The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) issued by the administration of US President Donald Trump needs careful analysis as it has many disquieting features. As it is, Trump has already upended the global system that was already flawed and is now becoming even more unstable. The NSS highlights ongoing concerns about the trajectory of US policy.

The premises underlying the NSS are highly debatable. The US has not been a victim of the global system, as it now claims. It largely created this system to maintain its post-World War II global political, economic, financial, and military domination. All its foreign policy choices were made in its best national interest. If its domestic politics and corporates dictated these choices, the responsibility for the consequences lies on America’s own shoulders.

Trump has often emphasized a narrative that frames the US as having been treated unfairly by other countries, which he uses to explain and support his more disruptive policy choices. The updated document appears to reflect this perspective. How can the strongest power in the world be a victim of the policies of others, especially an interventionist power which is prone to act unilaterally?

While disclaiming any intention to seek global domination – which has been interpreted by some as the US ceding space to others – the underlying theme of the NSS is to ensure continuing global domination, with the difference that the US would seek to lessen its burden by making others share the cost.

To those who argue that the NSS provides space for countries such as India to achieve their ambition to play a global role, it will be instructive to pay attention to what the document says: “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.”

There is a contradiction here. Why should the US prevent regional domination by any country if it doesn’t seek global domination? It should let power be dispersed within the global system. It should accept multipolarity.

To what extent this concern about regional domination by any power might extend to India should invite reflection.

The NSS says further: “We want to recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and – if necessary – win them quickly and decisively.” What does this portend? The US will always define its own interests as it sees them, irrespective of whether they are legitimate or not. This gives it freedom to act as it wills.

Instead of avoiding a renewed arms race and restoring the dialogue on disarmament so as to reduce military build-ups and tensions, the NSS says: “We want the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent, plus next-generation missile defenses – including a Golden Dome for the American homeland – to protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies.” This appears to be a recipe for........

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