arche)type and their ordering of the world as a large platform within which transactions--iterative, cumulative, and expressions of the realization of interest--define and order the world and manifest its optimal values. What one is sure of is that in this trans-xistential space one might (collectively) have the luxury of being or belonging, for a moment, in and to a world that is quite removed from that (other) reality that always threatens to consume us, and then digested again, to project one out and back into the the (an) other world.
Of course the world itself is indifferent. Facts have no identity issues. These they reflect as a function of the effort to see in them something other than the fact itself, that is the data node. That is also a form of trans-xistential- nothing has changed at all--its objects, its facticity, remain unmoved and unchanged. Perception and the cognitive universe from out of which the unchanging can be changed by shifting the basis for a perception of the thing (or by making the thing visible or invisible as a function of the range and capacity of our "sight") remain constant as well--the most potent fancy dress in which a society wraps itself for its collective fancy dress parties. Still--for that moment--and for those who revel in the moment--the feeling, the performance, can be worth all of the destruction (including self-destruction) that may be the price of twisting self-actualization in the mirrors of perception that may be angled this way and that. What makes all of this more than interesting is the extraordinary disruption of this fancy dress party. For generations Americans, and with them the rest of the world, have been guests at an extended party in which the relationship between costume and identity were inverted--the world of the official/bureaucrat type masquerading as a merchant from time to time, but one in which the bureaucrat/official/expert was expected to construct an intricate, networked, ordered apparatus for the constitution of layers of protection against instability and chaos, driven by values manifested as what was "best" for the masses, whose role was to show gratitude through obedience. None of this implies criticism of either model--humans invest themselves and their objects with whatever value suits, and, theoretically, they all suit as a function of the values they represent, assuming that one chooses those values and value premises that appeal as "truth" and "best" either universally or within a collective context. (The
"Merchant" (商), the "Bureaucrat" (士) and the "Tariff War"--The
Cognitive Cages of the New Apex Post-Global and the Condition of the
U.S. and China in their Folie à Deux).
Most of this is harmless stuff at the level of the banal, and when undertaken by individuals in small gatherings of people who never really "leave" themselves precisely because they are all sharing the same trans-existential experience as such. And this is a fancy dress party has is millennia old in any case. However, when that trans-existentialism corrodes the brain, when it seeks to displace the underlying and unmoving reality of existence--of proclivity, of the form and function in the world of those "archetypes" that have served for so long to mold a being into what they presume they are (and thus must be), when the self-reflexivity of play acting becomes more real than the reality on which it rests then one moves to madness, not in the sense of something bad, but in the sense of its more ancient roots in the notion of a disordered intellect; losing one's cognitive moorings--adrift between cognitive states that produce a miasma of reality that eventually will collapse on itself. That is neither here nor there when it occurs to or within an individual. Indeed, that is the stuff of quite evocative literature that continues to move readers and bring insight. It is quite another thing when this sort of madness is shared among a class of merchants, already toiling within the spaces of bureaucrats that must now style themselves warriors--warriors of transactional battles to be fought with the weapons that bureaucrats wield and into which warriors are thrust and merchants profit. One moves from the trans-xistential to the magical qualities of disordered intellect.
All
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Third Witch
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digged i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Slivered in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.
All
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch
Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good.
[Enter Hecate, goddess of witchcraft]
Hecate
O well done. I commend your pains, And every one shall share i' the gains.
And now about the cauldron sing, Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in. (Shakespeare, McBeth, Act 4 Scene 1)
And when that disordered intellect is shared collectively by a coven of merchants ("Economic security is national security": President Trump Issues Executive Order--"America First Investment Policy") one enters what appears to be the normality of the first third of the 21st Century. (The
"Merchant" (商), the "Bureaucrat" (士) and the "Tariff War"--The
Cognitive Cages of the New Apex Post-Global and the Condition of the
U.S. and China in their Folie à Deux). That causes the sort of conflict within institutions that are cognitively bureaucratic. One sees this most recently in the largely unnecessary reminder of the President to Congress that he will exercise his discretion with respect to those matters within his powers as he sees fit (within the constraints of the limits of those powers and always in good faith and for the benefit of the nation rather than of a particular individual, no matter how lofty their role, title or office one would suppose). In President Trump's Statement of 18 December 2025 (which follows below), the President put in text what virtually every other President has undertaken by action--having "signed into law S. 1071, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026” (the “Act”). . . . [that] will enable the DoW to carry out my Peace Through Strength agenda, protect the homeland from domestic and foreign threats, and strengthen the defense industrial base, while eliminating funding for wasteful and radical programs that undermine the warfighting ethos of our Nation’s men and women in uniform." (Statement by the President 18 December 2025), Merchant Princes, CEOs, like top level bureaucratic leaders, do not answer to or conform their behaviors to laterally situated power, except when they have to. In the context of the NSS2025, this suggests that the President will exercise discretion, including the discretion to report to Congress, as he (rather than Congressional mandate) deems appropriate. Of course, the President cannot compel Congress tp act--or fund--his vision. That, like the dealings of a merchant prince with his financiers, may temper discretion.
This is not to suggest that the United States is something special in this regard--one encounters variations of this globally, shared miasmas of blended normative archetypes of covens of warriors and bureaucrats with their own concoctions to brew as they play dress up in the skins of other ruler "types."
I considered elements of this from the perspective of cognitive lens archetypes through the quite profound Presidential Message on the anniversary of the end of Spanish American War (
Reflections
on President Trump: "America 250: Presidential Message on the
Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War"). And one might wonder, is this just a specific manifestation of a broader type of trans-cognition within or against the driving values of the leadership of a political economic system? It is possible, then (and at last), to put forward the possibility that the most useful thing about NSS2025 is not about national security, but about the way national security is meant to reflect the broader values of America First, and then, the way that this reflection, in turn, better describes the values and premises on which it (and nationals security) are built. Lastly, that reflexive building also serves to differentiate the national ethos-security architecture of America First as the expression of merchant-type empire, from that of the bureaucrat/official/expert type imperial project of the prior era of American historical development. At the same time serves to distinguish the merchant-type imperial project from that of the official/bureau(techno)crat-type imperium manifested best in the current era of history by the Chinese. In theirs, one dresses up the vanguardist state apparatus in the fancy dress of national security. In both cases security, and the warrior-types who are its instruments, as consequential and secondary manifestations of power. In both cases peace rather than conflict (for the most part) enhances the national project. Those are the characteristics these imperia have in common. But merchants and bureau(techno)crats have very different visions of the world and its ordering; their values are not always compatible and their methods of management tend, at the limit to be mutually incomprehensible and thus (in the parlance of the times) triggering.
