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Welcome to The Geopolity’s What We’re Watching (3W), our daily look at the interconnected worlds of Geopolitics, Economics and Energy. Curated from the world’s leading sources of information, our analysis and commentary is designed to help you make sense of the events driving the major developments in the world.
In this roundup, we take a closer look at the US’s new 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), which was released on Friday the 5th of December. The NSS sets out the US foreign-policy establishment’s perspective on the world and its priorities.
During the first Trump administration, in 2017, the NSS first featured China as the US’s main geopolitical competitor. At the time, RAND Corporation noted that it described China as a “revisionist power” that “actively competes” against the United States and its allies and partners. It accused China of trying to “shift the regional balance in its favor” and “displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region.” In other words, NSS 2017 presented China as competing with the US for the status of global leader.
Under president Biden, China remained the focus of US geopolitical thinking. In 2022 the NSS described China as the “most consequential geopolitical challenge” and it said that while Russia posed an “immediate and ongoing” threat, it “lacks the across the spectrum capabilities” of China. China “is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective,” the document further stated.
As to the US strategy to counter China, NSS 2022 was explicit:
“The US will support and strengthen partnerships with countries that subscribe to the rules-based international order, and we will make sure those countries can defend themselves against foreign threats.
The US will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al Mandab, nor tolerate efforts by any country to dominate another or the region through military buildups, incursions, or threats.
[The US] will work to reduce tensions, de-escalate, and end conflicts wherever possible through diplomacy.
Fourth, the United States will promote regional integration by building political, economic, and security connections between and among US partners, including through integrated air and maritime defense structures, while respecting each country’s sovereignty and independent choices.
Fifth, the US will always promote human rights and the values enshrined in the UN Charter.”
Quite clearly, these pillars of the US strategic response to China were abandoned during the first year of the second Trump administration. The US ended its participation in many of the multilateral organizations through which it previously designed the “international rules-based order” (IRBO), such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the G20 and the “Conference or Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC”, more commonly known as the COP process related to climate change. In addition, the US took a stance on matters of international trade that clearly conflicted with its own IRBO, for example demanding that other countries pay tariffs for their exports to the US and without demanding the US do the same for exports to them. The US support for the UN human rights was also quite clearly abandoned, which was evidenced not only through the US unconditional support for Israel in Palestine and the broader Levant, but also the US attacks on Iran and Venezuela, as well as its treatment of domestic and foreign critics of Trump administration policies.
The NSS 2025 formalizes the US’s departure from the vision and strategy that underpinned its geopolitics over the past decade. The Wall Street Journal writes that it doesn’t name China as the US’s greatest challenge and removed almost all references to the IRBO.
The New York Times adds that NSS 2025 also talks of the US preference being “non-interference in other nations’ affairs” and “respecting states’ sovereignty”. The document says the US now seeks “good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world,” adding, “without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.” This is effectively a copy of China’s narrative around what the essence of an international order should be, notes 3W. This Chinese narrative was designed as an alternative to the US’s IRBO. The US plan behind the IRBO was that multilateral organizations should agree the rules. Since the US controlled these international organizations, this would enable the US to set the rules of the game, in its favour. That is why China proposed that countries’ sovereignty should be respected and that the primary international rule should be non-interference, i.e. international organizations or national states should not prescribe how countries should govern themselves. This adoption of a Chinese narrative ibn our 3W view is further evidence that through NSS 2025 the US is stepping back from its objective to keep China down.
Through this, NSS 2025 appears to concede that the US has failed in its ambition to maintain US hegemony by keeping China down, writes The Center for Strategic and International Studies. It describes China as a “near-peer”. Instead of competing with this near-peer for global hegemony, NSS 2025 says that the US will focus on preserving hegemony in its own backyard, the Americas. It essentially repeats the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, implying that China is to get out of North and South America: “The US must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity…. The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence—from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.”
But, at the same time, writes The Atlantic Council, NSS 2025 states that the US will “ensure that allied economies do not become subordinate to any competing power”, and that it will strengthen its and its allies’ capacity “to deny any attempt to seize Taiwan or achieve a balance of forces so unfavorable to us as to make defending that island impossible.” The document also calls explicitly for working with regional allies and partners to “deny any attempt to seize Taiwan or achieve a balance of forces so unfavorable to us as to make defending that island impossible.” It also emphasizes the importance of the “Quad” grouping of the US, Australia, Japan and India, which shares intelligence and coordinates maritime policy in the Pacific. In essence, what this means is that while the US wants to remain hegemonic in its Western hemisphere, i.e. the Americas, it does not want China to become a hegemon in its Asia-Pacific hemisphere. From this position of relative strength, NSS 2025 says the US is to achieve a “mutually advantageous economic relationship with China.”
3W adds that NSS 2025 also says, “We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain. But the American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone. Our allies must step up and spend—and more importantly do—much more for collective defense. America’s diplomatic efforts should focus on pressing our First Island Chain allies and partners to allow the US military greater access to their ports and other facilities, to spend more on their own defense, and most importantly to invest in capabilities aimed at deterring aggression.” What this all means, in our 3W view, is the following:
Firstly, the US has acknowledged the failure of its geopolitical strategies over the past 15 or so years. It has not been able to keep China down. And it cannot, today, take on China and expect the outcome pt favorable to the US. For that reason, the US focus is now no longer on global hegemony, but regional hegemony.
Secondly, as a regional hegemon the US will try to keep China from becoming a regional hegemon, through partnering with other countries in the Asia-Pacific hemisphere. The difference here is that in the past, under a global hegemon ambition the US aimed at determining the Asia-Pacific order. Now, as a regional order, it doesn’t care what the order is. It just wants to prevent a regional hegemon from appearing in the Asia-Pacific. Short of that, the countries of the Asia-Pacific will be allowed by the US to organize their affairs however they want.
Thirdly, the above means that the US is adjusting its strategy in recognition of current realities. The ambition is no longer to keep China down, but to keep China from becoming a hegemon in the Asia-Pacific. It may develop a strong economy, and even a strong military. But it must be prevented from being able to use these strengths to order its backyard in a way that benefits it. The US should therefore be expected to offer increased military support to countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, to enable them to stand up to China – for which these countries will have to pay.
Fourthly, within its own hemisphere the US should be expected to continue to demand that others end their relationship with China in all areas deemed of importance to the US. This means that industries such as tech, automotive, pharma, et cetera, will become no-go for Chinese companies, who will also be banned from making investments in critical infrastructure in the Western hemisphere.
Fifthly, the above should also mean less US interference in the regions that fall outside of the Americas and Asia-Pacific. Under a “regional hegemon” strategy the US should be expected to be less concerned with personally managing the details of policies in the countries of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as long as they support the key US policy objectives of preventing another regional hegemon in Asia-Pacific, and trading with the US in a manner that benefits the US. These countries should expect more freedom to maneuver in the international arena, therefore, in return for which they will be expected to take more care of themselves and end the expectation that the US will resolve issues between them.
Note – See the Geopolitics of America deep dive, that looks at the evolution of the US and its grand strategy.