An Unreliable American Partner
An Unreliable American partner
What America Thinks It Wants
A strategy is meant to evaluate, sort, and prioritise. It exists to make choices. Not every country, region, issue, or cause, however worthy, can sit at the centre of national policy. The opening pages of the National Security Strategy (NSS) get this much right. They argue that American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has become bloated, unfocused, and morally performative: a catalogue of aspirations rather than a hierarchy of interests. The document insists that foreign policy should serve a single purpose: the protection of core national interests, and that anything beyond that is a distraction.
There is an obvious truth here. Resources are finite. Time is finite. Power has limits. Any serious strategy must accept that trade offs are unavoidable, that prioritisation is not cynicism but necessity.
But almost immediately, the document begins to reveal what it misunderstands about American power. But also overstates such power.
The United States has never dominated the world alone. Its strength has always rested on alliances, institutions, partners, and shared systems that allowed it to project influence far beyond what its raw resources would otherwise permit. The NSS treats alliances not as force multipliers, but as optional conveniences, to be engaged only when immediately useful. That framing is presented as realism. Taken seriously, it risks becoming something else: a misreading of how American power has actually functioned for the last eighty years.
The most revealing phrase in these opening pages is four simple words: “what we should want.” The document is not merely reassessing means. It is quietly redefining ends. It is no longer asking how America achieves its goals, but which goals are ideologically acceptable in the first place. The shift is subtle but profound. A values based approach gives way to one in which economics sit above all else, and moral commitments are treated as liabilities rather than assets.
This is not framed as rhetoric. It is framed as direction. The NSS signals an expectation that regions such as Latin America and Europe should adapt their political and economic behaviour accordingly. That expectation has implications that extend well beyond trade balances or supply chains. If followed through, it places Europe in an increasingly exposed position, caught between American economic pressure and Chinese strategic gravity, required to navigate both while being assured of neither.
What matters here is not whether this vision succeeds, but that it is being articulated at all.
The final lines of the introduction carry a quiet retreat from long standing assumptions. Other nations’ affairs, the document claims, are America’s concern only when they directly threaten U.S. interests. Some still assume this is posturing, that economic gravity, NATO obligations, or shared threats will eventually pull Washington back into familiar roles. That may prove true. But strategy is about preparation, not hope. The NSS is attempting to formalise conditionality where certainty once existed.
If American engagement is now selective, delayed, or transactional, allies must be resilient enough to endure periods of absence. Or accept that help may not arrive at all. That logic, once acknowledged, reshapes planning across Europe. Rearmament is not driven by sudden hostility toward the United States, but by the erosion of assumptions that once made reliance safe.
Canada appears to have recognised this shift sooner than most. Long assumed to be insulated by geography, integration, and cultural proximity, it has instead found itself directly exposed to American unpredictability. Trade disputes, political pressure, and open questioning of established norms have forced Ottawa to confront a reality Europe is only now fully absorbing: closeness to the United States no longer guarantees stability. Canada’s response has not been theatrical, but it has been clear. Hedging, diversification, and a reassessment of long standing assumptions are already underway. In that sense, Canada is not an outlier. It is an early indicator.
The NSS presents itself as disciplined and restrained. What follows complicates that claim. Beneath the language of prioritisation sits a cluster of ideas that are neither temporary nor limited to a single administration. Some will outlast Trump. Some should be taken seriously precisely because they reflect deeper currents within American politics.
What begins as a critique of overextension gradually reveals a different impulse. Restraint is not evenly applied. Economic interest becomes justification. Ideological preference re enters through the side door. The document hints at a transformation in American conservatism itself, away from the liberal internationalism that dominated the last eight decades, toward something narrower, more transactional, and more willing to export its domestic political battles abroad.
At this stage, the consequences are only implied. They become clearer as the strategy turns from principle to practice.
From Restraint to Intervention
The Western Hemisphere: Selective Non-Intervention
The document wastes little time revealing where its restraint ends. In the Western Hemisphere, it calls for stability sufficient to prevent mass migration, cooperation against cartels and transnational crime, protection of supply chains, and exclusion of hostile foreign influence. This is framed explicitly as a new Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The problem is that while the Monroe Doctrine at least rested on a coherent strategic logic, this version appears focused on regime change and pressuring anyone the United States disagrees with.
