The US National Security Strategy for Asia doesn’t emphasize democratic values. But by securing deals, maintaining a bigger military and getting allies to pay more, the Trump administration is betting it won’t need to.
The new National Security Strategy (NSS) released by the Trump administration last Thursday sent shock waves through Europe, putting into writing what amounts to a fundamental shift in trans-Atlantic ties.
On Asia, the strategy looks more consistent with previous policies, and includes familiar tropes emphasizing the importance of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific and working with a “network of alliances” to contain and manage China.
But the 2025 NSS does reveal a shift in how President Donald Trump’s second administration sees the US-China rivalry, framing the “ultimate stakes” for the future of Asia as centered on business deals, securing trade routes and “maintaining economic preeminence.”
Even as Trump’s chaotic tariff policy has rattled US partners in Asia, the new security document argues that economic stability, with the US in the lead, is the best basis for deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.
“We will rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence … Our ultimate goal is to lay the foundation for long-term economic vitality,” it says.
The strategy outlines how the US can leverage business, technological and military power to bring both allies and adversaries into line with US interests, and is loaded with “America First” rhetoric.
Who needs democracy?
Gone is the emphasis from Trump’s first security strategy in 2017 on “great power competition,” which warned China and Russia both were seeking to “shape a world antithetical to US values and interests.” Also missing in the new 33-page document is the long-running portrayal of China as a systemic rival pushing an alternative world order.
The document is instead full of praise for Trump, claiming the US president “single-handedly” reversed decades of “mistaken American assumptions” about China, namely the idea that free trade would lead Beijing toward adopting liberal values.
It is also packed with far-right talking points, railing against “sovereignty-sapping incursions” of “intrusive transnational organizations.”
“It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty,” it says.
The US will avoid “imposing democratic or other social change” on other countries while pursuing “good and peaceful commercial relations.”
“The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations,” the document adds.
It is a markedly different tone from the 2017 NSS that singled out China for “expanding its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others.”
“The democracy agenda is clearly over,” Emily Harding, director of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, writes in her analysis of the document.
“Beijing will love the explicit declaration that the US preference is noninterference in other nations’ affairs and the clear statement about respecting states’ sovereignty,” she says.
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