She’ll Be Right, Mate: The New U.S. National Security Strategy and the Pacific

An examination of the new Trump administration National Security Strategy and the implications for security and prosperity in the Pacific.

Image: The White House

Ultimately, there’s plenty to work with in this grab bag of ideas. But like its predecessors, this is less a strategy than a mood board. Editorial Board, Washington Post, 5 December 2025

In the past 24 hours, the Trump administration released its new National Security Strategy. This is a declaratory policy, and a document, that think tanks, national security practitioners as well ad America’s friends and allies have been waiting on for some time. Like most recent M. Night Shyamalan movies, the initial reviews are hardly glowing. As one reviewerwrote in War on the Rocks:

The new National Security Strategy is out, and it’s a shock to the system. It is not just the latest public articulation of principles, ambitions, and priorities around which the United States organizes its foreign policy. Instead, it reads like a manifesto for a radically different American project. It is narrower, more partisan, more inwardly focused, and more personalized than any of its predecessors.

The strategy probably marks a epochal shift from the national security policy of American administrations after the end of the Cold War. Indeed, this new document probably marks a new phase of the post-Cold War era. Let me explain.

Initially, there was a decade long Era of Euphoria where America strode tall across the world stage. It had won the decades-long cold war, its tech industry was delivering new riches to the nation and America military power was at its zenith. This era came to an end with the 9/11 attacks. This saw the dawn of the 9/11 era of post-Cold War history, where counter terrorism operations, national building and the rise of social media, distrust in institutions and the growth of the power and influence of authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia.

The 2025 Trump National Security Strategy ends that 9/11 era. We are now in a more chaotic and transactional era. It is the America First era. And it is likely to be a transitional era as the major powers – China, Russia, India, America, Japan and Europe – undergo a rebalancing in global power, prosperity and influence. This new America First era will last years, if not decades. But the competition, cooperation, and conflicts we are likely to see in this era will likely give birth to the new world order promised at the end of the Cold War. It just won’t be the End of History we all hoped for!

American National Security in the America First Era

While the focus of this article is the Pacific elements of the new National Security Strategy, a quick look at the document is in order.

It begins with an introduction from Donald Trump and the dubious statement that “over the past nine months, we have brought our nation – and the world – back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster.” A few other interesting, evidence-free claims are then made before we then get into the main document.

The focus in the international aspects of the new National Security Strategy is economics and military power. Domestically, it jumps into culture wars and a range of other topics.

It is a much shorter document than its 2022 predecessor (and much shorter than the 2017 National Security Strategy from the first Trump administration). And while those two previous documents explain America’s role in the world up front, with America First featuring prominently in 2017, the 2025 National Security Strategy starts very differently.

It begins with a whining statement that “American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short” and then has a kick at foreign policy elites several times on the same page. But, as the new document explains, the Trump administration has “successfully marshalled America’s great strengths to correct course and begin ushering in a new golden age for our country.”

The aim of this article is not to provide a blow-by-blow critique of the document. There are more than enough quick-take articles on the National Security Strategy by news outlets. There are also some more considered, and serious, examinations of the new strategy that are actually worth reading. The Council on Foreign Relations has a good examination here. Another critique, by Eliot Cohen, describes the National Security Strategy as follows:

This is a populist document. It expresses an undifferentiated loathing of traditional foreign-policy elites, which the administration has shunned. Its intellectual incoherence is that of the angry autodidact, the anti-vaxxer activist, and the anti-Biden conspiracy theorist.

The document, like the administration, is split between internationalist and isolationist impulses—offering a commitment to American alliances and a forward presence in Asia on the one hand, and indulging proclivities for “America First” isolationism on the other. In some respects, the NSS reflects the peculiar nature of the Trump coalition, which is composed of different and occasionally mutually antagonistic factions, and above all of the muddled enthusiasms, resentments, insecurities, and vanities of the president himself.

