Earlier this month, the Trump administration finally released its National Security Strategy 2025 (NSS 2025). As expected, media coverage in Japan and South Korea often featured commentaries that missed the forest for the trees, with headlines such as:
These headlines make one suspect whether the journalist read the 33-page report in its entirety. While these articles may not be “wrong,” they fundamentally fail to grasp the essence of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy 2025.
What I see as the “essence” of NSS 2025 is that this document appears to be a product of compromise intended to bridge the differences that surfaced within the Trump administration, particularly between U.S. President Donald Trump and the primary writers of the document. As a result, it is undeniable that NSS 2025 has fallen short of being a “grand strategy” for national security, instead becoming little more than a collection of “grand tactics.” That said, however, I also do not believe this fundamentally altered the basis of U.S. national security strategy compared to the era of the Biden administration.
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