With all of this in mind it might be worth exploring NSS2025 and its national context more closely. NSS2025 is another iteration of an annual report to Congress mandated
under the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Department Reorganization Act of
1986 (amending Title 50, Chapter 15, Section 404a
of the US Code). "The NSS is intended to provide strategic yet
prioritized guidance from which national security agencies base their
own guidance documents, budgets, directives, and policies." (Micah
Zenko, Trump’s National Security Strategy Deserves to Be Ignored, Foreign Policy (Dec. 18, 2017)).
Of course, for at least for a few days, the distribution of NSS 2025 had its intended propaganda effects. There was intense examination, and even more intense use of the NSS2025 release to restate and reinforce positions already held or desired by those moved enough to write something related to NSS2025. The signification of NSS2025, and its interpretation, especially its placement within interpretive fields among communities of meaning makers organized in factional spaces, fit nicely into the performative spaces of the politics of transformation, and of the defense of the quickly receding imaginaries of global convergence and the multi-lateral rules based convergence order. In that sense, all parties, and all actors, might be said to have been delighted that NSS2025 was, indeed, made public. It was an instrument that anyone could use to their own ends, including, in the end, the members of the Trump Administration.
That was nicely brought out in one of the many commentaries that were quickly produced almost the instant the NSS2025 was distributed, and like the fizz of a carbonated drink may have the same quick but only instantaneous effect on those who ingest it. But not this one. Bob Zoellick, a distinguished member of the old guard (served as US Trade Representative (2001-05), deputy Secretary of State (2005-06), and World Bank President (2007-12)) during the apogee of the oh-so-close realization of its normative ambitions, wrote a quite interesting essay on the point for the Wall Street Journal ('
White House National -Security Strategy Reflects Vance's Thinking,'
Wall Street Journal 11 December 2025; an easy to digest summary for those who prefer not to read the essay
here), just a week or so before Turning Point USA endorsed Mr. Vance for President in 2028, at an event attended by Nicki Minaj (which was, itself, a revolutionary semiosis of political alignments that, incomprehensible to left and right traditionalists, would either be disparaged as some sort of clown show or ignore entirely, and yet she too had some quite interesting things to say that are revealing of certain strains of thinking that continue to grow beneath the spectrum of visibility of those currently in control of the national political narrative.
But back to Bob Zoellick: Mr. Zoellick suggests that the document, as is customary for these sorts of efforts, is--like drone technology in peace and war--a dual use instrument. One the one hand it is directed to its object, to define the principles through which a U.S. national security strategy can be realized. Mr. Zoellick, however, wanted to concentrate on that other, more subterranean, purpose which, given the the Trump Administration 's merchant-transaction lebenswelt ("imaginaries" for those whose taste runs to the French and away from the German) have have some significance for those who are interesting in (or shaping) cognitive reality (and the factotums through which that is to be realized ) more than three years beyond 2025:
The 2025 White House National Security Strategy is revealing—especially about Vice President JD Vance’s worldview. As a practical matter, the document won’t constrain Donald Trump’s ambition to become the “president of peace” through deals. But the authors of this document—likely led by Andy Baker,
deputy national security adviser and a former aide to Mr. Vance—have
explained how they would create a new framework after Mr. Trump’s
destruction of the old order. ('White House National -Security Strategy Reflects Vance's Thinking)
Mr. Zoellick suggests that the vision that is meant to be advanced, perhaps, indeed, as a prequel to the Vice President's run for the Presidency, suggests a revanchist mentality (much in vogue among key elements on all sides of the American political spectrum though to different ends and with different agendas in mind). Mr. Zoellick notes: "In the best light, the new strategy imitates Theodore Roosevelt’s effort to take advantage of America’s rising influence and mediate balances of power in East Asia and Europe while dominating North America and the Caribbean." ('White House National -Security Strategy Reflects Vance's Thinking). These Mr. Zoellick breaks down into their interesting regional manifestations:
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The regional strategy opens with the Western Hemisphere, calling for a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, imitating Theodore Roosevelt’s revision. Foreign policy is connected directly to domestic interests, calling for a halt of “destabilizing” migration and the use of the military against narco-traffickers.* * * European policy represents the biggest change. The administration contends that Europe faces economic stagnation and “civilizational erasure.” . . The strategy treats Europe and Russia as politically equivalent. The U.S. role will be to mediate a restoration of stable security in Europe. * * * Although some in the White House have trumpeted Indo-Pacific security as the priority, the strategy for the region seems uninspired except for economic protectionism. The document stresses free navigation, especially for supply chains.* * * In the Mideast, the authors are eager for Washington to get on with its long-delayed pullback, even though the president is engaged with the region as he busily searches for peace deals. The strategy relies on the Gulf monarchies to maintain security in some association with Israel. Africa is an afterthought—a source of natural resources. ('White House National -Security Strategy Reflects Vance's Thinking)
None of this is new, of course. Nor is it necessarily good or bad as these things go as historical patterns that keep on going. It is just convenient to have it packages in a singular discursive dollop of text, and with it of the conviction, passion, and ordering referents from which what appears to Mr. Zoellick to be the articulation of "their strategy clearly—if not always coherently" (ibid.) might to others be the textual blob that consumed a number of global contradictions that are quite worthy of serious consideration but which have been reduced to burlesque, made sadder when the burlesque's "book" is authored by those against whom it is directed. Perhaps that is, in part, Mr. Zoelick's point, or at least his starting point for the ribaldry that then follows in his own text.
