National Security Strategy of the United States of America November 2025

National Security Strategy

of the United States of America
November 2025

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

My fellow Americans:

Over the past nine months, we have brought our nation—and the world—back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster. After four years of weakness, extremism, and deadly failures, my administration has moved with urgency and historic speed to restore American strength at home and abroad, and bring peace and stability to our world.

No administration in history has achieved so dramatic a turnaround in so short a time.

Starting on my first day in office, we restored the sovereign borders of the United States and deployed the U.S. military to stop the invasion of our country. We got radical gender ideology and woke lunacy out of our Armed Forces, and began strengthening our military with $1 trillion of investment. We rebuilt our alliances and got our allies to contribute more to our common defense—including a historic commitment from NATO countries to raise defense spending from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP. We unleashed American energy production to reclaim our independence, and imposed historic tariffs to bring critical industries back home.

In Operation Midnight Hammer, we obliterated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity. I declared the drug cartels and savage foreign gangs operating in our region as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. And over the course of just eight months, we settled eight raging conflicts—including between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the DRC and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and ending the war in Gaza with all living hostages returned to their families.

America is strong and respected again—and because of that, we are making peace all over the world.

In everything we do, we are putting America First.

What follows is a National Security Strategy to describe and build upon the extraordinary strides we have made. This document is a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth. In the years ahead, we will continue to develop every dimension of our national strength—and we will make America safer, richer, freer, greater, and more powerful than ever before.

The White House November 2025

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction - What Is American Strategy? 1
2. How American “Strategy” Went Astray 1
3. President Trump’s Necessary, Welcome Correction 2
4. What Should the United States Want? 3
5. What Do We Want Overall? 3
6. What Do We Want In and From the World? 5

• What Are America’s Available Means to Get What We Want?.................................................................................... 6

1. The Strategy................................................................... 8
2. Principles...................................................................... 8
3. Priorities..................................................................... 11
4. The Regions............................................................... 15
5. The Western Hemisphere....................................... 15
6. Asia...................................................................... 19
7. Europe.................................................................. 25
8. The Middle East.................................................... 27
9. Africa................................................................... 29

1. Introduction - What Is American Strategy?
2. How American “Strategy ” Went Astray

To ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come, our country needs a coherent, focused strategy for how we interact with the world. And to get that right, all Americans need to know what, exactly, it is we are trying to do and why.

A “strategy” is a concrete, realistic plan that explains the essential connection between ends and means: it begins from an accurate assessment of what is desired and what tools are available, or can realistically be created, to achieve the desired outcomes.

A strategy must evaluate, sort, and prioritize. Not every country, region, issue, or cause—however worthy—can be the focus of American strategy. The purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests; that is the sole focus of this strategy.

American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short—they have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes; and have often misjudged what we should want.

After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.

Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare- regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex. They placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called “free trade” that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend. They allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people, and sometimes to suck us into conflicts and controversies central to their interests but peripheral or irrelevant to our own. And they lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty. In sum, not only did our elites pursue a fundamentally undesirable and impossible goal, in doing so they undermined the very means necessary to achieve that goal: the character of our nation upon which its power, wealth, and decency were built.

2. President Trump S Necessary, Welcome Correction

None of this was inevitable. President Trump’s first administration proved that with the right leadership making the right choices, all of the above could—and should—have been avoided, and much else achieved. He and his team successfully marshaled America’s great strengths to correct course and begin ushering in a new golden age for our country. To continue the United States on that path is the overarching purpose of President Trump’s second administration, and of this document.

The questions before us now are: 1) What should the United States want? 2) What are our available means to get it? and 3) How can we connect ends and means into a viable National Security Strategy?

1. What Should the United States Want?
2. What Do We Want Overall?

First and foremost, we want the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God-given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well-being and interests.

We want to protect this country, its people, its territory, its economy, and its way of life from military attack and hostile foreign influence, whether espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, cultural subversion, or any other threat to our nation.

We want full control over our borders, over our immigration system, and over transportation networks through which people come into our country—legally and illegally. We want a world in which migration is not merely “orderly” but one in which sovereign countries work together to stop rather than facilitate destabilizing population flows, and have full control over whom they do and do not admit.

We want a resilient national infrastructure that can withstand natural disasters, resist and thwart foreign threats, and prevent or mitigate any events that might harm the American people or disrupt the American economy. No adversary or danger should be able to hold America at risk.

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, with the lowest possible casualties to our forces. And we want a military in which every single servicemember is proud of their country and confident in their mission.

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.

