Lawfare Live: The Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy

Summary

The Lawfare Podcast

Episode: Lawfare Live: The Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy
Date: December 12, 2025
Host: Benjamin Wittes, Editor in Chief of Lawfare
Guests:

• Corey Shockey, Director of Foreign and Defense Policy, American Enterprise Institute
• Scott R. Anderson, Lawfare Senior Editor
• Dan Byman, Director, Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program, Center for Strategic Studies; Foreign Policy Editor, Lawfare

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Episode Overview

This episode features a roundtable discussion dissecting the Trump administration’s newly released 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS). The conversation critically examines the document's origins, guiding principles, key priorities, and the broader implications for U.S. foreign policy, alliances, and global stability. The panelists explore the NSS's break from traditional norms, its ideological underpinnings, and the explicit pivot toward "America First" and domestic political appeals.

Tone: Analytical, candid, and highly critical, with sharp insights into both the document’s content and subtext.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is a National Security Strategy, and How is the 2025 NSS Different?

[03:04–06:07] Corey Shockey:

• Traditional NSS: Legally required, typically includes:
  • Global threat assessment
  • U.S. strengths and tools
  • Strategic objectives and threat mitigation
• The 2025 NSS:
  • Its description of the world is "fantastical."
  • Main threat identified: Immigration—contrary to America's history as "a magnet for talent."
  • Focus on the Western Hemisphere at the expense of global concerns.
  • Allies characterized as "collapsing civilizations," especially NATO partners.
  • Self-contradictory and lacking self-awareness. Criticizes previous strategies for wishful thinking, then does the same.
• Memorable Moment:
  • “Several things about this strategy merit ridicule. One of them is the complete lack of self awareness.” – Corey Shockey [05:13]
  • “The real bell ringer... is the line where they say the American government possesses fearsome powers. It must never abuse those powers.” – Corey Shockey [05:38]

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2. Authorial Process & Intellectual Origins

[07:16–08:55] Benjamin Wittes & Scott R. Anderson:

• Normal process: Wide interagency authorship, often leading to consensus-driven but "mushy" documents.
• The 2025 NSS:
  • Lacks clear interagency input.
  • Likely written by a small, ideologically homogeneous group—possibly focused on appealing to domestic political bases rather than experts or allies.
  • Speculation about Michael Anton: Rumored to have drafted it but no public confirmation.
• Distinct from previous NSS efforts under McMaster (2017) and Jake Sullivan (2022), which were rooted in continuity and professional expertise.

Memorable Quote:

• “This is more the creature of a small number of people kind of channeling an even smaller number of intellectuals.” – Benjamin Wittes [07:33]
• “Who’s actually policy relevant? We don’t know.” – Scott R. Anderson [12:19]

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3. Tone, Sycophancy, and Audience

[17:39–21:49] Dan Byman:

• Document is full of sycophancy and self-congratulation, especially oriented toward Trump.
• Senior officials appear to perform for the “audience of one” — Trump himself — leading to political sycophancy and lack of substantive critique.
• Terrorism and North Korea: All but absent, even more so than during the post-9/11 era.
• China: Portrayed mainly as an economic threat; military buildup mostly ignored.
• Russia: Treated more favorably than U.S. allies.

Notable Quote:

• “The actual problems are not problems, and it’s the ones we should think about for domestic audiences... whatever Trump has been doing at a particular moment is being praised. The amount of probable graft going on somehow escapes mention.” – Dan Byman [18:12]
• “There’s also a strong audience of one, which is; I think people are performing for the man.” – Dan Byman [20:18]

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4. Guiding Principles – Or Lack Thereof

[23:28–28:31]

• The document claims: “pragmatic without being pragmatist, realistic without being realist, principled without being idealistic...” — seen by the panel as an admission of incoherence, rooted only in "America First."
• Panel’s reaction:
  • “Those are not things you can credibly claim about yourself. They are things other people have to say about you.” – Corey Shockey [23:28]
  • The principle is ultimately what works for Trump, with no ideological coherence.

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5. Immigration at the Center: Domestic and International Focus

[34:33–39:54]

• Immigration enforcement and border security are elevated as the central national security priority.
• Surprising and alarming focus on pressuring U.S. allies (esp. Europe) to adopt similarly exclusionary, racially-inflected policies.
• Administration advocates support for far-right, ethnonationalist parties in Europe, but expresses indifference to authoritarian regimes in Russia and China.

Notable Quotes:

• “No, in fact, you are understating it, Ben, not overstating it. We are a nation by creed... it is profoundly un-American to suggest that ethnicity or religion or race is the basis of being an American.” – Corey Shockey [37:25]
• “We need to interfere in the domestic politics of our closest friends, but should not interfere... with our actual adversaries.” – Corey Shockey [38:20]

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6. Treatment of China, Russia, and Major Power Competition

China (Indo-Pacific):
[40:33–46:35] Dan Byman & Scott R. Anderson

• China discussed mostly as an economic adversary (chips, trade), virtually ignoring military threat.
• Taiwan’s importance tied to chip supply chains, not democracy or alliances.
• Lack of acknowledgment of allies in the Pacific (e.g., the Philippines), despite formal defense treaties.
• Use of throwback “island chain” rhetoric, which downplays diplomatic recognition of regional allies.
• Key implication: Allies may feel sidelined and anxious.

Russia (Europe):
[48:25–54:12]

• No meaningful recognition of Russia as a threat; instead, Russia’s worldview on Europe is echoed.
• Strategy appears to validate Russian and Chinese “spheres of influence.”
• The only foreign government to praise the NSS is Russia.