Despite all of the other commentaries about the document - that is gives Europe unrealistic timelines to look after its defence, that it elevates American culture wars into a national security priority, that it focusses too much on the western hemisphere, that it is anti-immigration and that it places too much emphasis on commercial ties (all of which are reasonable)- there are some interesting and positive aspects of the National Security Strategy that concern the Pacific region.

Image: @HQJOC

The Pacific

For all its apparent placidity, the Pacific seems today to be positioned at the leading edge of any number of potential challenges and crises - whether they relate to politics or economics, to geology, to weather, to the supply of food, or to the most basic questions about the number of people that this planet can support. Simon Winchester, Pacific, 2015.

In her review of the new National Security Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies expert Emily Hardinghas written that “Beijing will love the explicit declaration that the U.S. preference is noninterference in other nations’ affairs and the clear statement about respecting states’ sovereignty. That may assuage Chinese fears that the United States seeks to undermine regime stability. They will hate the calls for them to get out of Latin America and the robust approach to deterrence, both necessary and excellent policy positions.”

Harding’s summation that “overall, the Pacific section is strong” is close to the money. I think there are seven key issues in the National Security Strategy that highlight the opportunities and challenges for Pacific nations dealing with a new America First National Security Strategy.

First, the largest section of the document concerns America’s interests in, and interactions with, Asia. At six pages (of a 29-page document) the weight given to America’s relationships in Asia and its security interests there outweighs its attention paid to Europe, the Middle East and other regions such as Africa and the Western Hemisphere. That is a good thing. The amount of space dedicated to Asia is an important signal from the Trump administration about where its priorities lay. That will, in the main, please Pacific nations. It won’t please Europe nor the Ukrainians fighting for the future of their nation.

Second, China will also not be that happy with the document. The National Security Strategy calls out China’s lack of reform with respect to democratic forms of government and that “since the Chinese economy reopened to the world in 1979, commercial relations between our two countries have been and remain fundamentally unbalanced.” Further on, the document notes that America will rebalance its economic relationship with China and restore American ‘independence’ (whatever that means). More importantly, the document clearly has China in mind when it speaks of “a robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific”. It calls out “propaganda, influence operations and other forms of cultural subversion” (which China is a leading proponent and employer of), advocates again for the Quad (which China hates) and describes how America will: “work to align the actions of our allies and partners with our joint interest in preventing domination by any single competitor nation.”

To conclude this section on how China will be unhappy with the new strategy, there is a passage on page 24 of the document that deals with freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. It asserts that America will not allow the imposition of a “toll system” over vital sea lanes, which can be viewed as a very direct comment on Chinese behaviour in that body of water. The Chinese Communist Party will hate the concept expounded upon here as the South China Sea resides within their arbitrary ten-dash-line, which has no historical or legal basis.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is yet to issue a formal response to the document. I think their focus at present is the visit of President Macron to China.

Third, many nations in the Pacific will be comfortable with the strategy’s plan to remain in engaged with the region. In the wake of Trump’s comments about NATO and how it has managed its relationship with Ukraine and other European nations, many leaders and strategic thinkers across the region have rightly pondered the degree to which America might also disengage with nations across the Pacific. The new Trump National Security Strategy will assuage some of those doubts, the provide a reinforced level of confidence among America’s allies in the Pacific. Given the latest surge of PLA Navy activity across the region, this is a good thing.

The current surge in Chinese navy activity across the western Pacific. Image: Ian Ellis Jones.

Fourth, there are many economic elements contained in the document that discuss America’s relationship with Pacific nations. This will be viewed across the region positively because nations in the Pacific do not want to see the China-America strategic competition boil down to just a military correlation of forces. Military deterrence is important, but economic considerations outweigh military concerns for many in the Pacific. Economic competition, and the potential for new trading blocs that include America, must now be on the minds of national security policy makers across the Pacific region.

