Trump’s New Security Strategy Pivots Hard to China, Economic Nationalism — and India-Focused South Asia

The White House has released President Donald Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), a 33-page document that sharply narrows America’s global ambitions, casts China as the principal long-term rival, and openly pressures allies to fall in line with a more transactional U.S. agenda.

Framed as a corrective to “globalism” and decades of overreach, the strategy rejects the idea of permanent U.S. global dominance and instead defines a tight list of “core, vital national interests” — from a secure Western Hemisphere to a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and continued American edge in critical technologies like AI, biotech and quantum.

It also makes clear that, in South Asia, Washington’s center of gravity is now India. Pakistan and Afghanistan do not appear in the text at all.

Break with the post–Cold War consensus

The document opens with a blistering critique of U.S. foreign policy since the 1990s, accusing “elites” of chasing an “undesirable and impossible” goal of ruling the world while hollowing out the very industrial and middle-class base on which U.S. power depends.

Instead, the strategy says America’s foreign policy will be judged against a narrow checklist:

• Survival and safety of the U.S. as a sovereign republic.
• Protection of the homeland from military attack and “hostile foreign influence,” including predatory trade, propaganda and cultural subversion.
• Full control of borders and migration flows.
• The world’s strongest military, nuclear deterrent and energy sector.
• A robust industrial base and reindustrialization as “highest priority” economic policy.

Longstanding language about upholding a “rules-based international order” is replaced by repeated references to core interests, borders, and economic security.

Economic security at the heart of national security

More than recent strategies under either party, the NSS fuses domestic economic policy with grand strategy:

• It declares that reindustrializing the U.S. economy and unleashing domestic energy production are central to national power, not just prosperity.
• It ties Trump’s tax cuts, deregulation and pushback against “DEI” directly to restoring institutional “competence” and competitiveness.
• It calls for protecting supply chains and intellectual property and confronting “predatory” practices by foreign competitors — a thinly veiled reference to China.

Foreign policy, the document argues, must stop “allowing allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people,” and must stop accepting trade and financial arrangements that damage the U.S. middle class.

Re-bargaining the deal with allies

Allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific are put on notice: Washington wants their help, but on new terms.

Europe and NATO

In Europe, the U.S. promises to “support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe” — but also insists the continent must assume primary responsibility for its own defense as “aligned but sovereign nations.”

The strategy explicitly warns against NATO becoming a “perpetually expanding alliance,” a subtle but significant departure from the open-door language favored by many European governments.

Beyond defense, the document criticizes European migration policies, censorship trends and demographic decline, and speaks favorably of “patriotic European parties” — a notable ideological tilt that could sharpen tensions with several EU governments.

Indo-Pacific allies

In Asia, the tone is both reassuring and demanding. The U.S. vows to help “keep the Indo-Pacific free and open,” preserve freedom of navigation, and deny aggression inside the First Island Chain — the arc of territory from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines.

But it also pushes allies such as Japan, South Korea and Australia to:

• Spend more on defense,
• Grant expanded access to ports and facilities, and
• Invest in specific deterrent capabilities aimed at China.

The message: Washington still sees itself as the backbone of deterrence, but wants others to carry more weight — financially, politically and militarily.

China at the center of the new strategy

China occupies pride of place in the strategy and is clearly labeled the primary systemic competitor.

The document argues that three decades of “mistaken” engagement made China richer but “neither freer nor more peaceful,” and that the U.S. must now push for a “rebalanced, reciprocal relationship” that focuses on non-sensitive trade while confronting Beijing on five fronts:

1. Predatory subsidies and overcapacity that distort global markets.
2. IP theft and industrial espionage.
3. Supply-chain vulnerabilities, including critical minerals.
4. Fentanyl precursor exports fueling the U.S. drug crisis.
5. Propaganda and cultural influence operations.

On the security side, the strategy:

• Reaffirms opposition to any unilateral change of the Taiwan status quo.
• Calls for preserving U.S. military “overmatch” and building a posture that can deny aggression in the First Island Chain.
• Highlights the South China Sea as a potential choke point where coercion could threaten one-third of global shipping — and calls for deeper cooperation from “India to Japan and beyond” to keep those lanes open.

Rather than full decoupling, the NSS sketches a model of managed coexistence plus hard deterrence: economic pushback, supply-chain reshoring, and tech controls, paired with a more muscular regional military posture.

South Asia: India elevated, Pakistan and Afghanistan sidelined

Nowhere is the strategy’s strategic reframing more visible than in South Asia.

• The terms “South Asia,” “Pakistan,” and “Afghanistan” do not appear in the document.
• India, by contrast, is referenced repeatedly — both as a key Indo-Pacific partner and as a pivotal actor in the broader Global South.

The NSS calls for:

• Strengthening commercial relations with India.
• Deepening defense and strategic cooperation, notably via the Quad alongside Japan and Australia.
• Enlisting India, alongside European and Asian allies, in competing with China for infrastructure, investment and critical minerals in the Global South.

The absence of Pakistan and Afghanistan signals a major downgrade. Regional issues that once dominated U.S. agendas — cross-border militancy, Afghan stability, India-Pakistan crisis management — are no longer framed as central to American “vital interests.”

Instead, the region is viewed primarily through:

• An Indo-Pacific maritime lens (sea lanes, chokepoints, China’s naval presence), and
• A Global South economic lens (infrastructure, supply chains, and competition with China’s Belt and Road–style initiatives).

For New Delhi, the strategy is both opportunity and obligation: India is given an upgraded role, but also clear expectations that it will spend more on defense, align more closely on tech and supply-chain policy, and shoulder more responsibility in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia.

For Islamabad and Kabul, the signal is sobering: unless terrorism or nuclear risk spikes in ways that directly touch U.S. homeland security or great-power competition, Washington’s strategic gaze is drifting elsewhere.

A narrower, harder U.S. posture

Taken together, the 2025 National Security Strategy describes a United States that:

• Defines fewer vital interests,
• Puts economic and industrial power at the center of security,
• Treats China as the primary, enduring challenger,
• Leans heavily on like-minded allies — especially in Europe and the Indo-Pacific — but on more explicitly American terms, and
• Reimagines South Asia with India at the core and Pakistan and Afghanistan on the margins.

Whether allies, rivals and regional actors adapt to this sharper, more transactional U.S. posture will go a long way toward determining how stable — or turbulent — the coming decade becomes.