For others, perhaps, a closer reading of NSS2025 might suggest a sophisticated politics of passive-aggressive whining (again similar to what came before but through a different political lens). At its most depressing, elite whining might be made more dainty by calling it something more polite (since all elites whine, or certainly all elites appear to like to whine since the cultural revolutions of the 1960s) as something like "national populism" or "populist grievance"--as long as it has a "populist in there all is good, at least as a discursive trope that signal solidarity with something "not" populist." And so this assessment: "The vice president’s psychology of populist grievance underpins these
regional strategies. He appeals to resentments about past overreach,
unfair burdens, unreliable foreigners, the woke agenda, the elites—and
especially migration. Yet the document adds its own globalist ideology
of protecting national cultures against foreign influences and
migration." ('White House National -Security Strategy Reflects Vance's Thinking)
Of course, each with an analogue on the other side of the political spectrum, the whining about which marked the discourse of high level acolytes of that elite collective in wonderfully interesting ways especially between 2020 and 2024. So named, one might be tempted to reduce this delightfully names version of a universal elite reflex in the US it might to the sort of whining that one would expect from an unworldly uneducated individual whose own world view is sieved through the lens of historical and class grievance then extrapolated and combined with just enough effluvia of the anti-current-inner circle-elite elitism to appear as discursively sophisticated (that is as seeking to speak the language of those members of the magisterium of the controlling elite who are despised (perhaps rightly) for a generation of arrogant mismanagement and closed club elitist false (or al least self serving) consciousness) as the targets who are the object of this discursive exercise.
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But in the end mostly whining. . . and grievance; something the American magisterium across the political spectrum has refined to an art form. Indeed, a cynic might be tempted to say that the Americans (or at least their elites when it suits them) have engages in the long-running arc of post-colonial angst on Earth. It is an artform that the Global South has been astute enough to copy, contextualized for local conditions and needs, but there it is--the Americans as the founders of Global Southism and still a member, if NSS2025 is to be believed. It follows that for a political class (and their claques), for which the performance of grievance embedded within a longing for a past or a past ideal that can produce the simulacra on which the future can be built, the writing of NSS 2025 is meant to provide the appearance of one and encounter with national security but winds up, with little but another episode of a post-colonial
howl. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,* * *
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
City Hall, (Alan Ginsberg, Howl (1956) excerpt)
The NSS2025, then, is a howling to the moon of the ambitions of their authors, and to those ends, of their ambitions for the nation. Do not misunderstand, everyone is howling, and by everyone one means States, their intellectual and institutional claques and their factotums. That the Americans are also howling suggests the nature of the times and the importance of the moment that either may amount to a last gasp of thing that is passing or the first glimmerings of something that is just now coming over the horizon, the birth pangs of the post-institutional.
But might there be something else? In the case of the NSS2025, that "something else" might have been better provided by Marco Rubio who has been much better at articulating the parameters of the cognitive cages of a transactional-merchant lebenswelt. That is something that the NSS2025 might have clutched tightly; it is a "thing" that that survives in the NSS2025 in the Western Hemisphere regional description that Mr. Zoellick describes as the contemporary embodiment of the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt bereft of any sense of the lessons that century that followed offered, but perhaps better understood as a much more Leninist imaginary of the world and the U.S. role in it--something the Vice President and his Advisors might have picked up at Yale or perhaps within the circles in which they, and indeed in which many of all political stripes, travel (see, e.g., The
American Leninist-Brain Trust Republic: Text of President Trump's
Executive Order, "Launching the Genesis Mission," and the Press Release
"President Trump Launches the Genesis Mission to Accelerate AI for
Scientific Discovery").
Mr. Zoellick finds echoes of Mr. Putin's world view in parts of the NSS2025; not surprising, though it bears remembering that the American transactional mentality (and it is not clear whether the Vice President understands much less shares that mentality, having been "raised" in an intellectual environment in which the official rather than the merchant was the cognitive way to go (eg here). Nonetheless it may be worth considering the extent to which the Vice President and his clique might come to their position from a very different place than someone who was immersed in youth within a peculiar corner of the Soviet security obsessed nomenklatura, and who is immersed in the cultures of the early 20th century official immersed in a political-spiritual enterprise around which order and advantage is elaborated. That might also produce its own version of revanchist whining (eg a tidbit here), but it is not, except in results, cognitively aligned with the American version. In any case, Mr. Zoellick is not a fan: "In some bizarre way, Mr. Trump’s American greatness is supposed to be a soft power that will lead to cultural rebirth of diverse peoples around the globe. . . Those who recognize the dangers of this sharp historical turn need to speak out." ('White House National -Security Strategy Reflects Vance's Thinking). But then, again, he is unlikely to fall easily into the merchant-type, nor likely "wired" cognitively to embrace the way they see and understand, much less the way they value and manifest the world around them.
In that sense the NSS2025 is much much closer in spirit to its Chinese counterpart, and indeed reflecting a political-economic vision closer to what used to be called the Belt& Road Initiative, than it does to Teddy Roosevelt and his vision now receding into ancient (by American reckoning) history. The difference, and what separates NSS2025 from its American predecessors and from those of the Chinese , is the fundamentally important difference (at least among some) between the cognitive perspectives of the merchant (focus on transactions for which order is needed), and that of the official (order is needed for which transactions are necessary). The old elite, almost universally, embraced the universalist sensibilities of the official. One spoke of "order"--a multilateral rules based order, for example, or a convergence ordering for normatively infused management of human interaction (socially, economically, politically etc.). It became so common and well established that even academics sought to "understand" and by understanding "manage" it to suit their politics. Perhaps, indeed, it ought to have been the hand of Marco Rubio rather than that of the Vice President, whose fingerprints ought to have been all over this policy-performance. But because today s actually the compressed prequel to tomorrow, and tomorrow one encounters the fight over the succession to the leadership of whatever it is the Republican Party is (the Democratic Party has its own drama, acted out from a script that might well have been lifted from the 1970s' revolutionary times scripts; through now that it is orchestrated from the top perhaps a rethinking of the Cultural Revolution analogy contextualized in an American spirit might be more helpful), that Secretary Rubio and the Vice President might find it increasingly difficult to breath the same air in the same room.
