Niall Ferguson: The Truth About Trump's National Security Strategy

Niall Ferguson: The Truth About Trump’s National Security StrategyDonald Trump during a cabinet meeting in the White House in Washington, D.C., on December 2, 2025. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)Don’t confuse a document with a doctrine.--:----:--Upgrade to ListenProduced by ElevenLabs using AI narration539489The good Old Scots word stramash is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “an uproar, state of noise and confusion; a ‘row.’ ” I was reminded of it as I read the media coverage of President Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), a 33-page document released last week to lay out his administration’s foreign policy priorities—”a road map,” according to the president’s own introduction, “to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history.”Unlike, say, Europe. The most eye-catching feature of the document was its highly critical references to this country’s European allies. Their military spending was “insufficient.” Their economies were afflicted by “stagnation” and “decline.” They even faced the prospect of “civilizational erasure.”Continue Reading The Free PressTo support our journalism, and unlock all of our investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is, subscribe below.Annual$8.33/monthBilled as $100 yearlyMonthly$10/monthBilled as $10 monthlyAlready have an account?Sign InNiall FergusonSir Niall Ferguson, MA, DPhil, FRSE, is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of 16 books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award. He is a columnist with The Free Press. In addition, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle, a New York-based advisory firm, a co-founder of the Latin American fintech company Ualá, and a co-founding trustee of the new University of Austin.CommentsNo posts