Overview
- The administration quietly released a 33-page National Security Strategy last week that foregrounds an 'America First' realignment with a renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere.
- In The Bulwark, former Bush Pentagon official Eric S. Edelman argues the strategy departs from U.S. approaches dating to 1941 and diverges sharply from the first-term Trump NSS.
- Edelman highlights a line declaring that the United States will no longer 'prop up the entire world order like Atlas,' which he reads as relinquishing the traditional role of chief maintainer of the global order.
- He denounces the document’s tone and personalization, noting 27 references to Trump by name and describing what he calls 'chest-thumping pomposity' and white‑nationalist idioms.
- A separate Forbes analysis details substantive shifts: a 'Trump corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine in Latin America, a more transactional Asia posture with greater burden‑sharing, skepticism about Europe and a quick end to the Ukraine war, and an emphasis on economic opportunity in the Middle East that has unsettled allies.