Memorable Quotations:

• “Every American ally should be incredibly anxious about the credibility of anything the Trump administration promises...” – Corey Shockey [46:35]
• “It’s worse than that. They are taking Vladimir Putin’s ideology and talking points and parroting them.” – Corey Shockey [50:35]
• “This document is proposing a bargain to China and Russia... ‘don’t push too far, but you have sway in your domain.’” – Scott R. Anderson [54:12]

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7. International Reaction

[55:21–58:37]

• U.S. allies respond quietly and anxiously — open criticism risks direct retaliation by the administration.
• U.S. adversaries express approval.
• Diplomats are analyzing the document’s influence and testing for Congressional and institutional buy-in.

Quotes:

• “Quiet despair and private anxiety by America’s closest friends and celebration by those countries that are working to destroy American power and prosperity.” – Corey Shockey [57:56]
• “This strategy is speaking for a really narrow audience...I think it’s speaking to a constituency of one, as Dan noted.” – Scott R. Anderson [58:37]

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8. The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine

[61:09–63:17]

• The strategy claims a new corollary to the Monroe Doctrine for Latin America without clear definition — seen as more bombast and intimidation than substance.
• Latin American countries now look to Europe for protection from U.S. threats, a stark reversal.
• Even the U.K. has cut intelligence sharing in protest over Caribbean policy.

Corey Shockey:

• “They are trying to make this a thing — that the United States threatening the use of military force around Latin America is somehow a new element of the Monroe Doctrine... I suspect it doesn’t exist and won’t have a shelf life.” [61:09]

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Notable and Memorable Moments

• On sycophancy:

  • “The incredible painful sycophancy that is throughout this report... If Trump changes his mind tomorrow, you praise the 180-degree turn.” – Dan Byman [18:33]

• On ideology:

  • “We don’t believe in anything except what we do.” – Benjamin Wittes [22:00]

• On U.S. allies:

  • “Every American ally should be incredibly anxious about the credibility of anything the Trump administration promises them based on this strategy.” – Corey Shockey [46:35]

• On Russia:

  • “They are taking Vladimir Putin’s ideology and talking points and parroting them.” – Corey Shockey [50:35]
  • “It is incredibly indicative that the only foreign government that has praised this strategy is the government of the Russian Federation.” – Corey Shockey [51:14]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• NSS overview & differences: [03:04–06:07]
• Authorship & process: [07:16–13:40]
• Tone, sycophancy, audience: [17:39–21:49]
• Principles or incoherence: [23:28–28:31]
• Immigration & race: [34:33–39:54]
• China/Indo-Pacific region: [40:33–47:00]
• Russia & major powers: [48:25–54:12]
• International reactions: [55:21–58:37]
• The Monroe Doctrine “corollary”: [61:09–63:17]

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Overall Summary

The panel concludes that the 2025 NSS is remarkable both for its break with bipartisan national security tradition and for its overt domestic political orientation—geared not to reassuring allies or deterring adversaries, but to catering to the preferences, anxieties, and grievances of Donald Trump and his core supporters. The document is candid in its rejection of longstanding U.S. values, and, in the eyes of the panel, it is "profoundly un-American" in its attitude toward immigration and race, dangerous in its disregard for allies, and outright destabilizing in its tolerance of spheres of influence for adversaries such as Russia and China.

If you’re seeking to understand the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy and its world-altering implications, this episode is an unflinching, thorough, and at times scathing guide.

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For more information and live analysis, visit lawfareblog.com or tune in to future Lawfare Live sessions.

Transcript

[Corey Shockey]

Nearly every News alert in 2025 has.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Raised questions, some old, some new, about.

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And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us.

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Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions.

[Scott R. Anderson]

You can submit your question by leaving.

[Corey Shockey]

A voicemail at 202-643-846, or by sending.

[Scott R. Anderson]

A recording of yourself asking your question to askusanythinglawfairmail.com by December 16th.

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[Benjamin Wittes]

It's lawfare Live the Now. I'm Benjamin Wittes, Editor in Chief of Lawfare. It is 10:00am Eastern Time on December 11th, 11th, 2025, and I am here with the very estimable Corey Shockey, Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute Scott R. Anderson, lawfare Senior Editor and Dan Byman, Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats and Terrorism Program at the center for Strategic Studies, who is also the Foreign policy editor of Lawfare. And we are here to discuss the Trump administration's 2025 National Security Strategy. This document came out a week ago today. It was kind of dropped onto the website, I think, of the White House with basically no announcement. It is, I think it's fair to say, a remarkable document. And Corey, I want to start with you. What does a normal national security strategy document look like and how is this one different from that?

[Corey Shockey]

So a president has a legal requirement to produce a public national security strategy. It by statute he's required by the Congress to do so. And they typically start with a description of the international environment. What is the world? What are the threats to American interests? That tends to be followed by an explanation of our strengths and tools to manage those interests. And then the bulk of the strategy document explains how we are going to minimize our vulnerabilities and protect and advance our interests. A couple of things are different about this national security strategy. First, its description of the world is fantastical. Right. It identifies the main threat to American interests as immigration, what has traditionally been perceived as a major American advantage in shaping the international order because we are, because both of our domestic and international policies, a magnet for talent from around the world. That's not how this administration sees either the international environment or America's tools. It identifies immigration as the main threat, makes the Western hemisphere the fundamental focus of American interests. It describes America's treaty allies and closest friends in the world, the 31 other countries of the NATO alliance, as a collapsing civilization, rather than the vibrant, prosperous contributors to international security that they actually are. There's a very funny I mean, several things about this strategy merit ridicule. One of them is the complete lack of self awareness. So, for example, it starts off with a very condescending description of prior strategies as nothing but lists of things we wish we had. And then this strategy is also simply a list of things we wish we had, they wish we had. The other, the real bell ringer for me, and I promise I'll stop after this, Ben, is the line where they say the American government possesses fearsome powers. It must never abuse those powers.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Yeah. And what is just in the department of concern? What is your concern about the we must never abuse it must never abuse those powers line?