We want the world’s strongest, most dynamic, most innovative, and most advanced economy. The U.S. economy is the bedrock of the American way of life, which promises and delivers widespread and broad-based prosperity, creates upward mobility, and rewards hard work. Our economy is also the bedrock of our global position and the necessary foundation of our military.

We want the world’s most robust industrial base. American national power depends on a strong industrial sector capable of meeting both peacetime and wartime production demands. That requires not only direct defense industrial production capacity but also defense-related production capacity. Cultivating American industrial strength must become the highest priority of national economic policy.

We want the world’s most robust, productive, and innovative energy sector—one capable not just of fueling American economic growth but of being one of America’s leading export industries in its own right.

We want to remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country, and to build on these strengths. And we want to protect our intellectual property from foreign theft. America’s pioneering spirit is a key pillar of our continued economic dominance and military superiority; it must be preserved.

We want to maintain the United States’ unrivaled “soft power” through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests. In doing so, we will be unapologetic about our country’s past and present while respectful of other countries’ differing religions, cultures, and governing systems. “Soft power” that serves America’s true national interest is effective only if we believe in our country’s inherent greatness and decency.

Finally, we want the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible. We want an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age. We want a people who are proud, happy, and optimistic that they will leave their country to the next generation better than they found it. We want a gainfully employed citizenry—with no one sitting on the sidelines—who take satisfaction from knowing that their work is essential to the prosperity of our nation and to the well-being of individuals and families. This cannot be accomplished without growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.

2. What Do We Want In and From the World?

Achieving these goals requires marshaling every resource of our national power. Yet this strategy’s focus is foreign policy. What are America’s core foreign policy interests? What do we want in and from the world?

• We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine;
• We want to halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy while keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials;
• We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity;
• We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass while avoiding the “forever wars” that bogged us down in that region at great cost; and
• We want to ensure that U.S. technology and U.S. standards—particularly in AI, biotech, and quantum computing—drive the world forward.

These are the United States’ core, vital national interests. While we also have others, these are the interests we must focus on above all others, and that we ignore or neglect at our peril.

• What Are America’s Available Means to Get What We Want?

America retains the world’s most enviable position, with world-leading assets, resources, and advantages, including:

• A still nimble political system that can course correct;
• The world’s single largest and most innovative economy, which both generates wealth we can invest in strategic interests and provides leverage over countries that want access to our markets;
• The world’s leading financial system and capital markets, including the dollar’s global reserve currency status;
• The world’s most advanced, most innovative, and most profitable technology sector, which undergirds our economy, provides a qualitative edge to our military, and strengthens our global influence;
• The world’s most powerful and capable military;
• A broad network of alliances, with treaty allies and partners in the world’s most strategically important regions;
• An enviable geography with abundant natural resources, no competing powers physically dominant in our Hemisphere, borders at no risk of military invasion, and other great powers separated by vast oceans;
• Unmatched “soft power” and cultural influence; and
• The courage, willpower, and patriotism of the American people.

In addition, through President Trump’s robust domestic agenda, the United States is:

• Re-instilling a culture of competence, rooting out so-called “DEI” and other discriminatory and anti-competitive practices that degrade our institutions and hold us back;
• Unleashing our enormous energy production capacity as a strategic priority to fuel growth and innovation, and to bolster and rebuild the middle class;
• Reindustrializing our economy, again to further support the middle class and control our own supply chains and production capacities;
• Returning economic freedom to our citizens via historic tax cuts and deregulatory efforts, making the United States the premier place to do business and invest capital; and
• Investing in emerging technologies and basic science, to ensure our continued prosperity, competitive advantage, and military dominance for future generations.

The goal of this strategy is to tie together all of these world-leading assets, and others, to strengthen American power and preeminence and make our country even greater than it ever has been.

1. The Strategy
2. Principles

President Trump’s foreign policy is pragmatic without being “pragmatist,” realistic without being “realist,” principled without being “idealistic,” muscular without being “hawkish,” and restrained without being “dovish.” It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words, “America First.”

President Trump has cemented his legacy as The President of Peace. In addition to the remarkable success achieved during his first term with the historic Abraham Accords, President Trump has leveraged his dealmaking ability to secure unprecedented peace in eight conflicts throughout the world over the course of just eight months of his second term. He negotiated peace between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the DRC and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and ended the war in Gaza with all living hostages returned to their families.

Stopping regional conflicts before they spiral into global wars that drag down whole continents is worthy of the Commander-in-Chiefs attention, and a priority for this administration. A world on fire, where wars come to our shores, is bad for American interests. President Trump uses unconventional diplomacy, America’s military might, and economic leverage to surgically extinguish embers of division between nuclear-capable nations and violent wars caused by centuries-long hatred.

