The US National Security Strategy 2025 reflects a decisive break from more than three decades old US foreign policy directions post- Cold War. The tone in NSS can easily be characterized as interest-driven, transactional and nationalist where it is termed in the strategy as ‘realistic alignment of ends and means.’ From a vantage point, the 2025 NSS abandons universalist language, moral framing and expansive commitments of earlier strategies towards economic power, military strength and sovereignty. The current strategy focuses on states and national interests through ‘America First’ approach as ultimate guarantors of security rather than relying on any international institutions or their universal norms.
The End of America as the World’s Default Guarantor?
The 2025 NSS reflects a more restrained approach of US to engage selectively within the global order as it challenges openly the ‘strategic overconfidence’ of the US in the past as a guarantor of global order. The document offers a detailed critique of previous US administrations’ strategies which in turn, affected domestic industries, affected middle class prosperity and enforced unstable financial and political costs for the US. The foundation of the NSS rests on five core principles: 1) prioritization of national interest, 2) primacy of sovereignty, 3) deterrence through strength, 4) flexible realism in diplomacy, and 5) burden-sharing among allies. While the strategy ensures that the US will no longer seek ‘police the world,’ it contradicts expansive economic and technological supremacy as central pillars of national security.
This is particularly evident in the NSS’s framing of economic and technological supremacy through energy-self-sufficiency and industrial base as core pillars of national security. As a response, the strategy necessitates massive reindustrialization, onshoring critical supply chains and aggressive competition with regard to emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) including biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. For this reason, the 2025 NSS positions the US as a standard-setter for the EDTs through American norms rather than allowing other international models of its rivals defining the future. This shift emphasizes that the coming global hierarchies will be guided by technological ecosystems rather than diplomatic alignments. Within those technological ecosystems may lead to technological stratification where access to such technologies becomes a tool for strategic exclusion and exceptionalism rather than shared growth.
The Retreat from Climate Multilateralism in U.S. Grand Strategy
The 2025 NSS also indicates a shift away from international climate-driven mandates to prioritize American economic resilience through energy dominance. It calls for outright rejection of ‘disastrous climate change and Net Zero ideologies.’ Moreover, the US aims to leverage being a leading exporter in energy sector (oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power) to deepen relations with its allies but also curb the influence of its adversaries in this domain. The US signals that economic resilience through inward orientation outweighs collective international climate commitments.
It is reflected in the US withdrawal from Paris Agreement – second time under Trump administration (effective in January 2026), revoking the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan for developing countries, ceasing all financial contributions to the UN Green Climate Fund and ordering withdrawal from any other agreements made through United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This was also cemented through the no-show of any high-level US delegation to COP30 2025 climate talks in Brazil for the first time in three decades of the UN talks. When climate priorities are downgraded by major powers, the burden shifts unjustly. For developing countries already grappling with catastrophic effects of climate change, this means that the collective environmental responsibility may shift heavily towards national competitiveness, thereby, making them bear the greatest climate induced threats and costs.
South Asia in Trump’s Calculus: Peace for Pakistan, Partnership for India
Unlike regional sections about Africa, Europe, Middle East and the Western Hemisphere, South Asia does not enjoy a dedicated section. Nevertheless, South Asia fills a paradoxical space within the strategy by being termed as an acute risk on one side and a region of limited opportunity on the other. Within this framework, Pakistan is viewed through the lens of crisis management via curtailing any crisis between India and Pakistan from going nuclear. President Trump’s much highlighted brokered peace in May 2025 crisis is shown as a diplomatic success story through his ‘unconventional diplomacy.’
From Pakistan’s standpoint, the stress on peace is a welcome step, albeit incomplete. When stability is imposed superficially as a necessity for global security rather than a regional justice imperative, it risks freezing underlying conflicts and disputes rather than resolving them. The NSS celebrates the “extinguishing of embers” between two nuclear rivals, but it fails to address a roadmap for unresolved dispute resolution or military, nuclear and technological asymmetries as a result of Western exceptionalism. There is an increased attempt to improve commercial and other (military) relations with India seen as long term strategic investment. For this the NSS indicates steps for India to increase its role. For India these include more alignment with US Indo-Pacific strategy, protecting sea lines especially in South China Sea, further involvement in Quadrilateral dialogue, providing export markets in finance and technology to the US and help improve and cement the US position in Western Hemisphere and Africa especially for critical minerals. India is also given the opportunity to get EDT deals in addition to already provided nuclear and military deals by the US. This will further deepen bifurcation risks while institutionalizing imbalance between India and Pakistan, thereby impacting already fragile deterrence equilibrium in South Asia. Hence, for Pakistan,
reliance on major powers as so-called external guarantors of stability is neither enough nor sustainable. Pakistan has to depend on its own strengths to counter regional instabilities.
Peace Through Strength Rather Than Arms Control
Instead of opting for a traditional treaty-based arms control framework, NSS prioritizes increased reliance on military and nuclear modernization to maintain military dominance by peace through strength. This is attempted through investment in nuclear deterrence, missile defence systems (Golden Dome) and industrial mobilization. The strategy also addresses countering proliferation through military actions rather than dialogue where Operation Midnight Hammer against Iranian nuclear program is considered as a success. Furthermore, the NSS also prioritizes reestablishing strategic stability with Russia and across European landmass including prevention of unintended escalation in Ukraine. Regarding China, the strategy terms it as a near-peer competitor and extends to counter Chinese influence in Global South, Western Hemisphere and also deterring military conflict over Taiwan.
The strategy also asks NATO and other allies for burden sharing. It also attempts for an increase in military capabilities of South Korea and Japan to deter aggression and protecting the First Island Chain in the Western Pacific to contain China. This is also reflective in the US approval of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) for South Korea in addition to SSNs for Australia.
Taken together, 2025 NSS echoes selective engagement embedded in sovereignty for stability which is yet to be seen in forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Missile Defense Review (MDR). Moreover, this selective approach of US American retrenchment may result in a fragment world order. This may shift the economic and strategic burdens on nation states already living with imbalance, vulnerability and fragile strategic stability.