Thus situated, at least in its discursive elements (who knows what people actually believe, and frankly it may be of less importance, except to them, then how belief becomes "real", is incarnated, in belief-action), the dual-use character of the NSS exercise becomes clearer--and for analysis a much richer experience. It bears recalling that NSS Reports have long ceased to be annual technical reporting to Congress. They have become more public facing expressions of a national vision that increasingly aligns domestic and foreign policy in ways that can e leveraged for the political agenda of whatever Administration is in power and that can also be used as an instrument for the deeper embedding of whatever normative or ideological stance that Administration in power seeks both to further and to more deeply embed or naturalize within the cognitive frameworks of the nation. This is all undertaken within an instrument that is meant ot augment the authority of its contents by its connection to the experts who would have been thought to have had a hand in its elaboration (see, e.g.,
The
American Leninist-Brain Trust Republic: Text of President Trump's
Executive Order, "Launching the Genesis Mission," and the Press Release
"President Trump Launches the Genesis Mission to Accelerate AI for
Scientific Discovery"). None of this is wrong, per se; it is the way Americans have been attempting politics. Recently, the NSS exercise, when it is undertaken by an Administration, have become something other than annual reporting and to
some extent more of a public facing narrative of the publicly embraced
premises that an Administration will use to support or justify the many
decisions it will take in its foreign relations to the extent and in
furtherance of a national security vision it has adopted for itself.
Usually these are also closely tied into domestic issues that reflect
both the times and strategies to perpetuate one or another political
party in office by appealing, in the short term, to the perceived
desires (or the learned to be perceived desires) of the populace. None
of this is bad or good, just the costumes for the fancy dress
trans-existential ball, the mechanics and performance of which are well
established within the cultures of public life--even when attempted by
merchants in the halls of bureaucrats attempting to direct warriors for
the benefit of laborers.
That leaves us with the text of NSS205. At this point that is almost an afterthought. Its text, as far as one might be tempted to conclude, is not about its own text, but rather he text of NSS2025 serves as subtext to its own politics and the the ambitions of its authors. something with more is is subtext NSS2025 is cut from the same cloth. It might usefully be compared with another--President
Trump's On 4 December 2017 the Office of the President of the United
States
released its national security strategy going forward, Office of the
President of the United States, National Security Strategy of the United States
(4 Dec. 2017), and against the NSS efforts of the Biden Administration, the erasure of the effects and influence of which appear to have been a significant priority of President Trump and his Administration since resuming office in 2025.
In 2017, The President gave a speech at the unveiling of NSS2017 (Read Trump’s full speech outlining his national security strategy, WPSU (18 Dec. 2017)).
Our new strategy is based on a principled realism, guided by our vital national interests, and rooted in our timeless values. This strategy recognizes that, whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of competition. We accept that vigorous military, economic, and political contests are now playing out all around the world. We face rogue regimes that threaten the United States and our allies. We face terrorist organizations, transnational criminal networks, and others who spread violence and evil around the globe. We also face rival powers, Russia and China, that seek to challenge American influence, values, and wealth. We will attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest. (President Trump Speech 18 December 2017)
But 2025 is not 2017. "America is strong and respected again—and because of that, we are making peace all over the world.* * * . This document is a roadmap to ensure thatAmerica remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the‘home of freedom on earth. In the years ahead, we will continue to develop every dimension of our national strength—and we will make America safer, richer, freer,greater, and more powerful than ever before" (President Trump, Letter of Transmittal of the NSS2025). The factors remain virtually unchanged, but the analytic environment now changes their signification and the meaning of their relation to the United States, even as the value system, the premises and vision of the United States changes. That is the gulf that separates these two years, now the end and starting points of epochs--the receding era of global convergence and the approaching era of post-global non-territorial empire--is only now becoming more apparent, and one that will survive ant change in American leadership, not because the Americans will it but because it is no longer possible to reverse on a global scale. The old order, the ancien regime, was on display as late as 2024, as the Americans saw off the old era in the glow of the senescence of the Biden Administration (consider the U.S. Army War College Strategic
Studies Institute, "2024 Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security
Environment" (see, my reflections Brief
Reflections on the Release of the U.S. Army War College Strategic
Studies Institute, "2024 Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security
Environment")). In 2025, the glimmerings of the strategy heralded in the middle of the first term of the leadership of President Trump was transformed into that of the merchant president of peace ("President
Trump is the President of Peace" Reflections on the Power of
Presidential Self-Revolution (自我革命), the Republic's Social Revolution
(社会革命) and the Presidential Message: "President Trump Brokers Another
Historic Peace Deal").
That, finally, gets one to the beginning of that road that will lead us to the current version of the American Oz. "The questions before us now are: 1) What should the United States want? 2) What are our available means to get it? and 3) How can we connect ends and means into a viable National Security Strategy?" (NSS2025, pp. 1-5, 2). It is from there that the Strategy emerges (NSS2025, pp. 6-29). And the answers provide the framework for what comes next. That is not to suggest that it is either good or bad--it is the product of a mindset that rejects, at a fundamental level, the premises and worldview of its predecessors, though as one will see, not the instruments that they used to craft their own ordering.
1. Defining/describing the cognitive cage of the national security mask of economic policy. All cognitive cages require description, the premises and approaches that make it possible to construct and place the bars on the the cage within winch premise based analysis, and the appropriate conclusions to be drawn from them may be undertaken, NSS2025 does not disappoint.
A “strategy” is a concrete, realistic plan that explains the essential connection between ends and means: it begins from an accurate assessment of what is desired and what tools are available, or can realistically be created, to achieve the desired outcomes.(NSS 2025, p. 1).