What makes this especially concerning is that it does not remain theoretical. Recent U.S. actions point toward a willingness to exert direct political pressure against democratically elected governments whose politics are deemed unacceptable. Tariffs threatened against Brazil following the jailing of a former president who attempted to overturn an election are not easily explained as neutral economic policy. Nor are repeated public attacks on centre-left and socialist governments, paired with open sympathy for political actors aligned with Trump and his worldview.
Taken together, these actions suggest more than rhetorical preference. Democratically elected governments are treated as legitimate only when they produce outcomes Washington approves of. When they do not, economic pressure, diplomatic hostility, and political delegitimisation follow. That is not non-interventionism. It is conditional acceptance of democracy itself. What matters is not the region, but the method. Latin America provides the clearest evidence because the pressure is overt and the tools are explicit. Europe is not exempt from this logic. The strategy’s language toward European institutions, its endorsement of so-called patriotic parties, and its stated intent to cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory apply the same framework in a different context. The instruments may differ, trade leverage rather than tariffs, political signalling rather than direct coercion, but the objective is consistent: reshaping allied political environments to better align with American ideological preferences rather than respecting democratic outcomes as they are.
This pattern matters because it aligns directly with the strategy’s stated intent to “cultivate resistance” within allied states. When combined with trade leverage, ideological signalling, and selective respect for sovereignty, it points toward something that cannot be dismissed as coincidence. The United States is no longer merely adapting to allied political change. It is signalling a willingness to shape it.
That is why concerns about regime change are not speculative. They are inferred from behaviour, not rhetoric.
In plain terms, this is interventionism, just redirected. While the NSS criticises Middle Eastern forever wars, it simultaneously asserts an expansive right to intervene across Latin America. That appears to be the priority above all else. The principle of limited engagement collapses the moment geography and domestic politics demand otherwise. Sovereignty is respected only when outcomes align with Washington’s preferences.
The contradiction is not accidental. It is structural. The strategy is not about doing less. It is about doing less elsewhere. The focus is Latin America above all else.
China and Asia
Economics Without Values
When the document turns to Asia, the tone shifts again. The priority is clear: secure supply chains, freedom of navigation, and protection from economic damage inflicted by foreign actors. China is the unspoken target, but the response is not ideological competition. It is protectionism. Taiwan is mentioned, but in a way that quietly breaks with long standing commitments.
This is why partners are listening, adjusting, forming new alliances, and in some cases engaging more openly with China. In effect, the United States is pushing people toward China, not through weakness, but through unpredictability.
Across Latin America and Asia, a pattern emerges. Sovereignty and partnership are conditional. Ideals are optional. Interests, narrowly defined, are not.
Europe
From Ally to Problem
Europe receives different treatment entirely.
The NSS claims the U.S. wants to support European security while restoring Europe’s civilisational self confidence and Western identity. The phrasing is careful enough to maintain plausible deniability, but the meaning is unmistakable. Europe is criticised not for weakness, but for becoming something the administration finds ideologically unacceptable. Given what this document implies, that should cause real concern. The United States is signalling a desire for political change in Europe, not merely policy adjustment.
This is where the document crosses a line, from strategy into cultural politics. Migration, identity, and demography are framed as security issues. The implication is not subtle. Europe is becoming insufficiently European. This is a far right talking point rooted in conspiracy thinking, elevated here into the language of national security.
That framing appears again and again. The document attacks sovereignty sapping transnational institutions, language that can only reasonably be read as a direct assault on the European Union. The EU is presented as both an economic rival, through regulation, digital policy, and trade rules, and an ideological threat, embodying immigration, social liberalism, and shared sovereignty.
This is no longer about defending allies. It is about reshaping them.
Flexible Realism and the Collapse of Principle
The NSS declares two guiding principles: Flexible Realism, which rejects imposing democratic change on others, and the Primacy of Nations, which elevates sovereignty above transnational governance. On paper, these sound restrained, even respectful.
In practice, they collapse instantly. The Trump Corollary authorises intervention across Latin America. Europe is openly criticised for its internal politics, identity, and institutions. Sovereignty is upheld selectively and discarded when inconvenient.
This is not realism. It is power politics dressed in principle.
