Welcome to the fifth edition of Trends 360, the bimonthly newsletter from TRENDS Research & Advisory. Each issue unpacks critical global developments shaping the international landscape, from shifting alliances and great power rivalries to emerging policy disruptions. This month, we focus on the newly released U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) under the Trump 2.0 administration.
Since 1986, Section 603 of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act has required each U.S. president to submit a classified and comprehensive NSS to Congress. However, since 1987, successive administrations have published unclassified versions of the NSS, which serve as the principal strategic planning framework guiding the formulation and execution of U.S. foreign policy. These public reports articulate Washington’s international interests, commitments, objectives, and policy priorities to Congress, the American public, and the international community. While Section 603 mandates submission, there is no statutory requirement that future presidents adopt or retain their predecessors’ strategies. As a result, NSS documents are inherently flexible and routinely revised to reflect their worldview, policy objectives, and threat perceptions.
The Trump 2.0 NSS departs from both the Trump 1.0 and the Biden administration’s approach to the “great power competition” with China and Russia. Instead, the strategy looks toward Europe, warning of what it describes as “civilization erasure” due to mass immigration, regulatory constraints imposed by the European Union (EU), and the suppression of far-right speech and protest movements. At the same time, the NSS reinforces the administration’s “America First” policy, reaffirmed throughout 2025, by renewing its commitment to the Monroe Doctrine to restore American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. The articulation of a “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” seeks to deny non-Hemispheric powers economic or military leverage within the Western Hemisphere. Although the great power competition is no longer framed as the sole focus of the administration, it remains on its radar, as the NSS reframes economic relations with China and adopts a more ambivalent stance toward Russia.