[Corey Shockey]

That they are manifestly abusing those powers with the very aggressive moves on the part of the executive branch of government in using military force internationally without a congressional authorization for the use of force or even an explanation to the American public of why they are doing what they are doing and what the limits on it are. The very aggressive and quite dangerous use of immigration and border control for deportations in the American homeland, the deployment of National Guard and active duty military troops for policing missions in American cities in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Those are just my top three, Ben.

[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, Scott, what do we know about the genesis of this document? Normally, a national security strategy comes out of a major interagency process and as a result of which, let's be honest, they often read a bit like mush, which is one of the patronizing critiques that this one makes of, say, all prior national security strategy documents. This one I am unaware of a significant interagency process that this one reflects. It seems like it is more the creature of a Small number of people kind of channeling an even smaller number of intellectuals. What do we know about where this document comes from?

[Scott R. Anderson]

So I actually have not seen a lot of really concrete reporting on who had the main pen on this, which a little interesting. I may have missed something. So people have seen something. Please flag me. Dan and Corey, feel free to supplement. But I haven't seen it. That can be a bit of a departure. We Knew for the 2022 strategy, the Biden administration release, that was a Jake Sullivan joint pretty solidly. He was known to be involved with the process, authoring it. It reflected a lot of the academic writing he had done. The foreign policy piece that kind of notoriously lined up with it in certain ways just before the October 7th attacks, that kind of flipped Middle east policy for the administration. So we knew that clearly that was a.

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[Scott R. Anderson]

All we really know is that this is released with the President's name and the White House, through the White House. So we know it was spearheaded by the White House, and we know there's a little bit of a kitchen cabinet around foreign policy issues. You have Marco Rubio, who is, of course, the National Security Advisor, Secretary of State. One would expect him to be a central, if not the central figure in the process that might lead to this. And I have no doubt he was very influential, had input into it by doubt. He was the sole author. In fact, I would be very surprised because a lot of this stuff does not seem to align with at least how he has framed parts of the world prior to assuming his current role as Secretary of State and National Security advisor. Although perhaps his views have shifted. We know Susie Wiles, Vice President J.D. vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, all these people and a couple of their senior advisors are often involved in the key discussions about the strategy the administration is orienting towards. And then I think more importantly here potentially is who they think they're speaking to, who the audience they care about is for a document like this, because they are trying to communicate, use this to communicate something to someone. And it's not clear exactly who that is in all these cases. And it can vary across national security strategies. In 2017, National Security Strategy, we knew was written with a heavy hand by HR McMaster, the National Security Advisor at the time, with national security staff that had a lot of carryover actually with career people who carried over from the very end of the Obama administration, a lot of areas. And it was, I think, best read as reflecting a degree of continuity and stability and professionalism around a administration it imagined perhaps imagined. Exactly.

[Benjamin Wittes]

It may be argued that it was H.R. mcMaster deluding himself, that there was continuity and stability, but it certainly reflected McMaster's aspirations in that direction.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Exactly. And I think that really you're anticipating the exact point I was going to come away from at this, which is that with HR McMaster, he's speaking to an audience which was then professional policy and national security people saying, don't worry, the country is in solid hands. Because so many people had doubts about President Trump and the Trump administration. I don't think that actually ended up looking like a very credible commitment in hindsight, certainly, and frankly, relatively short. After that Strategy was released, 2022 strategy, which we saw this big delay of, was coming after the Afghanistan withdrawal, was coming after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Biden administration wrestling with all these national security strategies, was trying to embed it in a strategy that represented a substantial departure. I think it was intended to be more public facing document still to lead audiences. But making the case for the Biden administration's pivot away from neoliberalism towards more state based economic policy feed into major power competition as being the big challenge. A theme that continued from and built from the second Obama strategy through the Trump one strategy into the Biden strategy here. Who is their audience? Who are they talking to? I think like many parts of this administration, they're speaking to their domestic constituency because there are parts of this that are completely incoherent and inconsistent with each other that echo and claim to be realist in some regards while trying to dictate the civilizational values of Europe and making that a European U.S. policy priority. Not a very realist concept by most assessments of the imagination. It is really, really a document that has a lot of different threads in it. And if you're asking me what is the commonality between those threads, I think it is that this is the different components of the mega camp. And if you were to try and take their different policy preferences and foreign affairs and iron them together along with some continuity of what conventional national security professionals, including those on the right, think are important, like Taiwan, like the Ukraine conflict to some extent and somehow reconcile those and you end up with something like this. But because of that, there's a lot of giveaway lines that say some pretty dramatic things that would be big policy pivots if they actually were married with actual policies. What we have to wait and find out now is is this actually a document that is saying something that the administration's going to implement or is it a signaling mechanism to those audiences, who's actually policy relevant? We don't know. My suspicion is that it's not going to be a touchstone for the administration moving forward, but it does reflect worldviews that are really different among the community of people that the leaders of this administration think they're the ones they have to talk to. And that is pretty notable.

[Benjamin Wittes]

So there has been a lot of. I don't know if it's rumors or assertions or truth that this is primarily a Michael Anton document. Do any of you know, Scott said that he was not aware of any confirmation of specific authorship. Dan or Corey, do either of you know to what extent the common attribution of this to Michael Anton is accurate?

