Late Thursday night, the Trump administration rolled out the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), and its message is unmistakable: a return to a modernized Monroe Doctrine. The new framework prioritizes strengthening America’s military footprint in the Western Hemisphere, aggressively confronting drug cartels, tightening border security, securing trade deals that actually benefit the United States, and unleashing American energy production.
In other words, it’s a strategy built around restoring U.S. sovereignty, protecting the homeland, and reasserting American power in our own backyard — something Washington elites abandoned for decades but our founders pursued with vigor and without apology:
The 33-page document builds on Trump’s “America First” ideology but also provides the first explicit reference to the president replicating the Monroe Doctrine, calling for U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region,” the document states.
The document doesn’t explicitly lay out a U.S. retreat from the globe, but it does call for increasing burden sharing among allies, elevating American economic interests and access to critical supply chains, and “unleashing” American energy production.
That’s not the worst high-level summary of the NSS, but a closer look at the actual document is far more revealing.
You can see the entire Trump administration NSS here. Here are some highlights:
To ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come, our country needs a coherent, focused strategy for how we interact with the world. And to get that right, all Americans need to know what, exactly, it is we are trying to do and why.
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.
A strategy must evaluate, sort, and prioritize. Not every country, region, issue, or cause—however worthy—can be the focus of American strategy. The purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests; that is the sole focus of this strategy.
One of the most striking — though hardly surprising — elements of the new NSS is its unapologetic embrace of a modern Monroe Doctrine. The original 19th-century policy was designed to block further European expansion into the Western Hemisphere and cement American dominance in our own region.
The Trump administration’s updated version takes that same foundational principle and applies it to 21st-century threats, using both internal and external security tools to reassert U.S. power. It’s a deliberate course correction after decades of drift, signaling that America intends to control its own neighborhood once again — economically, militarily, and strategically:
American policy should focus on enlisting regional champions that can help create tolerable stability in the region, even beyond those partners’ borders. These nations would help us stop illegal and destabilizing migration, neutralize cartels, nearshore manufacturing, and develop local private economies, among other things. We will reward and encourage the region’s governments, political parties, and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy. But we must not overlook governments with different outlooks with whom we nonetheless share interests and who want to work with us.
A plain-text reading makes it obvious that the NSS is gesturing toward ongoing pressure on Venezuela — including the recent destruction of drug-running speedboats — even though the country isn’t named directly. China is named, however, and that’s where the real context becomes clear. Beijing has been steadily expanding its footprint throughout Latin America, trying to buy influence in America’s backyard.
Under this revived Monroe Doctrine — or, more accurately, the emerging Trump Doctrine — that’s no longer going to be treated as a regional footnote. It’s a national security priority. The NSS ties this directly to America’s Indo-Pacific strategy, making it clear that countering China isn’t limited to the South China Sea or Taiwan. It extends throughout the Western Hemisphere, where U.S. leadership is being reasserted after years of neglect.
It’s obvious the Trump administration plans to ensure the United States once again stands astride the Western Hemisphere like the Colossus of Rhodes — dominant, immovable, and unmistakably in charge. But the Pacific remains a critical front as well.
China is aggressively expanding its economic and military footprint across the Western Pacific, and it’s running headlong into three of America’s most important allies: Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. These nations sit directly in Beijing’s path, and the NSS makes clear that the United States isn’t backing away from that reality or from its commitments.
The message is simple: whether in our own hemisphere or across the Pacific, American power is back — and the days of strategic retreat are over:
Going forward, we will rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence. Trade with China should be balanced and focused on non-sensitive factors. If America remains on a growth path—and can sustain that while maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing—we should be headed from our present $30 trillion economy in 2025 to $40 trillion in the 2030s, putting our country in an enviable position to maintain our status as the world’s leading economy. Our ultimate goal is to lay the foundation for long-term economic vitality.
Importantly, this must be accompanied by a robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific. This combined approach can become a virtuous cycle as strong American deterrence opens up space for more disciplined economic action, while more disciplined economic action leads to greater American resources to sustain deterrence in the long term.
Of course, achieving these goals won’t be simple. China — like Russia — is teetering on the edge of a demographic cliff, with a shrinking workforce, collapsing birthrates, and a rapidly aging population. Time is not on Beijing’s side. And that’s precisely what makes the situation dangerous. A desperate Chinese Communist Party, armed with a swelling military, nuclear weapons, and an alarming interest in biological agents, is not a regime the world can afford to underestimate.
The 2025 Trump administration National Security Strategy deserves a careful, line-by-line reading. Its intent is clear: restore American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, block China’s advances, crush drug cartels, expand U.S. energy production, secure the border, and maintain overwhelming American military superiority. These are sound, necessary goals for the United States and its allies.
The next question is execution — how the administration operationalizes these priorities in the face of predictable resistance. Because one thing is guaranteed: Democrats in Congress and across the political establishment will do everything they can to obstruct, delay, and undermine this strategy.
