Policy fluid

Interviews with Indian diplomatic and military analysts suggest the US will have a flexible foreign policy other than in its neighbourhood and Europe to an extent, and will prioritise commercial relations with the rest of the world.

In the introduction, Trump wrote the document is “a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and the most successful nation in human history”, and that his administration puts “America first” in everything it does.

Also Read

US steps back as global leader, sees continuity for India in Indo-Pacific

“This is a return of the America-first strategy on a global scale. The US will now define its foreign policy objectives on a flexible basis — what suits it and when. There are no fixed positions,” former foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai said.

The one exception is the Western hemisphere, where the US wants to consolidate its power, he added. The NSS places China in a second tier; Russia, the European Union and Japan in the third; and India and some other countries in the fourth, Mathai said when asked to infer the power ranking.

In other words, the 2025 NSS views India as a regional power and not an emerging global power, unlike the 2017 NSS, published during Trump’s first term in office. He had then written, his administration would “promote a balance of power that favours the United States, our allies, and our partners”.

The new NSS says Trump’s foreign policy is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. Meera Shankar, India’s former ambassador to the US, said this “fundamentally shifts the US security approach, no longer prioritising ‘global dominance’. Instead it lays out the US’ primary security goal as ensuring the security of the homeland, including preventing the flow of immigrants (both illegal and legal) and drugs.”

The US seeks to reassert dominance primarily over North and South America, she added. The NSS criticises past US foreign policies, saying it forced the American public to pay for others’ security since the Cold War ended (1991). Now, the US will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere. The “Trump corollary” to the doctrine is “a common-sense and potent restoration” of US power and priorities, consistent with its security interests.

“We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our hemisphere.” China is the non-hemispheric competitor, according to the US think-tank Brookings. One of its expert commentaries said the NSS strongly emphasises the need to counter the multifaceted elements of China’s presence in the Western hemisphere, such as pushing it out of Latin American ports and other critical infrastructure and limiting its economic engagement with the region.  There is only limited recognition in the NSS that Latin American countries have a say. Another commentary said how this demand (to push China out) will be balanced against the stated priority of trade negotiations remains an open question.

The US will deploy its military resources from other parts of the world in its neighbourhood to address “urgent threats”, according to the NSS.

From an Indian strategic perspective, Pakistan does not figure as a problem for terrorism or nuclear proliferation or find any reference of disapproval in this document, unlike the 2017 NSS.

“Pakistan is getting to play a bigger role in Trump’s foreign policy or geopolitical objectives,” Mathai said, adding, the reference to India and Pakistan together points to that. “We need to be wary.”

In regions such as the Indo-Pacific, the US wants its allies and partners to shoulder greater responsibility, while offering less, Shankar said.

Indo-Pacific

The NSS says the US must continue to improve commercial and other relations with India to encourage the country to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through continued quadrilateral cooperation.

Australia, Japan, the US, and India comprise the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad (formalised in 2007, revived in 2017 during Trump’s first term). A leaders summit was supposed to be hosted by India last year, when the US imposed 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods, straining bilateral ties. The grouping’s next steps are unclear.

“We will also work to align the actions of our allies and partners with our joint interest in preventing domination by any single competitor nation,” the NSS says of the region. Again, the reference is understood to be China.

The difference between Trump’s first and second terms is the shift of focus to the Western hemisphere. But the Indo-Pacific Command is still that, it is not called the Asia-Pacific command, Admiral Arun Prakash (retired), former Indian Navy chief, said while referring to the US military’s unified command for the vast region.

The Pacific Command was renamed the Indo-Pacific Command (in 2018) in line with the US’ “pivot to Asia”. Chinese commentary objects to the term “Indo Pacific”. Officials have told the media: “The Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean.”

Compared with the earlier NSS, there is a change in priority on countering China, Prakash said. While keeping relations with China, the US, under Trump, wants to engage in a powerplay through trade and commercial means.