[Dan Byman]

I do not know. I've certainly heard the report. And he's a writer, right? I mean, so there's logic to that beyond a substantive question. But, you know, whether this is simply people trying to guess and converging on the same guess or actual knowledge, I do not know.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Corey, do you have a sense of it?

[Corey Shockey]

I don't, but I do think it's striking and that nobody's rushing to take credit for this national security strategy, which typically everybody who made a contribution tends to.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Right.

[Benjamin Wittes]

So McMaster wrote an entire book about how we should understand his period as national security advisor as the creation of a national security strategy that reflected both continuity, but also departures from the stupidities and excesses of the Obama administration. And of course, as Scott points out, Jake Sullivan hands were. There was nothing subtle about Jake Sullivan's hands on the Biden national security strategy. This is one where there. There are rumors, but we. And we sort of understand it to be. Have a lot of Michael Anton in it, but we don't know for sure. Is that fair?

[Scott R. Anderson]

I think with the reporting is. Mike Lantin was the head of policy planning at the State Department until September, and he was believed to have drafted what was one of the early drafts of this. That was some reporting that came out about this. Marcy Wheeler wrote about this at Empty Wheel and kind of tied together. Obviously, things have shifted. It's been a few months since then. There are parts of this policy that have reflected evolving developments, including in relation primarily to Venezuela, that would be looking pretty different now than they were in September when Anton left or earlier to that when he would have been writing this strategy if he did substantially write the first draft. But I think it's a fair point. I actually guess Michael Anton had a strong hand in it, having not really thought through the timeline on rational security earlier this week. And I don't think it really probably does reflect a lot of his thinking. Part of that is because Michael Anton, one thing he is good at, and the reason why he's risen to such prominent roles in this administration, is that he's good at taking. Taking disparate threads of foreign policy views and knitting them into something that looks like a more cohesive whole. That is to some extent, intellectual exercise. I'm not sure it succeeds at that. I don't think it does for the reasons I know that we're going to discuss. But he's good at that kind of exercise of bricolage that you need to do to come up with a cohesive document like this. So I'm not surprised that it borrows from his writing and thinking, even if whether or not he was actually directly involved in kind of the finalization of it. And of course, he's a fellow traveler of Stephen Miller to some extent, J.D. vance, other people in the White House who would have had direct input into this and probably would have been channeling a lot of him even if he didn't hold the pen.

[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, so, Dan, I am curious. Let's sort of dive into the actual substance of this, which is a little bit of a tricky business, because it, as Corey describes it, starts by criticizing prior administrations for having a kind of laundry list quality of the, of including everything and therefore saying nothing, and then proceeds to include a huge amount of stuff. And exactly what it's saying is not always either consistent with itself or even that easy to discern. Um, let's start with your region, which is the Middle East. What do you see it as breaking new ground in that department? And in what sense? If so, and. And what is it actually saying?

[Dan Byman]

So on the Middle east, it's that kind of mix, I think we see throughout of sycophancy and self congratulation and as Corey said, a real sense that the actual problems are not problems and it's the ones we should think about for domestic audiences. So, you know, Iran has been solved. Right. We bombed it. It's over. Right. And because you, I believe it uses the word obliterated. Yeah, exactly. And in general, we see whatever Trump has been doing at a particular moment is being praised. The amount of probable graft going on somehow escapes mention. But it is simply a way of praising the present. And that's one point I wanted to highlight, because we see it in every section, is the incredible painful sycophancy that is throughout this report. And not only does it make it hard to. To read, I think it has implications for how we should think about how senior officials see their relationship with the present, which is praise, praise, praise. And if Trump changes his mind tomorrow, you praise the 180 degree turn. And then if he keeps changing, you praise every shift. And I think what we know, which is good advice, concerns, problems are not reaching the president, in part because the president doesn't want to listen and doesn't want this. But this document reflects, I think, the limits of an ra very limited administration. And we see it in the Middle Eastern section, we see it in the other sections. I would also note, and I went back through other strategy documents, even if you go Back to the 80s, terrorism is mentioned less than any time that I could find, at least. And I'm someone who's actually said, look, we should be focusing on other problems than terrorism, even though it's my area of specialization. But it is remarkable not to see this. It's remarkable not to see anything serious on North Korea. And China, when we look more broadly, is largely portrayed as an economic threat. The massive Chinese military buildup is really something that isn't taken seriously in this document, even though, in my view, it should be one of the centers of US Planning. Russia, of course, is portrayed more positively than our close European allies. So if you can look in the Middle east, you can look in Europe, you can look in Asia, the threats that are there are not treated as threats. The focus is domestic. The emphasis on the cult of personality of Trump makes it painful. And so to go to Scott's point, I agree that there was a strong domestic audience for this, but there's also a strong audience of one, right, which is, I think people are performing for the man and they're trying to use this document in that way. So we see this kind of sneering criticism of predecessors, which is something Trump himself loves to do. So in all his speeches, he'll begin by saying, didn't Biden mess up whatever we're talking about today? And we see that in this document as well. So the one thing I want to say in its praise is that in Contrast to the 2017 document, this one I actually think is an accurate reflection of the administration. Right. And the tone reflects administration policy. The way to think about the world, I think, reflects a lot of thinking in this administration. And so something that people like me at think tanks try to do is use these documents as guides priorities. And this one might not be a bad guide right now. I disagree with all the priorities, but in terms of actually using it to understand a foreign policy and where things might be going.

[Benjamin Wittes]

It's a fairly emotionally honest document.

[Dan Byman]

Yeah, that is correct. Sometimes you wish it weren't, but I think that is a real thing.