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| Pix credit here (Cosimo di Medici) |
But of course NSS2025 means to do more than that. To get to strategy, one must first define the premises within which it is possible to identify ends and then produce the structures within which it is possible to assess the value and possibility of the means that may be used to attain those ends. That is, before a "strategy [can]evaluate, sort and prioritize" (NSS2025, p. 1), it must first set out the premises and values necessary to identify and assess fact, conditions, history, desires, and the like from out of which it is possible to develop "ends" that are either consonant with these or that fulfill their expectations. One must, it seems, presuppose an ideology with normative values, because one can go about the task of identifying "ends" and assessing the "best" or "most effective" (values laden terms) "means." That is the crucial object of the NSS2025, and with it the identification of the nature and characteristics of America First (the ends; "What Should the US Want? NSS2025, pp. 3-5) ) and thus its means (NSS pp. 6-7), which then produce the strategy that is the incarnated manifestation of the America First project realized through the lens of national security (NSS2025, pp. 7-29). But all of that requires some expression of an ultimate ruling ideology. For China that ruling ideology, grounded in the core norms of Marxist-Leninism posits the deployment of all of the nation's productive forces (including human productive forces) led by a revolutionary and then institutional/bureaucratic vanguard toward the ends of realizing a communist society (achieved by proceeding along a "Socialist Road" toward those ends) and requiring highest level production of both material and societal/cultural progress. For the Americans, at least under NSS2025, that ruling ideology requires now aided by a hierarchically arranged magisterium tasked with the role of shepherd ing and protecting the merchant flock--but in which the shepherds themselves are meant to be merchant-warriors or merchant-officials protective of the transactional spaces within which material and spiritual satisfaction may be achieved through the cumulative value of economic, social, cultural, and perhaps even political transactions. Where the Marxist-Leninist seeks security for the achievement of communism, the American merchant seeks security for the protection of nationally led transactional vanguardism to the material and moral profit of its participants, the content of which is itself derived from the accumulating iteration of transactions that are themselves in constant motion as participants enter and leave the transactional spaces created and maintained for them.
NSS2025 is organized that way one would think a ruling ideology that is also to serve as a ordering of reality as a function of the values and principles that make it possible to both see and understand the world and to distinguish between bad and good--ideology as the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (boni et mali; טוֹב וָרָע). That is, the NSS2025 creates its system of valuation and judgment, the principles and ideals against which consequences, actions and policies may be assessed and thus assessed, judged as good or bad. To those ends the NSS organizaiton follows--first the elaboration of the ideals (What
should the United States want?; NSS2025, pp 3-6); then a pragmatic assessment of the tools available to approach those wants (What are America's means to get what we want?; NSS2025, pp. 6-8. These then are followed by the means toward operationalization, the preferred strategy at this stage of the historical development of the United States. These start with foundational principles for manifestation of strategy United States (NSS2025; pp. 8-11); then the strategy priorities that follow from these strategic principles themselves drawn from the foundational cognitive premises (the what should the US want ideological baseline) (NSS2025, pp. 11-15); and finally their application to regions of interest, which in the case of the United States includes substantially all of the world--or at least all of the world encased within the transactional universe of the United States.
Taken all together the vision is not complicated. Its alpha and omega are the United States; and it is dedicated to the proposition that the United States must, from its lair, permit everyone to do as they like as long as American interests are undisturbed. That is, that American policy is built, and its national security lens is shaped, as a function of the cognitive ordering of the merchant-type: as long as the Americans can roam around as they please, to please themselves, then the rest of the world may do as it likes, with the exception of the old colonial homelands, which must be preserved as some sort of historically time locked place protected against both migratory settler colonialism of the Global South and their cultural imperialism--even if the old homelands are quite content (or their ruling vanguards anyway) to see themselves (again) transformed, and the old center displaced, amid a slow settler migration that changes things a bit, as it has happened periodically in Europe--that sometimes violent mixing bowl of migrations --since at least 1200 B.C. when the Sea People's swept into the Eastern Mediterranean.Here, perhaps, a howl directed toward a parent with whom the post-colonial child continues to have separation issues--as do, ironically the last wave of post-colonial sovereignty constructed out of the last epoch or territorial empire.
1. What should the US want? To those ends it must appear that one must rely on one's leaders. That, at least, continues to expert Führerprinzip of vanguardist government as important to American democratic socialists as it is to their colleagues at the other end of the American spectrum. So, one starts with what one ought to want (NSS2025. pp. 3-5). This is divided into two parts that themselves frame the ordering premise around which the NSS is built. First one considers overall desire; and then one turns to what the US ought to want "in and from the world." With respect to the former, one a single macro-objective (along with the normative , values giving, basis for the objective), followed by increasingly more specific elaboration from out of the first, macro-desire/objective/normal.
First and foremost, we want the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God-given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well-being and interests (NSS2025, p. 3).
The key terms are "survival and safety," "sovereign," "God-given natural rights," "citizens," and "well being and interests." These describe include and exclude. They measure. They provide the baseline of the ideal State and its function.They operate, as well as physical and intangible subjects.
All of this is then elaborated in what follows. An independent and sovereign republic requires the state to "protect this country, its people, territory, and way of life." That last bit is likely as important as the first and suggests cultural solidarity of equal weight to the integrity of the other attributes of sovereignty. NSS2025 then suggests the current list of elements against which the Republic requires protecting: "military attack and hostile foreign influence, whether espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, cultural subversion, or any other threat to our nation." The listing is important. This is not one's grandparents' enemies list: one worries as much about non-state actors with state power as one worries about harm to and corruption of society, culture economics and the like. All of this requires a metrics and it is not clear where one finds this (perhaps in American history and tradition, as the Supreme Court has sometimes alluded) or something else.
