Washington: The Trump administration’s new manifesto on global security renews calls for Indo-Pacific allies to spend more on defence and to share the burden of containing China, but places less emphasis on Australia’s role than on Japan’s and South Korea’s.
The eagerly awaited National Security Strategy released by the White House also represents a paradigm shift in America’s relationship with Europe, with one analyst describing the document as “a real, painful, shocking wake-up call” for that continent.
The 33-page strategy is significant because it represents the first holistic, high-level articulation of the Trump administration’s foreign policy agenda and priorities, including a decisive shift towards protecting the United States from threats closer to home.
In the Indo-Pacific, it prioritises rebalancing the US’s economic relationship with China while maintaining “a robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war”.
The document maintains Washington’s long-standing opposition to any unilateral change to the status quo of Taiwan, and says the US will have the capacity to deny aggression anywhere in the first island chain.
“But the American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone,” it says. “Our allies must step up and spend – and more importantly do – much more for collective defence.”
In particular, the strategy says Japan and South Korea must lift defence spending and do more to deter China. Its language on Australia is more muted.
“We will also harden and strengthen our military presence in the Western Pacific, while in our dealings with Taiwan and Australia, we maintain our determined rhetoric on increased defence spending.”
It calls on US allies and partners, including Australia, to counteract predatory economic practices and “use our combined economic power to help safeguard our prime position in the world economy, and ensure that allied economies do not become subordinate to any competing power”.
The strategy says the US has now made clear to its allies that its current account deficits are unsustainable. “We must encourage Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, Mexico and other prominent nations in adopting trade policies that help rebalance China’s economy toward household consumption because South-East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East cannot alone absorb China’s enormous excess capacity.”
On this point, the review singles out the Quad – the US, Australia, Japan and India – as a way to encourage New Delhi to contribute more to Indo-Pacific security.
That is despite this year’s planned meeting of Quad leaders, due to be hosted by India, being abandoned amid tensions between US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In the US’s own backyard, the review proposes reviving the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which effectively closed the Western Hemisphere to further European colonisation and interference, and adding a new “Trump Corollary”.
In a clear repudiation of China’s involvement in Latin America, the strategy says the US will deny any outside competitors the ability to position their forces or control strategically vital assets in the Western Hemisphere.
‘The Trump administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition.’
Excerpt from US National Security Strategy document
“This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”
However, the starkest change in the US position pertains to Europe. The new security strategy warns Europe that it risks “civilisational erasure” due to erosion of national sovereignty by the European Union and transnational bodies, mass migration, censorship of free speech, collapsing birthrates and loss of national identities.
“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilisational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the Trump agenda states, adding that the lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia.
The document says that while most Europeans want peace, this has not translated into policy.
“The Trump administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition.”
Emily Harding, vice-president of defence and security at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the strategy was a “shocking wake-up call” for Europe, despite the warnings given by Vice President JD Vance in his speech to the Munich Security Conference earlier this year.
“This is a truly pivotal moment in the way the world works,” she wrote, noting that under Trump, the US’s prime foreign policy interest was making itself more powerful and prosperous.
“It is a moment of cavernous divergence between Europe’s view of itself and Trump’s vision for Europe. The administration is asking – demanding, really – that Europe polices its own part of the world and, most importantly, pays for it itself.”
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via Twitter or email.
