Trump’s Post-Globalist ‘Flexible Realism’ renounces globalism, puts US sovereignty first

Posted on 12/8/25 at 4:16 pm

Posted by NC_Tigah

Make Orwell Fiction Again

Member since Sep 2003

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Posted on 12/8/25 at 4:16 pm

quote:
Trump’s Post-Globalist ‘Flexible Realism’
The president’s NSS renounces globalism, deters rivals, and puts America’s sovereignty first.
by Francis P. Sempa
December 7, 2025

President Trump’s National Security Strategy can be summarized by the following bullet points:

• Enforce the Monroe Doctrine to ensure U.S. predominance in the Western Hemisphere.
• Establish and maintain a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.
• Cede primary responsibility for the defense of Europe to European powers.
• Maintain a favorable balance of power in the Middle East through support of key regional allies.
• Ensure that the United States leads the world in technology, AI, biotech, and quantum computing.

To pursue, protect and preserve those vital interests, the United States requires unmatched economic and military power, a revived defense industrial base, a revitalized nuclear deterrent, energy independence and dominance, balanced trade, strong alliances in strategic regions of the globe, global cultural superiority, and a whole of government approach to achieve these goals.

Only a strong America will be able to avoid unnecessary wars and successfully negotiate peace among regional rivals.

Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) emphasizes pragmatism, realism, muscularity, restraint, and eschews any tradition or ideology. Its sole motivation is “America First.” All domestic and foreign policies must meet the test of “what works for America,” what is best for America. Unlike previous presidential administrations since the 1930s, the Trump administration seeks to narrow, not expand, the definition of the “national interest.” As the National Security Strategy states: “America’s core national security interests shall be our focus.”

Focusing on core national security interests means treating peripheral interests as “peripheral.” Not every conflict on the globe, not every crisis on every continent, not every humanitarian problem is America’s conflict, crisis, or problem. In fact, the National Security Strategy expressly invokes a presumption against interventionism abroad — a return, in essence, to a foreign policy modeled on Washington’s Farewell Address and John Quincy Adams’ counsel to avoid going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. This is not isolationism, but rather a return to a pre-World War I and II, and pre-Cold War American foreign policy — in a phrase, a policy of “flexible realism.”

Indeed, the segment of the National Security Strategy titled “Flexible Realism” is little more than a re-wording of Washington’s Farewell Address...

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The president believes that what works best for America is a policy of “peace through strength.” Only a strong America will be able to avoid unnecessary wars and successfully negotiate peace among regional rivals. There will be no crusades based on ideology or abstract principles. America will not attempt to shape other nations in our own image. Nation-building is a thing of the past. Refreshingly, there is no mention of the United Nations, no genuflection at the altar of climate change, no apologies to the nations of the Third World, no professed commitment to “arms control.”

This National Security Strategy may be the most important U.S. strategy document since NSC-68 set the framework for U.S. policy in the Cold War.

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