Trade as Leverage
Nowhere is this clearer than in the document’s approach to trade. America’s current account deficit is framed as unsustainable. Allies are instructed explicitly to rebalance China’s economy by absorbing excess capacity and opening their markets. Trade becomes the primary instrument of foreign policy.
The NSS admits, unintentionally, what it depends on: alliances. Without European and Asian cooperation, the United States cannot rebalance global trade or counter China. Yet that cooperation is treated not as partnership, but as obligation.
Europe’s declining share of global GDP is blamed on regulation rather than on the reality of faster growth elsewhere. The solution offered is not adaptation, but deregulation, paired with cultural correction.
This is the turning point of the document. Economic demands merge with ideological pressure. Markets are to be opened not just through negotiation, but through political change.
Cultivating Resistance
The strategy makes this explicit. U.S. policy toward Europe will prioritise cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory while opening markets to American goods and services.
This is not diplomatic language. It is a description of political intervention.
The NSS openly endorses patriotic European parties, framing them as vehicles for restoring identity, sovereignty, and economic openness. European governments are described as unstable, anti democratic, and suppressive. Popular will is invoked selectively, only when it aligns with Washington’s ideological preferences.
This is the core of the strategy: destabilise the political centre, weaken the EU, and reshape Europe into a more compliant economic and ideological partner.
Ukraine and Russia.
Peace Without Victory
The document’s approach to Ukraine is brutally concise. The priority is an expeditious cessation of hostilities and the re establishment of strategic stability with Russia.
There is no discussion of Ukrainian victory. No definition of justice. No acknowledgement of European security concerns. The implication is clear. Freezing the conflict is acceptable if it enables a broader reset with Moscow.
This is not peacemaking. It is a transaction. Russia receives an off ramp. Ukraine absorbs the cost. Europe is sidelined entirely.
For European states that view Russia as an existential threat, this is a fundamental rupture. The NSS treats Russian aggression as a problem to be managed, not deterred. Stability matters more than outcome.
Using the War Against Europe
The document then turns the war into a political weapon. European governments are accused of holding unrealistic expectations, suppressing opposition, and subverting democracy. A supposed popular desire for peace is invoked to delegitimise elected leadership.
The logic is circular. Governments are unstable because they refuse the peace Washington prefers. Therefore, they must be pressured or replaced.
This framing provides the justification for intervention. Europe, the NSS claims, cannot reform itself while trapped in political crisis. America, implicitly, must help.
NATO
Identity Over Security
The most alarming section concerns NATO. The NSS speculates that some members may become majority non European, questioning whether they will still share the values of the alliance’s founders. Expansion is framed as a threat rather than a success.
This is demographic anxiety elevated to strategic doctrine. It echoes far right replacement theories and uses them to justify narrowing the alliance.
The implication is devastating. NATO’s legitimacy is no longer based on shared security interests, but on cultural and racial continuity. Ukraine, Moldova, and others are quietly written off. Russia’s sphere is frozen in place.
The Consequence
Taken together, the NSS does something unprecedented. It commits the United States to actively undermining the political cohesion of its closest democratic allies while questioning the foundations of the post war security order.
This is not non interventionism. It is ideological intervention on a continental scale.
Europe is no longer treated as a partner to be strengthened, but as a system to be reshaped or weakened for economic and political gain. NATO is no longer a shared project, but a conditional arrangement. Ukraine is no longer a test of deterrence, but a bargaining chip.
In plain terms, America is now an unreliable partner.
The Only Rational Response
Europe cannot base its security on the hope that this worldview is temporary. Strategy cannot assume a return to normality. The only viable response is resilience.
That means accelerated rearmament and rebuilding the European defence industrial base beyond symbolic spending targets. It means securing supply chains and strategic autonomy in critical technologies. It means political hardening against external interference, whether from Washington, Moscow, or Beijing.
The era of complacency is over. The NSS offers brutal clarity. Europe must act on it.
America First contains a contradiction it cannot escape. It rejects the alliances that made American power possible while relying on them to achieve its goals. That conflict is not going away.
The European giant must awaken and begin acting like the military, economic, and regulatory power it already is. As a collective, it must take its place among the great powers. That is the only way it remains relevant in a changing and increasingly hostile world.
Eighty years of automatic alignment are over. The world is shifting east. It is time to face the future with eyes open, and confront the reality rather than continue to deny it.