[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, so I want to ask for each of your thoughts in response to the opening paragraph of the section entitled Principles, because the paragraph seems to me to be remarkably and overtly unprincipled. It reads as follows. President Trump's foreign policy is pragmatic without being pragmatist, realistic without being realist, principled without being idealistic, muscular without being hawkish, and restrained without being dovish. It is not grounded in traditional political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America, or in two words, America first. So, Corey, I want to start with you. I found this statement completely arresting because it had this quality of we don't believe in anything except what we do. And I'm trying to. It seems to me the sort of thing that if it's true about you, that you don't say, much less say right up front, without any sense of that you're saying, we believe in nothing. And so I'm curious for your reaction to this paragraph. And then Dan and Scott as well.

[Corey Shockey]

So even Ted Williams, the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, couldn't get away with saying he was the greatest hitter in the history of baseball. Those are not things you can credibly claim about yourself. They are things other people have to say about you. Moreover, that first business principled without. That whole thing is just nonsense. And I think we shouldn't permit the fancy wording that they're trying to project to cover the lack of discipline, the lack of consistency, the lack of actually protecting and advancing America's interests that this strategy reflects.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Dan, do you have thoughts on this?

[Dan Byman]

So when I read this, I was kind of trying to figure out what it meant, right. Because part of me actually liked the phrasing. It rolled off the tongue very nicely or wrote off the page very nicely, but it just. It was a way of claiming to express ideas without actually doing so. Right. If you say, you know, it's America first, but I'm not gonna tell you what that means, I was actually quite struck. It was then followed by the second paragraph after that, which is, you know, the President of peace. Right. And going through Trump's accomplishments, you know, to be clear, some of which are real, but rather than, say, the obvious, which is even some of his most impressive accomplishments, like the Israel Hamas ceasefire, have a lot of problems and are going to take a lot of work to carry forward, and that should not detract from the accomplishment. Everything is solved and everything is fixed because the great man has put his attention on it. And so I looked at that kind of initial paragraph to see if there was some philosophy I could glean. But I think many of us, and certainly Lawfare, has covered this a lot. I know AEI has covered it in its writings. We spend a lot of time trying to find the Trump principles. Right. And here's what's really guiding this administration. When that kind of mix of occult personality of a man who has the attention span of a gnat, who is highly motivated by personal grievance issues, who is motivated by family financial issues, those don't go well with the principles we like to lay out in trying to understand a foreign policy. Whether these are principles we agree or disagree with, these are things that are much more immediate and instrumental and changeable. And I think that actually reflects Trump's foreign policy. While these words just can't do it justice.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Scott, any you have any defense to make of this paragraph other than that it's kind of elegantly written, which is why it's arresting.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah. I mean, look, it's a defense of saying, I'm not incoherent, I'm an original. And like, that's fine. I think that's a fine defense, and there is some truth to it. Like, I think the inclination that you might have to say, oh, I have an ideological frame, and I'm going to use that to dictate my policy to the world, regardless of the state of the world, is a problem generally, including in many domains, but also in global policy and global US Foreign policy. And that inclination is actually a reason why I think this whole enterprise of the national security strategy is a little bit flawed and probably a bad idea if I'm being completely honest. But regardless, this is a case where what they're saying, I don't fundamentally disagree with the tone. That is striking. It's also extremely pedantic, and it's reflective of the prior three sections. Remember, this is section four of when you're getting into first principles of the strategy. The first three sections are a extended lecture that takes up about a third to a fourth of the strategy, saying, here's the way you should go about establishing national security strategy and going a reasoning process. Those sorts of methodological things are interesting. Maybe they're kind of useful at times in like a kind of historical or academic sort of context. In this context, it's extremely pedantic. Again, it's part of this big framework they're setting up to justify this particular outcome by saying everybody else has done it wrong, we're doing it right. And it is a reflection both of that immense egotism of the President himself that Dan's hit on quite times, which I 100% agree with. It's also like a necessary precept of an ideology that prides itself on being disruptive. The whole ideological motion of this administration on a lot of different fronts is essentially reject everything that has come prior. We're doing it the right way by doing the opposite or something really fundamentally different. And to do that, you do have to kind of denigrate everything that came before you. And this is a continuation of that. I think all these labels are all the thinking that's gone into these things usually in the past are the thing. It's all wrong. Here's the right way to do it and we're hitting on it. It's America first.

[Benjamin Wittes]

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[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, let's talk about some details of the America first foreign policy and national security policy. And I want to start with a point that Corey alluded to earlier, which is that the document on page 11 identifies immigration enforcement and border security not merely as a national security priority, but as the central national security priority, and specifically says I don't have the language in front of me that the fate of the United States as a sovereign republic depends on this. And then it turns around on page I can't remember if it's 24 or 25 and talks about how Europe is facing a civilizational crisis as a result of two things. One is failure to deal with immigration and the second is the relative non tolerance of far right parties that are hostile to immigration. There seem to me to be a lot of striking things about this. One is that the it is all but overtly racist in the sense that it is saying both about the United States and about Europe that the fate of democratic Western countries is threatened by immigration of non white people. And in one case we've already crossed the Rubicon, right? But the second issue is that it is, on the second point, overtly interested in interfering in the domestic affairs of European nations in order to force them to take this issue as seriously as J.D. vance and Stephen Miller do. So Corey, here I want to start with you. Am I overstating this matter? I don't normally find myself leaping to gosh, this is really racist, but gosh, this is really racist. And we seem to be really interested in dictating a kind of race based immigration policy to the domestic policies of European countries. And I'm curious whether I'm, you know, hyperventilating here.