Then one gets into the details of what may be understood as current threats and their avoidance, and a wish list: (1) migration as a destabilizing force, (2) an infrastructure that is modern sound and able to withstand enemy action, (3) a military power that is the world's "most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced that can be deployed against those working against American interests; (4) nuclear and other deterrents against enemies or threats, (5) an economy that is as dynamic, innovative and advanced as the American military is powerful, lethal and technologically advanced ("The U.S. economy is the bedrock of the American way of life, . . . Our economy is also the bedrock of our global position and the necessary foundation of our military." Ibid., p. 3-4), (6) the world's most robust industrial base ("Our economy is also the bedrock of our global position and the necessary foundation of our military." Ibid., p. 4), (7) world's most robust energy sector, (8) the maintenance of US "unrivaled “soft power” through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests." (ibid.), (9) and the great rejuvenation of the American nation (corresponding to the Chinese great rejuvenation (中华民族伟大复兴), a key element of New Era Chinese Leninism);
Finally, we want the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible. We want an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age. We want a people who are proud, happy, and optimistic that they will leave their country to the next generation better than they found it. We want a gainfully employed citizenry—with no one sitting on the sidelines—who take satisfaction from knowing that their work is essential to the prosperity of our nation and to the well-being of individuals and families. This cannot be accomplished without growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children. (Ibid.)
One has plenty to work from here. The stability of the nation depends on an "all around" approach to the national project. That national project is built around the great rejuvenation of the American nation, That great rejuvenation consists of a number of element of different character. Some are defensive and protective; others are cultural, spiritual, and social. At the center is the identification of the great contradiction of the current stage of the American nation--the need to return the United States to its traditional political economic model--a nation of autonomous merchants sharing a common political culture and common aspirations that is to be used to protect the Republic both defensively and offensively, and to describe what is protected--its infrastructure, economy, industrial base and energy sectors, driven by high quality production and a patriotic citizenry, gainfully employed and properly inserted in appropriate labor markets, each contributing to the nation and in that effort contributing to their own happiness in traditional families charged with raising healthy children.
All of this instructs the ideal United States and its institutional elements, along with its purpose: to constitute a nation that has no object other than to exist in accordance with its traditions, and customs, nor just sovereign, but independent and dedicated to the objective of continuity. In that respect, at least there is no end goal but to be--that is the golden age toward which all this economic and military power is dedicated--to permit the citizens through an investment in the apparatus of state, its military and its connections with infrastructure, the economy and its industrial base, to be whatever it wants to be, guided by those charged with the shepherding of the nation.
And, indeed, that is precisely what the NSS2025 has in mind. "Achieving these goals require marshaling every resource of our national power." (Ibid., p. 5). That requires, in turn, the necessity of acting in the world and wanting something from the world. In the process NSS2025 describes the conditions in and of the world necessary to make the United States feel safe--conditions that the United States finds important enough to project its military and soft power, its economic and industrial strength, to protect and perhaps expand. These include the following;
1. A well behaved Western hemisphere of reasonably stable (the US decides what is reasonable and what is stable--fair enough for a hegemon in the near peripheries of its core territories) states whose governments cooperate to rid their territories of annoyances to the United States, in the form of threats to American sovereign rights as the US sees it--a so-called "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe doctrine.
2. Halting and reversing naughty states that inflict damage on the American economy (this assumes that this damage is not the result of American business or economic incompetence that one would imagine would be an American problem--fair competition applies to all parties). But that is not what the NSS2025 means, it means efforts to claim ocean spaces for the national benefit of competitor states--"preserving freedom of navigation" though has long been an American position the genesis of which might be thought to go back to the founding of the Republic; in that respect it implies reinvigorated means rather than a new initiative, and, indeed, it follows the Biden Administration position in important respect.
3. Helping Europe remain "Western" in the way the Americans understand that term and for which the Americans would be willing to provide "support" (whatever that means).
4. Protecting MENA oil and gas supplies, including transport routes--all of which the Americans would be willing to protect, though in a ways that avoid what the U.S. calls forever wars (a concept that is quintessentially American given historical practice and conditions in Eurasia and North Africa for the last 2000 years.
5. The projection of US tech and tech standards "drive the world forward"--or perhaps better put, hardwire American standards and tech trajectories into global innovation in tech. That is an ambitious and not an odd goal, though one that will likely meet opposition from other players who share the goal but with a desire to assert tech hegemony on the basis of their own tech and tech standards.
In this way, the NSS2025 defines the American ideal and then the inter-relations between the ideal and its justification for the way the US would engage with the world beyond its national territories. Together these frame the environment in which a national security strategy can be framed.
2. What are the means of getting there? One then attaches pragmatics to ideal (NSS2025, p. 6-7). Effectively this section identifies national strengths which are to be directed toward national policy objectives to further national interests as defined by reference to national ideals and goals. These include the US political system, its economic power, its financial system, its tech sector, its military power, its network of treaty based alliances, its geography and natural resources,its soft power and cultural influence, and the "courage, willpower, and patriotism of the American people." (Ibid., p. 6). The NSS2025 also offers up the fruits of robust (positive) changes to the nation: the suppression of DEI and "re-instilling of cultural competence", the return to more traditional energy production, efforts at re-industrialization in traditional and innovative sectors, enhancing "economic freedom" through tax cuts, and national investment in high quality production and innovation (to use the Chinese term for the same sort of effort emerging from after the Chinese 3rd Plenum in 2024). "The goal of this strategy is to tie together all of these world-leading assets, and others, to strengthen American power and preeminence and make our country even greater than it ever has been." (Ibid., p. 7).