President Trump has proven that American foreign, defense, and intelligence policies must be driven by the following basic principles:

• Focused Definition of the National Interest - Since at least the end of the

Cold War, administrations have often published National Security Strategies that seek to expand the definition of America’s “national interest” such that that almost no issue or endeavor is considered outside its scope. But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America’s core national security interests shall be our focus.

• Peace Through Strength - Strength is the best deterrent. Countries or other actors sufficiently deterred from threatening American interests will not do so. In addition, strength can enable us to achieve peace, because parties that respect our strength often seek our help and are receptive to our efforts to resolve conflicts and maintain peace. Therefore, the United States must maintain the strongest economy, develop the most advanced technologies, bolster our society’s cultural health, and field the world’s most capable military.
• Predisposition to Non-Interventionism - In the Declaration of Independence, America’s founders laid down a clear preference for non­interventionism in the affairs of other nations and made clear the basis: just as all human beings possess God-given equal natural rights, all nations are entitled by “the laws of nature and nature’s God” to a “separate and equal station” with respect to one another. For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible. Yet this predisposition should set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention.
• Flexible Realism - U.S. policy will be realistic about what is possible and desirable to seek in its dealings with other nations. We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories. We recognize and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours even as we push like-minded friends to uphold our shared norms, furthering our interests as we do so.
• Primacy of Nations - The world’s fundamental political unit is and will remain the nation-state. It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty. The world works best when nations prioritize their interests. The United States will put our own interests first and, in our relations with other nations, encourage them to prioritize their own interests as well. We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests.
• Sovereignty and Respect - The United States will unapologetically protect our own sovereignty. This includes preventing its erosion by transnational and international organizations, attempts by foreign powers or entities to censor our discourse or curtail our citizens’ free speech rights, lobbying and influence operations that seek to steer our policies or involve us in foreign conflicts, and the cynical manipulation of our immigration system to build up voting blocs loyal to foreign interests within our country. The

United States will chart our own course in the world and determine our own destiny, free of outside interference.

• Balance of Power - The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries. 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. This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers. The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.
• Pro-American Worker - American policy will be pro-worker, not merely pro-growth, and it will prioritize our own workers. We must rebuild an economy in which prosperity is broadly based and widely shared, not concentrated at the top or localized in certain industries or a few parts of our country.
• Fairness - From military alliances to trade relations and beyond, the United States will insist on being treated fairly by other countries. We will no longer tolerate, and can no longer afford, free-riding, trade imbalances, predatory economic practices, and other impositions on our nation’s historic goodwill that disadvantage our interests. As we want our allies to be rich and capable, so must our allies see that it is in their interest that the United States also remain rich and capable. In particular, we expect our allies to spend far more of their national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on their own defense, to start to make up for the enormous imbalances accrued over decades of much greater spending by the United States.
• Competence and Merit - American prosperity and security depend on the development and promotion of competence. Competence and merit are among our greatest civilizational advantages: where the best Americans are hired, promoted, and honored, innovation and prosperity follow. Should competence be destroyed or systematically discouraged, complex systems that we take for granted—from infrastructure to national security to education and research—will cease to function. Should merit be smothered, America’s historic advantages in science, technology, industry, defense, and innovation will evaporate. The success of radical ideologies that seek to replace competence and merit with favored group status would render America unrecognizable and unable to defend itself. At the same time, we cannot allow meritocracy to be used as a justification to open America’s labor market to the world in the name of finding “global talent” that undercuts American workers. In our every principle and action, America and Americans must always come first.

2. Priorities

• The Era of Mass Migration Is Over - Who a country admits into its borders—in what numbers and from where—will inevitably define the future of that nation. Any country that considers itself sovereign has the right and duty to define its future. Throughout history, sovereign nations prohibited uncontrolled migration and granted citizenship only rarely to foreigners, who also had to meet demanding criteria. The West’s experience over the past decades vindicates this enduring wisdom. In countries throughout the world, mass migration has strained domestic resources, increased violence and other crime, weakened social cohesion, distorted labor markets, and undermined national security. The era of mass migration must end. Border security is the primary element of national security. We must protect our country from invasion, not just from unchecked migration but from cross-border threats such as terrorism, drugs, espionage, and human trafficking. A border controlled by the will of the American people as implemented by their government is fundamental to the survival of the United States as a sovereign republic.
• Protection of Core Rights and Liberties - The purpose of the American government is to secure the God-given natural rights of American citizens.