[Corey Shockey]

No in fact, you are understating it, Ben, not overstating it. We are a nation by creed in the United States. Right. If you choose to be an American, you can become an American. And it is profoundly un American to suggest that ethnicity or religion or race is the basis of being an American. And I think we shouldn't pull our punches on that. This is horrible. It's racist and it's un American, and it is going to deprive our country of talent that has been the major engine of our strength, our safety and our prosperity. And on the second point, you raised the responsibility that this document suggests we have to create to help elect ethno nationalist parties in other free societies is also genuinely shocking, especially when it is contrasted with. With the silence on the need for regime change in China, in Russia, in repressive authoritarian states. What this document is saying is we need to interfere in the domestic politics of our closest friends, but we should not interfere in the domestic politics of our actual adversaries.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Right.

[Benjamin Wittes]

And there are actually parts of the document where it says specifically, we really don't care what goes on in other countries. The one exception to that seems to be European immigration policy, where we care very much. All right, so, Dan Scott, do either of you have stuff to add to or disagree with in that is. Is. Is. Are. Are Corey and I overstating this?

[Scott R. Anderson]

Not at all.

[Dan Byman]

I wish you were.

[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, let's turn to the South Pacific or. Or to the Indo Pacific, where I honestly couldn't figure out what the document was saying. It seems to me to be the least radical component of it, but I honestly couldn't figure out whether it's just mush or whether it's saying something that I don't have the regional expertise to understand. Dan, do you have a sense of, like, what they are trying to communicate there?

[Dan Byman]

So I read it more as an economic document. And so whether it is about tariffs, whether it is about kind of chip limits, China's rise in economic terms, that seemed to be the emphasis. And I was expecting fairly anodyne, but nevertheless clear language that China is undergoing a massive military buildup that threatens US Interests and we are dealing with a pure competitor, we're dealing with an incredibly powerful military, and that should be shaping U.S. policy. And that was simply lacking. And that absence was one of the biggest surprises to me. I mentioned the absence of anything related to terrorism in a serious way, but that was expected from this administration. China, though, is a different story. They've really tried to emphasize this. And going to our opening discussion There are different constituencies in this administration that are very much about the military threat from China. But having read this, you would think that China was effectively really a more angry version of Japan in the 1980s, that it was about taking our jobs and it was anti competitive. But no one in the 1980s, even at the height of Japan fears, was saying, Japan's going to invade the United States. And this was, I think, portraying, I think, a real concern about China, but to me, not the one that has me quite worried. Right. If China ends up, you know, increasing its trade deficit with the United States, you know, that might be good, that might be bad. It's not something I really focus much on, but it's, you know, my family will be fine. If China, you know, rapidly modernizes its nuclear program as it's doing right now, that's a very different matter.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Scott, what did you make of this? I, you know, the point that Dan raises is one that frankly, I missed, which is I really noticed the lack of sense of Russia as an adversary state, but I kind of overlooked the, you know, because it, you know, has the sort of obligatory stuff about Taiwan. I kind of missed the lack of China as an adversary. What did you make of this discussion?

[Scott R. Anderson]

It's really remarkable, and it is maybe a little more subtle than the Russia talk, but it's 100% there. They describe the challenge with China as rebalancing the economic relationship. That is the fundamental challenge. That's the majority of the Asia section of the document. Then towards the end, they talk about military deterrence and deterrent conflict, and that is almost entirely about Taiwan. Some discussion of South China Sea, some discussion of other things, but almost entirely about Taiwan. But even Taiwan is recast in terms of that economic relationship, the value of Taiwan to the United States. The relationship of the United States to Taiwan is framed entirely in the context of semiconductors, chips, economic relationships, the central relationship in relation to AI and that this is a central US Interest. We have to protect it. And look, if they had said anything else in this document, it would have been a huge deal in D.C. it would have caused political problems for them left and right, with lots of people in Congress and their own caucus, lots of Republicans, right? So they had to put something in there about defending Taiwan, they say, very expressly. And here Taiwan policy is not changing. The formal US Policy, which is strategic ambiguity, keeping the option open if intervening on behalf of Taiwan. But the reasons they're willing to do it seem much narrower. What happens if we succeed at onshoring semiconductor and chip development? Then all of a sudden, why would you intervene on behalf of Taiwan? Because the main interest you've identified is no longer there. It is particularly a big departure because the big pillar of the US posture towards Taiwan across the Democratic and Republican administrations, and particularly strongly in Congress and in Congress, frankly, dating back to the Truman administration, has been that it was originally not Communist and since the 1990s has been that it's a Democratic government. Right. There's an ideological association here. I think there's ripe grounds for criticizing that at various points. I'm not saying that's the right view, but it's been a very real element of US policy, pretty continuity. And it's had a real bulwark traditionally in the Republican Party in Congress. That's completely absent here. That's a pretty big switch. The other thing I would really note about this, in the Asia section, look at the military deterrence section. It talks about island chains, the first and the second island chain. This is a concept that Dan and Corey can correct me because I bet they're better, closer scholars than I am. I believe this dates back to John Foster Dulles and basing structures that the Eisenhower administration was talking about putting across the Pacific as an effort to balance the rise of communist China and then Soviet influence as well. And it's been kind of a recurring element of like Pacific strategy at various points. It's like it's in the dialogue, although frankly, rarely. I haven't seen it feature this prominently in the literature in the space which I spent the last few years kind of reading in on at various strategies for various projects. What's notable is what they don't say. They don't name the allies that they're talking about. The island chain are the Philippines. Right. A US treaty ally. It also includes Japan. It includes a bunch of other elements of the specific where the US has real relationships. Instead, this talks about them as island chain. Yeah, it says these relationships are important to maintain these. We have to have these to balance a rising China militarily. But if you don't acknowledge them as independent countries, you're not really doing yourself any favors. It's a remarkably tone deaf framing of the whole problem. If you think this document has any audience outside the United States, which I promise you it does. Every diplomatic mission in the United States is writing a memo back to their capitol this past week about what this says and what they think it means, particularly Denmark. Denmark in particular. They may have a happier memo than others, coincidentally, but I think a lot of Pacific allies would say, hey, yeah, they're still on Aukus and yeah, they're still with the quad, and yeah, they're still doing all this stuff. But, man, they don't seem to really think of us as that important, particularly if you're again, the Philippines, a country that is really strategically significant for defending Taiwan and for the broader posture, but is not a major power the way Japan is or Australia is and therefore might be particularly sensitive to be overlooked in this sort of circumstances.