The parallels with Chinese strategies and core premises for national development might appear noteworthy. There is enough language that echoes key drivers of New Era Chinese Leninist development as the Chinese confront the central contradiction of the current stage of their historical development through the development their five year plans, and their ideological innovation--national rejuvenation and focus on high quality and innovative development while emphasizing the need to protect and enhance the economic and global position of the homeland all resonate, it appears, in similar manner in China and in the U.S. Yet for one, the effort proceeds from the sensibilities of the bureaucrat, for the other the merchant. One seeks transactional enhancement protected by the state apparatus, the other seeks the enhancement of the guiding power of the national apparatus enhanced through the exercise of guided transactions,
3. The strategy (of the moment) revealed. One can then, on that basis, and within that framework, develop and apply a strategy for getting as close as one can to the ideal by means of available instruments. For the many who might have skimmed through the more abstract theoretical basis for what follows, this is the only part worth reading--that is reading what the Americans are up to now (on the theory that theory is always a post-hoc justification or the fig leaf necessary to tie current desire to normative values). The suggestion in this brief reflection is the the opposite is true, that the least interesting and most derivative part of the NSS2025 is in the laundry list of current plans, and it is the least interesting because within the transactional lens of the merchant, all plans and specific objectives are always subject to negotiation in the service of the larger plan, which, in this case, have been revealed in the first 7 pages of NSS2025. Indeed, that rigidity both explains the fundamental difference between the merchant-type and the institutional/bureaucrat lens but also the way in which the Trump Administration vanguard elite dismisses the institutional/bureaucrat elite and its post 1945 project.
Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare-regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex. They placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called “free trade” that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend. They allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people, and sometimes to suck us into conflicts and controversies central to their interests but peripheral or irrelevant to our own. And they lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty. In sum, not only did our elites pursue a fundamentally undesirable and impossible goal, in doing so they undermined the very means necessary to achieve that goal: the character of our nation upon which its power, wealth, and decency were built. (NSS2025, pp. 1-2)
The rest follows. First the principles. that add detail to the outline of principles already described. The other, the priorities, that then order these principles in accordance with some sort of rule of precedence. Finally the more granular application.
Taken together one begins to see the shaping of America First bit as a concept around which domestic policy is framed, and then as a set of drivers of the projection of American domestic policy outward. National security, in this context, is an instrument of America First. It serves to enforce and ensure that objectives are realized and the core objectives protected from outside interference. It has little to do with law or with territory or global integrity. It has everything to do with the sketching out and protection of the space--the global platform--within which American transactional activities may be undertaken, guided and protected by the State and its military/political power.
One starts with the principles of the strategy. These are second order principles that structure the means by which the ends are to be achieved. The NSS2025 prattles on about principle and pragmatism in the style of institutional-bureaucrats; perhaps a necessary nod to the institutions that must be prodded to fulfill the vision of NSS2025 (NSS2025, p. 8), and then underscores its single key element--the maximization of the effectiveness of transactional platforms in which American dominance is to be constituted and projected for its consumers internally and worldwide, requires the end of conflict. The President has been styled the "President of Peace", but as suggested earlier, peace here is understood as the end of violent hostilities that then permit the operation of transactional activity through which merchants may engage in productive (wealth enhancing) activity (see, e.g., "President
Trump is the President of Peace" Reflections on the Power of
Presidential Self-Revolution (自我革命), the Republic's Social Revolution
(社会革命) and the Presidential Message: "President Trump Brokers Another
Historic Peace Deal"). Fair enough and as always a President ought to lose no opportunity to remind the people who elected him of the efforts undertaken in the service of peace (NSS2025, p. 8).
More important is the synthesis of all of this into a set of operational principles that must drive "American foreign, defense, and intelligence policies." (Ibid.). These are reduced to Chinese style key descriptors: (1) focused definition of the national interest (in the nation); (2) peace through strength; (3) predisposition to non-interventionism; (4) flexible realism; (5) primacy of nations; (6) sovereignty and respect; (7) balance of power; (8) pro-American worker; (9) fairness (the American win-win strategy); and (10) competence and merit (NSS2025, pp. 9-11). In one sense one can see that national security now touches on virtually every aspect of American political life, or put differently that the role of the State is to engage in national security protective measures, leaving the rest to the population the security of which it protects. There is, at its limit, nothing that is not national security, or that if it is important enough for the State to intervene, by definition it touches on national security--or at least the national security to protect and enhance the platforms within which it is possible to engage in transactional activity--by a State that uses transactional activity in the service of national security.
From this the State may chose (and modify) priorities that align with conditions at any stage of its historical development. For 2025 and beyond, the priorities are identified as (1) migration (political and social stability); (2) protection of core rights and liberties (a reset on the scope of the power of expert elites to nudge people into proper behaviors--but not their elimination); (3) treaties as transactional environments that further national interests (with a focus on NATO); (4) the benefit of running away from NATO--"Realignment through Peace" (there is a mistress waiting in the wings when one finally dumps one's spouse. . . .and these are transactional relationships anyway; and (5) economic security (economic security as fundamental to national security--producing a preference for "balanced trade", "ensuring access to critical supply chains and materials"; reindustrialization (taking a page from the Global South of the 1970s), "!reviving the US defense industrial base (taking a page from the Soviets); "energy dominance" (oil & gas and AI), and "financial sector dominance" (every state and regional group, especially in Asia is after this prize)) (NSS2025, pp. 11-15) .
Here, of course, things get murky, and the whining reaches a higher level. This is especially the case with the obsession about Europe that has chosen to drive itself to its present place since the late 19th century: "We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies." (NSS2025, p. 12, expanded at ibid., pp. 25-27 under the odd slogan of "Promoting European Greatness"). The merchant-type, as reflected in the core normative constructs of NSS2025 does not interfere as long as others do not threaten transactional spaces and the US enjoyment of those spaces toward its own ends. As such, it should be of no interest to the US that "the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less." And yet, with respect to "Europe" the opposite seems to be true. Does the merchant indulge in nostalgia for generative origin spaces/nations? Does America First include the obligation to protect the "territory" of democracy within its "homeland"? Those may be the wrong questions, A merchant-type abides by their agreements if they mean to retain their reputation in transactional markets. How then does a merchant achieve a break in contractual relations? They must discover a breach of fundamental terms and expectations. In this case the contract is NATO, and the breach is this cultural etc. This is the merchant-type ethos par excellance!Put differently, the merchant would argue that the NATO contract has failed of its purpose since the Americans are no longer dealing with the same partners with which they negotiated the original agreements and they did not agree to continue the contractual arrangements with (effectively) successor parties. This is convenient because the Americans are eager to deal with another , one whose fundamental character appears impervious to change. . . . What appears clear is that the Europeans are annoying the current crop of ruling elites in their preferred relationships with Russia and that to correct that they may indulge the rhetoric and projects of a discredited former American ruling elite.
