EUROPE, RUSSIA, AND EURASIA: A FRONT TO BE STABILIZED BUT NOT EMANCIPATED
The European section of the strategy is particularly significant for understanding the overall logic of the document.
Europe as a Space of projection, not as an autonomous Pole
Europe is presented as a fundamental partner, but not as an actor capable of independently defining its own strategic destiny. The rhetoric of “strengthening Europe” is accompanied by a set of conditions: a sharp increase in military spending, a reduction of energy and technological dependence on non-Western actors, greater openness to U.S. products and technologies, and support for political forces less integrated into the European supranational project.
The implicit assumption is that a truly autonomous Europe—especially one capable of engaging in structured dialogue with Russia and China—would represent a threat to the Atlantic order. Consequently, the strategy seeks a balance in which European states remain sufficiently strong to contribute to the security of the continent, but not to the extent of being able to define an independent strategic agenda.
Russia: Stabilizing the conflict and preventing a Eurasian Axis
The strategy declares its intention to negotiate a rapid cessation of hostilities in Ukraine and to restore conditions of strategic stability with Moscow. This marks a shift in tone compared to the period in which the explicit objective was the long-term “weakening” of Russia. However, the goal is not to integrate Russia as a legitimate pole within a Eurasian multipolar order, but rather to freeze its role, preventing it from functioning as a structural bridge between Europe and Asia.
In this sense, the stabilization of the Ukrainian front appears instrumental in blocking the emergence of a broader Eurasian space linking Moscow, Berlin, Beijing, and other capitals through networks of energy, infrastructural, and technological interdependence that would constitute an alternative to the U.S.-led order.
NATO as an instrument of burden-shifting
NATO remains at the core of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture, but its function is redefined: from a defensive organization against a clearly identified enemy to a platform for transferring burdens and responsibilities onto European allies.
The increase in defense spending and the push toward a “smaller but more heavily armed NATO” should be interpreted as an attempt to: (a) strengthen European capabilities in containing Russia; (b) generate demand for the U.S. defense industry; (c) free up American resources to be redeployed toward the Indo-Pacific theater.
ASIA AND THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE: CONTAINING CHINA AND THE RETURN OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE
China as a systemic challenge
China is treated as a systemic challenge that is primarily economic and technological rather than ideological in nature. The declared priority is to “rebalance” the economic relationship, reduce deficits and dependencies, limit Chinese access to critical technologies, and counter its expansion in middle- and low-income countries.
The strategy combines tariffs and sanctions, export and investment controls, the construction of regulatory coalitions with Europe, Japan, India, and Australia, and domestic investment in strategic sectors.
This approach, however, carries a potential side effect: it encourages Beijing to further strengthen ties with Russia, Iran, ASEAN countries, Africa, and Latin America, thereby accelerating the differentiation of the global economic system and the emergence of financial and technological circuits alternative to those of the West.
The Indo-Pacific and the role of regional allies
India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia are assigned complementary roles in the containment of China:
- India as a major continental power with margins of autonomy, oriented toward limiting Chinese expansion in the Subcontinent and the Indian Ocean;
- Japan and South Korea as pillars of maritime and air defense along the “first island chain”;
- Australia as an advanced logistical platform in the Pacific.
Here as well, the logic is transactional: Washington offers deterrence and security guarantees, but demands from its allies substantial increases in defense spending, technological alignment, and active participation in containment strategies.
LATIN AMERICA AND THE “TRUMP COROLLARY” TO THE MONROE DOCTRINE
Within its own hemisphere, the United States relaunches an updated version of the Monroe Doctrine. The objective is to prevent extra-hemispheric powers—above all China and Russia—from gaining control over critical infrastructures, natural resources, digital networks, and, more broadly, from exercising strong political influence in Latin American countries.
The strategy combines:
- preferential economic and trade initiatives for aligned partners;
- security cooperation in the fight against drug cartels and trafficking;
- political pressure against governments perceived as excessively close to Beijing or Moscow.
However, ongoing processes in the region—such as growing trade interdependence with China, experimentation with alternative monetary arrangements, and increasing interest in BRICS+—make this claim to exclusivity increasingly difficult to sustain.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT: A STRATEGY OF HEGEMONIC DEFENSE
Taken as a whole, the 2025 National Security Strategy appears as a strategy aimed more at defending than expanding U.S. hegemony. Its strengths should not be underestimated:
- it recognizes that external power depends on internal resilience;
- it clearly identifies the centrality of competition with China;
- it acknowledges the need to avoid dispersing military resources across too many fronts;
- it seeks to reduce economic dependencies deemed dangerous.
At the same time, significant structural limits emerge:
1. Rejection of a Cooperative Multipolar Order
The strategy acknowledges the existence of multiple poles but does not accept their full legitimacy. Other actors are viewed either as rivals to be contained or as subordinate partners. In the medium term, this risks fostering convergence among powers that, despite their differences, share the objective of reducing dependence on the U.S.-centered system.
2. Allies Treated as Contractors Rather Than Co-Architects of the Order
The transformation of alliances into predominantly transactional relationships may undermine the political trust that has underpinned them for decades. Europe, in particular, may respond—albeit with difficulty—by seeking greater strategic autonomy if Atlantic alignment is perceived as excessively costly in economic and political terms.
3. Defensive Use of Economic Power
Tariffs, sanctions, technological controls, and financial conditionality are effective tools in the short term, but they are insufficient to build an order toward which other actors willingly converge. A power that increasingly relies on restrictive instruments risks eroding its capacity for attraction.
4. Unresolved Internal Fragility
The centrality attributed to migration, drugs, and social insecurity reveals deep concern about internal cohesion. If these issues are addressed almost exclusively through securitized approaches, without parallel efforts to tackle their economic and political roots, the result may be only an apparent security that fails to address the underlying sources of vulnerability.
CONCLUSION
The 2025 National Security Strategy portrays an America unwilling to relinquish its role as a central power, yet compelled to profoundly rethink the means through which it seeks to preserve that role. Rather than proposing a project of shared order, the strategy outlines a design for the re-hierarchization of the international system: a world in which multiple poles exist, but are organized around a U.S. apex that continues to set standards, rules, and priorities.
Ultimately, this is a strategy of transition—too aware of the crisis of the old order to simply reproduce it, yet not prepared to imagine a truly polycentric arrangement in which the United States would be one great power among others, rather than the inevitable center of the system.
The future of the international order will depend in part on this very tension: on the ability—or inability—of this strategy to adapt to a world in which military strength and economic power, while still fundamental, are no longer sufficient to sustain uncontested hegemony. Whether the NSS 2025 will evolve into a platform for a new form of coexistence among powers, or remain the manifesto of a defensive hegemony destined to be eroded by the very processes it seeks to contain, remains an open question.
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