[Corey Shockey]

Also, we have a defense commitment to the Philippines. We have an Article 5 treaty obligation to defend them. Every American ally should be incredibly anxious about the credibility of anything the Trump administration promises them based on this strategy. I'm sorry for trampling in Dan.

[Dan Byman]

No, it's a smarter point than I was going to make. I'll just add that the tone of this, again, is insulting to allies and partners. And if there's a conflict between the United States and China, it's bad for the United States, it's bad for China, but it's really bad for the Philippines and it's really risky for Australia. These countries are going to be the grass on which the elephants fight. And we want to reassure them, we want to encourage them, we want to recognize their legitimate concerns as opposed to debates they're having in all these countries, which are, can we rely on the United States? Do we want to be part of this confrontation? And the kind of sneering tone that these countries aren't doing enough does the opposite of that. And one of my many frustrations with how we've approached this region is multiple administrations have tried hard to get these countries to do more, to be on America's side. We've been courting India since the 1990s. And quite rapidly there's been a shift in tone that has hurt this process in many countries, all often in the name of confronting China. So it's been exactly the opposite of what should be their goal.

[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, I want to spend a little bit of time on the international reaction to this document. But before we do, I would be remiss if I did not ask you guys about the Russia side of it, because there really is no discussion of Russia as a strategic threat. There is a discussion in the context of criticizing European allies of this idea that the Ukraine conflict should have been settled or should have been averted somehow, and that Europe is in some measure to blame for that. But there is no place where it describes Russia as a continuing threat to Europe and the United States as obliged to, committed to and likely to defend Europe against Russia. It seems to Just be complaining about ongoing European dependency on on Russia. Corey, I want to hear from all of you about this, but if I were Ukrainian, I would be really tearing my hair out about the way this depicts the relationship between the United States, Ukraine and Europe. And maybe they have bigger things to worry about like the news stories that say Trump is ready to cut them off or the data to day news cycle. But it does seem like he is saying or the administration is saying, we're just not that worried about Vladimir Putin.

[Corey Shockey]

It's worse than that. It's worse than that. They are taking Vladimir Putin's ideology and talking points and parroting them. This business about Europe as a civilizational disaster, Russia's a success and Europe is a disaster. That's the world turned upside down. It is incredibly indicative that the only foreign government that has praised this strategy is the government of the Russian Federation.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Dan, what did you make of it?

[Dan Byman]

Yeah, I mean it was chiding Europe for anxieties about Russia and not noting the genuine threat, not noting Russia's refusal to give reasonable conditions for any settlement of Ukraine. And we've seen this. I know lawfare has followed Ukraine negotiations very closely. We've seen this administration policy alternating between at times willing to listen to European allies, at times willing to respect our Ukrainian friends and in other cases just parroting Russian talking points. And this document is clearly in the Russian talking point category. And again, it's kind of its understanding of threat. What Corey pointed out in her first remarks misses the four or five top threats facing the United States and jumps immediately to campaign issues like immigration and threats of people who are disrupting traditional ways of life rather than actual strategic concerns.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah, I'll hop in there with just a thought to take a level higher because I agree with everything Corey and Dan have said and it's really, really remarkable. But I think this and the China shift really are reflective of what is the underlying worldview shift of this document, which it doesn't quite have the courage to come out and say. But I think it's pretty clear when you're in this document, I think the key point for understanding it is really what's the balance of power bullet under the Principles on page 10 of this document, which says I think this is a really important point. I'm just going to read it out. It is that the outsized influence of larger, richer and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. The United States, and I'm going back to a different sentence here, the United States rejects the ill fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional domination of others. And they say we're going to reach for a balance of power. This is a really dramatic shift from the crescendo over the last three national security strategies across Obama, Biden and Trump won, which is that major power competition is China and Russia seeking to disrupt the global status quo in a way that's detrimental to the United States. This document never mentions major power competition. Once it talks about superpower competition in the context of the Cold War, that's it. It references great power jockeying in the same sentence without really explaining what the head is, but it doesn't actually talk about it as a strategic priority or concern. What it says here is, it says, well, when there are other powers who are big and influential, of course they're going to want to control things, and that's ok. Inevitable. What we need to do is strike a balance of power so that we can understand and achieve, as they say in the Russian context, strategic stability. They're talking about spheres of influence. That's what this is.

[Benjamin Wittes]

The Great Game meets the Melian dialogue.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Exactly. And if you understand what they're saying here is we are proposing spheres of influence with Russia and China as the two other major powers. A lot more pieces of this begin to fall into place as making sense. Why do they think they can dictate cultural values in Europe but not in other parts of the world? Well, because Europe's in US sphere of influence, so we do get to dictate that because we're the superpower there. Query whether that's correct. Actually not sure that's quite a right framing of the relative parity there. But regardless, that's how they view it. Why is it we can't intrude? Why is it that we're only interested in Taiwan so long as we have that economic hook? The rest of it is up to China. That again, like. Like that is saying China, you get a sphere of influence here, it can't go too far. We need to strike a balance here. But essentially I read this document as proposing a bargain to China and Russia, saying, hey, don't push it too far, but you guys have a lot of sway in your domain. If you are Ukraine, if you are Taiwan, if you are most of the other countries in the Pacific, if you're any country in Eastern Europe or Western Europe, you're gonna find that really disheartening because it means that the United States, in the end, probably isn't gonna have your back, at least if the people who have this worldview have their way.