To this end, departments and agencies of the United States Government have been granted fearsome powers. Those powers must never be abused, whether under the guise of “deradicalization,” “protecting our democracy,” or any other pretext. When and where those powers are abused, abusers must be held accountable. In particular, the rights of free speech, freedom of religion and of conscience, and the right to choose and steer our common government are core rights that must never be infringed. Regarding countries that share, or say they share, these principles, the United States will advocate strongly that they be upheld in letter and spirit. We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies.

• Burden-Sharing and Burden-Shifting - The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over. We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense. President Trump has set a new global standard with the Hague Commitment, which pledges NATO countries to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense and which our NATO allies have endorsed and must now meet. Continuing President Trump’s approach of asking allies to assume primary responsibility for their regions, the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter. This approach ensures that burdens are shared and that all such efforts benefit from broader legitimacy. The model will be targeted partnerships that use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability. This strategic clarity will allow the United States to counter hostile and subversive influences efficiently while avoiding the overextension and diffuse focus that undermined past efforts. The United States will stand ready to help— potentially through more favorable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, and defense procurement—those counties that willingly take more responsibility for security in their neighborhoods and align their export controls with ours.
• Realignment Through Peace - Seeking peace deals at the President’s direction, even in regions and countries peripheral to our immediate core interests, is an effective way to increase stability, strengthen America’s global influence, realign countries and regions toward our interests, and open new markets. The resources required boil down to presidential diplomacy, which our great nation can embrace only with competent leadership. The dividends—an end to longstanding conflicts, lives saved, new friends made—can vastly outweigh the relatively minor costs of time and attention.
• Economic Security - Finally, because economic security is fundamental to national security, we will work to further strengthen the American economy, with emphases on:

o Balanced Trade - The United States will prioritize rebalancing our trade relations, reducing trade deficits, opposing barriers to our exports, and ending dumping and other anti-competitive practices that hurt American industries and workers. We seek fair, reciprocal trade deals with nations that want to trade with us on a basis of mutual benefit and respect. But our priorities must and will be our own workers, our own industries, and our own national security. o Securing Access to Critical Supply Chains and Materials - As Alexander Hamilton argued in our republic’s earliest days, the United States must never be dependent on any outside power for core components—from raw materials to parts to finished products— necessary to the nation’s defense or economy. We must re-secure our own independent and reliable access to the goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life. This will require expanding American access to critical minerals and materials while countering predatory economic practices. Moreover, the Intelligence Community will monitor key supply chains and technological advances around the world to ensure we understand and mitigate vulnerabilities and threats to American security and prosperity. o Reindustrialization - The future belongs to makers. The

United States will reindustrialize its economy, “re-shore” industrial production, and encourage and attract investment in our economy and our workforce, with a focus on the critical and emerging technology sectors that will define the future. We will do so through the strategic use of tariffs and new technologies that favor widespread industrial production in every corner of our nation, raise living standards for American workers, and ensure that our country is never again reliant on any adversary, present or potential, for critical products or components.

o Reviving our Defense Industrial Base - A strong, capable military cannot exist without a strong, capable defense industrial base. The huge gap, demonstrated in recent conflicts, between low-cost drones and missiles versus the expensive systems required to defend against them has laid bare our need to change and adapt. America requires a national mobilization to innovate powerful defenses at low cost, to produce the most capable and modern systems and munitions at scale, and to re-shore our defense industrial supply chains. In particular, we must provide our warfighters with the full range of capabilities, ranging from low-cost weapons that can defeat most adversaries up to the most capable high-end systems necessary for a conflict with a sophisticated enemy. And to realize President Trump’s vision of peace through strength, we must do so quickly. We will also encourage the revitalization of the industrial bases of all our allies and partners to strengthen collective defense.

o Energy Dominance - Restoring American energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear) and reshoring the necessary key energy components is a top strategic priority. Cheap and abundant energy will produce well-paying jobs in the United States, reduce costs for American consumers and businesses, fuel reindustrialization, and help maintain our advantage in cutting-edge technologies such as AI. Expanding our net energy exports will also deepen relationships with allies while curtailing the influence of adversaries, protect our ability to defend our shores, and—when and where necessary—enables us to project power. We reject the disastrous “climate change” and “Net Zero” ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.

o Preserving and Growing America’s Financial Sector Dominance - The United States boasts the world’s leading financial and capital

markets, which are pillars of American influence that afford policymakers significant leverage and tools to advance America’s national security priorities. But our leadership position cannot be taken for granted. Preserving and growing our dominance entails leveraging our dynamic free market system and our leadership in digital finance and innovation to ensure that our markets continue to be the most dynamic, liquid, and secure and remain the envy of the world.