Unlike recent US administrations, the NSS views China as an economic challenge and not a strategic threat. The document says trade with China should be balanced and focused on non-sensitive factors. If the US can sustain its growth while maintaining a mutually advantageous economic relationship with China, the US should be heading from a $30 trillion economy in 2025 to a $40 trillion one in the 2030s. When Trump first took office in 2017, China’s export to the US was 4 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) but has since fallen to over 2 per cent. China continues to export to the US through “proxy countries”, the new NSS says.

The US’ trade deficit with China is almost $300 billion. The US no longer sees China as a strategic rival but rather as a near-economic peer, which the US will seek to engage with. Seen through this prism, the partnership with India is less about strategic convergence than a transactional approach, which means opening an expanding market (India) for US business while limiting the flow of Indian skilled workers and students (through visa barriers), and persuading India to do more for security in the Indo- Pacific, Shankar said. 

The Quad’s role remains unexplained in the 2025 document. We will have to wait and see what importance the US assigns to it in the future, in light of the overall focus on “America first”, Shankar added.

“What is the actual purpose of the Quad if not to send a message to China?” Prakash said. The continent is among the five regions mentioned in the NSS, but the US is no longer pivoting to Asia. The other regions are the Western hemisphere, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.

“Given the shift in the US emphasis from the Indo-Pacific to the Western hemisphere, the fate of the Quad hangs in the balance,” Prakash said. Preventing conflict requires a vigilant posture in the Indo-Pacific, the NSS says.

The US expects India to spend more in the region, including building the country’s defence.

Mathai said India’s capability and policy goals should align, so as to be taken more seriously by the US: India needs to strengthen the Navy for the Indo-Pacific region; the Army must be able to take care of the northern borders “without US involvement” (intelligence included); and the Air Force must have a different ability.

The NSS’ message to the world and to India is that the US will not be local enforcers of security and stability, that job is for regional powers, Arvind Kumar, professor, Centre for the Study of the Americas, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, said.

Modernising India’s armed forces could mean potential arms sales for the US. India’s defence budget was some $82 billion last year. “Apart from making political noises, the fact remains that India wants a relationship with the US because of military technology,” Prakash said. “The lesson for India is to stand on its own feet.”

Since 2008, the US has sold upwards of $20 billion worth of military hardware to India but not technology. Trump has announced his administration would spend $1 trillion on US armed forces in the coming years. The NSS says the US must invest in research to preserve and advance its advantage in cutting-edge military and dual-use technology, with emphasis on the domains where US advantages are strongest.  These include undersea, space, and nuclear, as well as others that will decide the future of military power, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and autonomous systems, plus the energy necessary to fuel these domains.

Trump wants to restore US dominance in coal, oil, gas, nuclear power, and critical minerals. The NSS outlines US interests in the Persian Gulf in ways which are net positive for India because of its growing relations with the Arab countries, Mathai said.

South China Sea

The new NSS is a striking departure from past documents, less in its substance on Asia than in how its regional commitments sit within a markedly different global vision, according to another Brookings commentary: The Indo-Pacific does not emerge as a focal point until nearly halfway through the document but when it does, the language is largely familiar.  It opposes unilateral changes to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, supports freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, endorses the Quad, and commits to work with allies and partners in the Global South. On China, “it calls for rebalancing an unfair economic relationship”. Taken on their own, these positions largely track with the bipartisan mainstream of US Indo-Pacific policy.”

With the US set to focus on the Western hemisphere, it will need regional powers to step up. India, Japan, and Australia fall in that category, Srikanth Kondapalli, professor, China studies, JNU, said. “The Quad can stay alive, also because the US can’t be distracted by this region.”

The NSS says a security challenge in Asia is the potential for any competitor to control the South China Sea. “This could allow a potentially hostile power to impose a toll system over one of the world’s most vital lanes of commerce, or worse, to close and reopen it at will.”