Fifth, America has recommitted to its existing policy towards Taiwan, which in the document as follows:

United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

This will delight the government and people of Taiwan. It will give confidence to other regional nations such as the Philippines and Japan. It will infuriate Xi and the Chinese Communist Party. But it is also a net good for the region, because it encourages (again) economic and diplomatic relations in addition to military deterrence. And, more importantly, this recognises the prosperous, modern democracy that the Taiwanese people have created and that it is worth preserving. As the document asserts on page 9, America stands “for the sovereign rights of nations.”

Sixth, the document does however have a sting in the tail for America’s allies and friends across the region. On page 12, in the section on priorities, the document states that: “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over…Continuing President Trump’s approach of asking allies to assume primary responsibility for their regions, the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter.”

Importantly, it then avers that “the United States will stand ready to help—potentially through more favourable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, and defense procurement—those counties that willingly take more responsibility for security in their neighbourhoods and align their export controls with ours.”

Deeper into the document, specific reference is made to Japan and South Korea. The document states that: “we must urge these countries to increase defense spending, with a focus on the capabilities—including new capabilities—necessary to deter adversaries and protect the First Island Chain.” But other nations also get a mention in this regard. The National Security Strategy calls the current levels of defence spending in Taiwan and Australia:

We will also harden and strengthen our military presence in the Western Pacific, while in our dealings with Taiwan and Australia we maintain our determined rhetoric on increased defense spending.

Interestingly, the President of Taiwan published an opinion piece in the Washington Post just ten days ago which makes exactly the kind of commitment to increased defence spending that the Trump administration is calling for. In the piece, President Lai Ching-te writes that “our defense spending, which has already doubled in recent years, is expected to rise to 3.3 percent of gross domestic product by next year. I am committed to lifting this baseline to 5 percent by 2030.”

Unfortunately, the Australian government continues to ignore the signals like this from Washington. It has set defence spending at just over 2% of GDP, and while talking about potential future increases in the 2030s, is cutting budgets in the army, air force, space capability, infrastructure and other areas to fund the second-hand nuclear-powered submarines (two delivered in 2032 and 2035, with a third new one in 2038).

It will be interesting to see whether this is a topic that is discussed, and included in the American read out, of the AUSMIN meeting to be held in Washington DC in the coming week. Generally, the U.S. side provides a more comprehensive debrief of the discussions and outcomes of these meetings than the Australian government.

The seventh and final aspect of the National Security Strategy that will gain the attention of policy makers and think tankers across the region will be the following passage:

The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries. As 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. This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers. The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.

This is a complex and, in some respects, contradictory paragraph. But the key idea that some will take away from it is that America might be endorsing the idea of ‘spheres of influence’. I think the later section on Asia in the document makes American commitments to the security of Taiwan, the South China Sea and other nations clear enough that this is not an explicit endorsement of a Chinese sphere on influence.

But I could be wrong.

Image: @IndoPACOM

Conclusion

Overall, Pacific nations have much more to be satisfied about in the new Trump administration National Security Strategy than European countries. China will probably not be very happy at all, particularly with the economic, sovereignty and military aspects of the strategy.

But America’s democratic allies and partners, from Japan and Korea in north Asia down through the southeast Asian nations to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific island countries, will be generally comfortable that America has re-committed to the region and has placed its priority on prosperity and security in the Pacific.

That said, I don’t think the Trump administration will be permitting Pacific nations to get too complacent about American resourcing and military presence. The Trump administration is serious about burden sharing, and not every nation in this region has fully received the message yet (including Australia).

There will be some concern about exactly how this will be implemented. Writing about economic and military developments - and resourcing the necessary action to realise objectives in these domains - are two very different things. That will bear watching as the strategy is implemented.

This could have been a much worse document for the Pacific region than it is. For those in Pacific nations that are unconvinced, I suggest a trip to any European capital in the coming days. There you will see what true disappointment in this document looks like.