[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, we're going to wrap soon. But Dan, I wanted to ask about the international reaction. Corey mentioned that the Russian government had, of course, said this aligned with their values. I know that a lot of Europeans have been wringing their hands about it. What do we know about other countries reaction to it? If I were Brazil, I would not be thrilled with this.

[Dan Byman]

So I want to be careful because I'm sure I've missed a lot of, in fact, most of the world's reaction to this and focused on a few countries. But I'll say a few things. First of all, as you can imagine, I think that a number of traditional U.S. adversaries are probably quite heartened by this document. So this is something that certainly has been met with approval by perhaps people. I would not like to approve this document. In terms of other countries, though, people have learned not to publicly criticize Trump. Right? He takes mild criticism exceptionally seriously. I mentioned the overturning of the US Courtship of India. India's refusal to go along with the idea that Trump solved the India Pakistan dispute had staggering consequences for the US India relationship and led to increased tariffs and much greater US Support for Pakistan. And so I think countries that are likely to view this with a degree of despair are being quiet about because they're afraid of making things worse. And, you know, there is the eternal question of any strategy document of, you know, other than think tanks, who is actually reading this thing and who is taking it seriously. But beyond that, I think they're probably trying to, you know, as was said earlier, you know, discuss amongst themselves, but try to see how much it reflects reality.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Do either of the other two of you, Scott or Corey, have thoughts on any other country's reactions that you want to ventilate? I have not seen any. But if either of you have, this is a great time to reflect on them.

[Corey Shockey]

Dan has it exactly right. The countries that rely on the United States for security, for market access, for international recognition really have already taken the lesson that any public criticism of the Trump administration is met with while lashing out by the White House. And so what you see is quiet despair and private anxiety by America's closest friends and celebration by those countries that are working to destroy American power and prosperity.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah, I can't agree more with that. The one thing I will say, though, is that the political officers at foreign Embassies in Washington, D.C. who are writing that cable back to their home ministries about this strategy and trying to say, well, what does this mean? Aren't just saying the strategy. They are also trying to talk to congressional staffers, members of Congress, particularly Republican members of Congress. They're looking at the reactions. They're looking at the National Defense Authorization act draft that got out of committee or conference, excuse me, this week or last week. That lays out a lot of priorities do not align with the strategy. And I think they are asking the same question, saying what exactly does this mean in this environment where it very clearly reflects an ideological outlier in the broader schema of Republican politics, let alone on the national political sphere? And that is going to be a source of anxiety, but also some hope. I think for a lot of countries, this strategy, again, is speaking for a really narrow audience. I think it's speaking to a constituency of one, as Dan noted in the president, and particularly the constituency that is most supportive of him. But we've seen a lot of these policy ideas not translate directly into U.S. policy when they actually hit the realities of what that would mean. And I suspect we're going to see more of that. That's why I don't know if this is going to be a guiding document so much as a window of insight into some of the into the ideological milieu in which a lot of the decision makers are operating. It was really significant for that purpose. But there's a lot of other factors that actually go into U.S. policy, and that's now is what a lot of the diplomat are going to be trying to scrounge down and say, well, what do these other stakeholders think of this strategy, whether it's outside academics like us or more importantly, like people on Capitol Hill? And that's really going to be the real question over the next few weeks, is how much buy in does this have among those people and how much do they push back, as they appear to be doing in this first week? We'll have to wait and see.

[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, so there is one issue that I forgot to ask about which was particularly shameful of me, given that Corey Shockey is like the person in the world who you would dream up and summon from a cauldron in order to address it, which is the section of the document that addresses that creates a Trump codicil slash corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. And I'm just going to put a quarter in and press play. And I don't even have a question about it. Just.

[Corey Shockey]

Go, yeah, what's the line from Macbeth? By the pricking of my thumb, something wicked this way comes. It asserts a Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, but it doesn't actually say what that is. And so this is, as both Scott and Dan have said, this is a branding exercise. They're trying to make this a thing that the United States threatening the use of military force around Latin America is somehow a new element of the Monroe Doctrine. The only thing that's new about, to the extent anything's new about the Trump administration's approach is that in 1823, when the Monroe Doctrine was declared, it was welcomed by the countries of Latin America because we were protecting them from European depredation. And what this is doing is threatening the countries of Latin America who are now looking to Europe for protection against the United States. And the difference in attitudes, I mean, and that Great Britain, the country with which the United States has the closest intelligence sharing relationship, has cut off intelligence sharing over the Caribbean because they are so opposed to the policy the Trump administration has put in place. That's a fingerprint of just how unprincipled our closest friends think, what President Trump wants to do in Latin America, just how unprincipled that is. So I don't know what a Trump corollary is, but I suspect it doesn't exist and won't have a shelf life. And it's just a reflection of the sycophancy that this document is replete with.

[Benjamin Wittes]

We are going to leave it there. Thanks to Corey Shockey, Dan Byman and Scott R. Anderson. This podcast is a part of Lawfare's livestream series, Lawfare Live. The Now. If you want to get alerts about future such live streams, you can subscribe to Lawfare's YouTube or Substack. That'll give you a little ping every time we go live. Our audio engineer for this episode was the one, the only, Anna Hickey of lawfare. And as always, thank you for joining us today.

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[Dan Byman]

The world?

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