The “competitor” appears to be China, which claims the majority of the South China Sea. The document urges strong measures along with “the deterrence necessary to keep those lanes open, free of ‘tolls,’ and not subject to arbitrary closure by one country. This will require not just further investment in our military, especially naval capabilities, but also strong cooperation with every nation that stands to suffer, from India to Japan and beyond, if this problem is not addressed”.

The South China Sea is mentioned primarily owing to the large volume of US trade that passes through it, Kondapalli said. The NSS talks of China’s state-led and state-backed infrastructure push in the developing world and says the US and its allies have the resources to make a push for the Global South.

But the US’ strategic ambiguity on China continues, despite the document blaming previous US foreign policies for enabling China’s rise.

Going by this, Henry Kissinger (the late US former Secretary of State who focused on US-China relations for much of his life) failed the US but helped China, Kondapalli said, adding that China’s white paper on national security (released in May), which identifies the US as a major source of regional instability, shows “Chinese paranoia about the US”.

According to the NSS, the focus on Taiwan is partly because of its dominance of semiconductor production, but mostly because it provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and split Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theatres. Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the US economy.

“Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” the document says. “We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.”

Trump’s first administration gave arms to Taiwan. On December 18, Trump’s second administration asked the US Congress to approve arms sales worth $11 billion for Taiwan.

“But neither China nor Taiwan is expected to change the status quo. Taiwan can’t declare independence and China can’t take military action (invade),” Kondapalli said.

Taiwan has been a self-governed island since 1949. There are only a dozen countries that have independent diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

The US is not one of them, neither is India. Trump has announced on his social media platform that he would visit Beijing in April for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“US-China relations will influence, if not shape, China’s immediate priorities in Asia,” Mathai said.

Western civilisation

The NSS presents a harsh view of Europe and offers a way out of what it sees as a self-precipitated crisis.

Europe’s problems are not just insufficient military spending and economic stagnation. The NSS cites continental Europe’s loss of global GDP, from 25 per cent in 1990 to 14 per cent in 2025, as the deeper problem, partly owing to national and transnational regulations, but more importantly,

by the prospect of “civilizational erasure” (seems to blame it on immigration). The NSS says Europe’s “lack of self-confidence” is most evident in its relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure other than nuclear weapons. But many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat since the Ukraine war (the word “invasion” is not used) in 2022.  The document says some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) members will become majority non-European in the future. “It is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the US, in the same way” as the countries that signed the Nato charter (in 1949).

The US’ Europe policy would “prioritize reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia”; the US expects Europe to take primary responsibility for its own defence; open markets to US goods and services; and “end the perception, and prevent the reality”, of Nato as a perpetually expanding alliance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Nato’s interest in expansion forced his hand in the war.

Trump wrote in the introduction that his administration got a commitment from Nato countries to raise their defence spending from 2 per cent to 5 per cent (of the GDP).

The NSS is highly critical of Europe and prioritises the US objective of negotiating an end to the conflict in Ukraine, reintegrating Russia into the global economy and rebuilding strategic stability between Russia and Europe, Shankar said. “The US is no longer willing to shoulder the burden of European defence and wants Europe to take on the responsibility.”

Trump is referencing cultural roots — the same origins for many people in the US and Europe — when talking up civilisational issues, as the basis of shared global interests, Mathai said.

Although the NSS calls Trump’s foreign policy pragmatic, the strategy conveys the opposite: a vision of US primacy and global dominance that remains as expansive as liberal internationalism (“only less liberal and with a harder edge”), a Brookings commentary said.

The NSS shows the US wants to maintain dominance on a global scale, but there is pushback from Trump’s “make America great again” base, which wants his administration to prioritise core national interests. “The document seems to be managing between these two aspirations,” Mathai said. 

According to another Brookings takeaway, unlike Trump’s 2017 NSS, which had a traditional approach to national security and foreign policy, and “was discordant with the administration’s actual policies and actions”, the 2025 NSS makes the White House’s worldview clear. The US’ allies and partners are seen as a net burden and judged wholly on how much money they spend on defence.

Kumar said an inherent contradiction is how will the US remain a preeminent power by taking its eyes off the world.