Lose-lose is better than win-win? A detailed explanation of the U.S. National Security Strategy (Part 1)

I. Report Background and Core Positioning

The *2025 National Security Strategy* report released by the Trump administration serves as a guiding document for the United States' military, diplomatic, and foreign policies over the coming decades. Despite its concise length of only 20–30 pages, this report is sharply focused, with its core objective directly aimed at **ensuring that the United States remains the world's most powerful, prosperous, influential, and successful nation for decades to come**. The two key strategic themes running through the report—focus and coherence—not only provide essential clues for understanding this strategic document but also reflect the current urgent need of the United States for strategic resource integration and policy continuity.

In essence, this report represents a significant move by the United States to respond to the current changes in the global landscape and adjust its strategy for major power competition. Its core objective is to outline a clear path for strategic confrontation with China in the future, thereby maintaining its global dominance.

II. Critique and Reflection on U.S. Post-Cold War Strategy

The report delivers a sharp critique of U.S. diplomatic strategy after the end of the Cold War, pointing directly to its fundamental flaws. It argues that past strategies have either fallen into wish-list idealism, failing to clarify America's true demands, or have piled up vague clichés, leading to miscalculations regarding core strategic objectives. The root of this strategic deviation is attributed to a series of serious misjudgments by the U.S. diplomatic elite.

Four Major Strategic Misjudgments of the Elite

American foreign policy elites once firmly believed that permanent U.S. dominance over the entire world best served our national interests. However, the report clearly points out fatal flaws in this perception: First, it severely misjudged the willingness of the American people to bear global obligations, as the majority believe many international commitments are unrelated to the nation’s core interests. Second, it overestimated the U.S. capacity to simultaneously sustain a massive welfare system and extensive military and diplomatic institutions, leading to excessive resource depletion. Third, it placed misguided bets on globalism and free trade, as the industrial relocation during globalization hollowed out the foundation of the American middle class and the domestic industrial base. Fourth, it allowed allies to shift defense costs onto the U.S., even dragging the nation into international conflicts unrelated to its core interests.

(2) Systematic Criticism of International Institutions

The report also criticizes that U.S. policy is constrained by networks of international institutions, arguing that some of these institutions are driven by anti-Americanism, while more of them adhere to transnationalism that seeks to undermine national sovereignty. This excessive reliance on international mechanisms has weakened America's strategic autonomy. The report ultimately concludes that the American elite not only pursued a fundamentally undesirable and unattainable goal but also, in the process, undermined the core foundation for achieving it—America's wealth, power, and national character.

III. Trump's Strategic "Course Correction" and Discourse Reconstruction

The core logic of the "2025 National Security Strategy" report is to formalize and systematize Trump's political propositions, driving a comprehensive correction of U.S. strategy. This correction process is accompanied by a distinct reconstruction of the discourse system, forming a highly targeted strategic narrative.

The Implicit Critique of the "National Traitor" Theory

The report implies strong criticism towards specific groups, positioning career bureaucrats, Democratic politicians, Republican establishment figures, and entities like the Pentagon as national traitors who prioritize their own interests over those of the American people, suggesting these groups are major drivers behind past strategic failures.

(II) The Discourse Struggle for Hegemonic Autonomy

The report critiques the dependency of bipartisan foreign policies and emphasizes the pursuit of American hegemony's autonomy. Its core narrative logic lies in: The world's most powerful nation can be a dog for Europeans, a dog for Israelis, a dog for Japan and South Korea, but it simply cannot be an independent, powerful global empire on its own. This statement directly addresses past excessive compromises in U.S. diplomacy toward allies, attempting to reshape a hegemony narrative centered on America First.

(3) The Legitimacy Argument for "Course Correction" During Trump's Tenure

The report explicitly states that President Trump's first term demonstrated that all issues of past strategies could have been resolved at once, provided the leadership possessed unwavering determination. This statement not only justifies Trump's past policy practices but also sets continuing this course of correction as the core objective of his second term, thereby establishing a legitimate foundation for strategic continuity.

IV. The Core Objective System of the U.S. National Security Strategy

The report constructs a multidimensional national security objective system covering survival, safety, economy, military, society, and culture, among other dimensions. The orientation of **domestic affairs first** is extremely distinct, viewing the enhancement of domestic governance capabilities as the foundation for global competition.