4. And then. . . .the regions. There is a bit of disdain here ("It has become customary for documents such as this to mention every part of the world and issue, on the assumption that any oversight signifies a blind spot or a snub. As a result, such documents become bloated and unfocused—the opposite of what a strategy should be." NSS2025, p. 15). The reason, as suggested above, is straightforward--the merchant-type tends to apply objectives flexibly--if economic prosperity and security is the object, it dfoesn't matter how or through what ends that is achieved, and mid-action course corrections, abandonment and re-negotiation are just everyday parts pf the palette of the merchant-type, even when undertaken through institutions of State. What that leaves, then, are general indications of where the initial focus is connected to overall objectives (e.g. what can these regions do for us?), and signifiers of possession (Western Hemisphere and Europe) that permits a greater scope of outward projection of of national security measures.
Thus, for example, the Western Hemisphere is treated as an American near periphery the national security effects of which are substantial enough to warrant closer "connection." The NN2025 explains: "Our goals for the Western Hemisphere can be summarized as “Enlist and Expand.” We will enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea. We will expand by cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice." (NSS2025, p. 16). The Americans don't want to own them--the merchant reject territorial empire. But the spirit of the Platt Amendment with Cuba might now be generalized within the "American" Hemisphere ( (
Reflections
on President Trump: "America 250: Presidential Message on the
Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War"). American national security interests are to be transposed to neighbor states; the rest is transactional. That requires a substantial amount of bargaining under conditions of win-win--that is where the power relationships are such that all parties will have to use quite different metrics to determine how best to value deal making (at the state and private levels); what Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, in constructing ALBA, once described as asymmetrical arrangements based on national valuation of its interests (discussed
here).
China is now viewed as just another turnip seller in a medieval Asian marketplace of turnip sellers. As a sharp trader the Chinese must be challenged and their tactics exposed and defeated. The obsession is with "predatory economic practice"--with respect to the rest, the US appears less concerned. But what the merchant understands as predatory practices the official understands as core matters of state--territorial claims, the right to block sea routes, monopolistic control of markets, unfair competition, and subversion of unfriendly governments to ensure friendlier trade terms. The description reads more like an accounting of the old relations relations between Pepsi and Coca Cola than of the great power Thucydidean drama that had been the narrative since the financial crisis of 2007. But battles between merchants and bureaucrats can be no less deadly than the old traditional types. Vanguards sometimes make mistakes, and they are always so encased in their own imaginaries that they are sometimes incapable of seeing or correctly evaluating relations with others and their consequences. (NSS2025, pp. 19-24)
And yet it is the section entitles "Promoting European Greatness" that offers the best window onto the limits, contradictions, and operations of the merchant-type--especially when they have "
mommy/daddy issues" (NSS2025, pp. 24-27).
America is, understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent—and, of course, to Britain and Ireland. The character of these countries is also strategically important because we count upon creative, capable, confident, democratic allies to establish conditions of stability and security. We want to work with aligned countries that want to restore their former greatness. (NSS2025, p. 26)
All of this is accompanied by a lot of whining about Europe (NSS2025, pp. 24-25), and a bit of annoyance that mommy/daddy doesn't like want the US wants to do with their new friend (Russia) and their bullying of that "sad kid" no one really wants to befriend (Ukraine) (NSS2025, pp. 24-26). Sad really, like a lot of the current crop of "dysfunctional family" movies that the Americans seem to have a great interest in producing and amusing audiences everywhere. . . . Europe is at once partner, a necessary element of national security, a liability, a freeloader, and a cultural drag.It is too big not to have an effect on American economic and tech power, and it is too attached by history, culture, etc. to be cut loose ("Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory. We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe." NSS, pp. 26). Ultimately, then from the American merchant-type lens, the US is not getting the benefit of its bargain from a group that is no longer the same parties with which it contracted. So. . . all bets may be off and the bargain may be re-negotiated or declared to be in breach.
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| Pix credit here ("A Woman is a Sometime Thing"1935) |
The NSS2025 ends with the rest--MENA and "Africa." They are given textual short shrift but that may hide as much as it reveals. For MENA the US wants an exit strategy--and that for this crop of ruling elites means some sort of peace. But exit of military presence is meant to provide the space for the re-introduction of the merchant and transactional spaces, the essence of America First: "As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede. Instead, the region will increasingly become a source and
destination of international investment," NSS2025, p. 28). Of course the history of the region suggests that peace is a "sometime thing" but every generation must come to its own understanding of the nature of equilibrium states in that region. On the other hand, national building has been an elusive goal. The plan for Africa is also interesting. " The United States should transition from an aid-focused relationship with Africa to a trade- and investment-focused relationship, favoring partnerships with capable, reliable states committed to opening their markets to U.S. goods and services." (NSS2025, p. 29),. Still, ambition and realization are not identical things. The Chinese have transitioned to this approach by trading infrastructure deals for market and resource access. Americans arriving with beads to trade will likely not fare well. That means that a robust Africa plan within America First still has much to learn, and perhaps more to imitate, from the Belt & Road model. Possible, but it is not clear that American merchants "shepherds" have the bandwidth for the task.
And there it is. One can, of course, celebrate or condemn this NSS2025. My preference is to observe it for what it is and for its consequences, both within the governing order of the US and for the way it suggests American interaction beyond its borders. Like a wedding dress it includes "Something Olde, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, A Sixpence in your Shoe" (here). Perhaps, it will be lucky for the Americans. It will be new, in the sense that it will have taken strands of ideas and desires that have been percolating, each in their own corner, and, now aggregated, contribute to something that begins to take on the character of something plausible. One can, then, condemn its values and its objectives, by pushing forward an alternative list of both. But nonsensical it is unlikely to be, especially through the lens of the merchant-type.