Basic Guarantees: Survival and Safety

Survival and security are the primary objectives of strategy, with the core tenets including ensuring the continued existence of the United States as an independent sovereign republic, safeguarding the inherent rights of its citizens, protecting the security of the nation’s territory, economic system, and way of life, and defending against a wide range of traditional and non-traditional threats such as military aggression, espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, propaganda warfare, and cultural subversion.

(2) Core of Domestic Affairs: Border and Immigration Governance

The report elevates immigration issues to the core of national security for the first time, explicitly setting the goal of achieving full control over the borders. Its specific requirements include dismantling the transportation networks relied upon for both legal and illegal entry, promoting cooperation among sovereign states to prevent rather than facilitate destabilizing population movements, and insisting on the autonomous determination of criteria for admitting individuals. This goal-setting profoundly reflects the concept that foreign policy is an extension of domestic governance, placing domestic governance needs at the forefront of external strategy.

(3) Support System: Infrastructure, Military, and Economy

In the field of infrastructure, the strategy emphasizes building resilient infrastructure capable of withstanding natural disasters and external threats, thereby strengthening the physical barriers for domestic security. In the military domain, the goal is to create the world's most powerful, technologically advanced, and lethal armed forces, establishing a reliable nuclear deterrent and a next-generation missile defense system (including the Golden Dome system), with the core objective of deterring conflicts and, when necessary, swiftly and decisively winning wars with minimal casualties. In the economic and industrial sectors, building the world's strongest and most dynamic economy is regarded as the cornerstone of the American way of life and its global standing. It highlights revitalizing industry to meet production needs in both peacetime and wartime, while developing a globally leading energy export industry to translate economic strength into strategic competitiveness.

(IV) Core Driving Force: Technology and Innovation

The report identifies maintaining global technological leadership as a key strategic objective, explicitly requiring the protection of intellectual property from foreign theft and building competitive advantages through technological innovation. This goal is deeply intertwined with economic and military objectives, highlighting the central role of technology as a core battlefield in major-power competition.

(V) Spiritual Foundation: Soft Power and Cultural Health

The report suggests that maintaining unparalleled soft power must be based on restoring and revitalizing the American spirit and cultural health, arguing that the collapse of cultural identity would make long-term security unattainable. Its specific cultural goals include constructing an authentic and honorable narrative of American history, fostering a proud, optimistic populace that believes in intergenerational progress, ensuring full employment to strengthen citizens' national identity, and cultivating strong traditional families. The report particularly emphasizes: Without this, all our so-called national security strategies will be unachievable, treating cultural cohesion as the spiritual foundation of strategy. This direction essentially sounds a cultural clarion call domestically, attempting to end the influence of woke culture and reshape domestic consensus with the mindset that internal stability must precede external challenges.

V. Strategic External Extension: Global Projection of Domestic Objectives

The report clearly states that the aforementioned goals, which appear to focus on domestic affairs, are not merely about self-preservation but rather serve as a means to engage with the world in the context of global hegemony competition. The second part of the report will focus on foreign policy, with the core logic being to mobilize all national resources to support the achievement of domestic objectives, while simultaneously leveraging diplomatic means to transform domestic governance outcomes into global competitive advantages. This framework indicates that the United States' domestic adjustments are not a strategic retrenchment but rather a preparation for long-term global competition, with its strategy exhibiting a strong outward projection. Subsequently, it will further clarify the pathways of influence on key regions such as Europe.

Conclusion: The Nationalist Shift in American Strategy

The Trump administration's "2025 National Security Strategy" report signifies a major shift in U.S. strategic thinking, with **domestic priorities and cultural mobilization** at its core. By fiercely criticizing post-Cold War globalist diplomacy, the report refocuses strategic attention on America's own security, economic prosperity, and cultural identity, constructing a strategic system grounded in domestic governance and centered on nationalism. Issues such as the border crisis, industrial revival, and the reshaping of traditional values are elevated to the core of national security, while strong military power and diplomatic resources serve as tools to protect this system. This nationalist turn toward "America First" essentially ties the reshaping of domestic cohesion closely to the maintenance of global hegemony, attempting to bolster future great-power competition and confrontation by strengthening internal unity, which will have profound implications for the global landscape and major-power relations.