Atlas Shrugs:

The 2025 US National Security Strategy

  • The recently released US National Security Strategy is rooted in the principle of “America First” and is a repudiation of 80 years of American foreign policy.
  • It gives many of the world’s most repressive regimes license to continue their bad behaviour and singles traditional allies out for chastisement.
  • It is the clearest signal yet of American withdrawal from a range of multilateral institutions, especially NATO and the United Nations.
  • It asserts American hegemony over the Western Hemisphere and puts it on notice that it is there to service American “greatness.”
  • Canada will experience increasing pressure to relinquish some degree of its sovereignty, along with control over critical resource-based industries.

Making National Security Great Again

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS), dated November 2025 but released late in the evening of December 4, is unequivocally rooted in the principle of “America First.” Less a policy statement than a political manifesto / MAGA polemic, it is an almost total repudiation of America’s reasonably consistent (with some notable lapses) postwar policy of promoting liberal democracy on the international stage. Instead, as the strategy asserts, “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” There is no pretense of international cooperation in this strategy; human rights are dismissed as irrelevant and “radical;” and climate change is characterized as a “disastrous ideology” threatening the United States. American foreign policy is reduced to a purely transactional exercise in ensuring that the United States gets whatever it needs to remain, as President Trump says in his NSS “cover letter” to the nation, “…the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.” 

No Judgement Here…

For a national security strategy, parts of this document are confusing, even opaque. For example, “flexible realism,” one of its foundational principles, means that the United States will seek “…peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.” This is hardly surprising, giving as it does a free pass to regimes that the United States is actively courting in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and, especially, the Arab Middle East whose “…traditions and historic forms of government…” are explicitly referenced.

…Unless You Are Europe

Western Europe, on the other hand, stands accused of “losing its civilizational self-confidence,” largely on account of its migration policies, which mean that “certain NATO members are poised to become majority non-European” within a decade or two. Under the NSS, the United States intends to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” and “encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties” This is clearly interventionist language, to say nothing of a not-so-veiled expression of support for ultra-nationalist and far right political groups.

No More Free Lunch

And perhaps most disturbingly, real global bad actors are either not mentioned at all (North Korea), referred to euphemistically (China and Iran as “adversarial power”), or defined purely in terms of how they are perceived as a threat by others (Russia). In the end, it hardly seems to matter, because the NSS clearly states that America has reached the limits of its patience with “sovereignty sapping…intrusive international organizations (like, presumably the United Nations and the European Union) and “NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.” Allies will be forced to assume “primary responsibility for their regions…with the United States as convenor and supporter.” While this sounds like sensible pragmatism, it is hard to imagine how small countries will be able to defend themselves from geopolitical behemoths like Russia and China, regional support or otherwise. If there is any rejoicing at all over this document, it is in Moscow and Beijing.

Big Sticks and the American Lake: The Western Hemisphere

The clearest statement of intention in the NSS is in its language around the Western Hemisphere. In its naked interventionism, the strategy evokes both the Monroe Doctrine, and the long history of US backed coups and invasions across Latin America and the Caribbean.  Indeed, the strategy’s so-called “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine explicitly claims for the United States the right to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets in our Hemisphere.” 

This is a direct echo, and an explicit reinforcement, of the “Roosevelt Corollary” of 1904, known to many historians as the “Big Stick” policy. In theory meant to discourage foreign aggression in the hemisphere, the Roosevelt Corrolary was used by the United States to ensure internal stability in Latin America and to “exercise international police power in flagrant cases of wrongdoing or impotence.” Among other things, it served as post facto justification for the Spanish-American War, as well as subsequent American intervention in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. 

The NSS section on the Western Hemisphere is one of the longest and deserves close reading. Evoking Founding Father and first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, the NSS affirms that the United States “must never be dependent on any outside power for core components…necessary to the nation’s defense or economy.” It states unequivocally that the United States will expand “American access to critical minerals and materials;” restore “American energy dominance;” and pivot American intelligence and analytical capabilities “to identify strategic points and resources in the Western Hemisphere with a view to their protection and joint development”

Ruling the Waves

What this seems to be saying is that US economic, energy and resource dependency stops now. By virtue of its (self) proclaimed dominance of the hemisphere, it will henceforth view all the Americas (including, presumably, Greenland) as an extension of itself, at least in terms of its access to strategic points and resources. The equivalent of Theodore Roosevelt’s “gunboat diplomacy” will be an “adjustment” of the global US military presence to address hemispheric threats such as “unwanted migration” and “drug trafficking,” and to “ensure and establish access to strategic locations.” This seems to confirm the hypothesis, discussed in a recent Canadian Intelligence Brief, that the current US policy of blowing up putative “drug boats” and their crews off the coast of Venezuela is a means of exerting pressure on the regime of President Nicolás Maduro, which controls the largest proven petroleum reserves on the planet.

Why Do We Care?

While Canada is only mentioned once in the NSS, as one of several “prominent” nations that are expected to help “rebalance” the American current account deficit with China, the implicit threats to Canada, and Canadian sovereignty, are clear. Again, previous CIBs have discussed the American fixation on Canadian energy, minerals, and water. Indeed, it is these three critical resources that underlie American rhetoric around “Canada as the 51st State.” Under the Trump Corollary, the possibility that the United States could move to unilaterally claim those resources as strategic necessities now seems less remote than ever.

The current US administration has never made any secret of the fact that it views Canada in much the same way that it views most of Western Europe: liberal (if not socialist), “woke,” internationalist, emasculated by its immigration policies, and wholly dependent on American goodwill for its national defence. Canadians can expect political pressure from the United States – perhaps even political interference in the form of “encouragement of patriotic parties” – to address perceived policy deficiencies in key areas like intelligence, border security, and defence spending. If we do not, the threat is clear: exclusion from what the NSS refers to as the “Golden Dome for the American homeland…protect[ing] the American people, American assets…and American allies.” And in a worst-case scenario, under the Trump Corollary, we could be subjected to the same kind of “blockade by proxy” that is currently being deployed against Venezuela.

Finally, a key component of the NSS strategy to bring the hemisphere into line is the expectation that “all our embassies” and every “U.S. government official…should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.” This signals that American diplomacy is about to become a lot more pointed in its demands for access, concessions, and favourable treatment in Canadian markets. And Canadian businesses, particularly in the critical resource sectors noted above, are going to experience real pressure as their US counterparts work to penetrate Canadian markets and exert control over Canadian corporate interests.

At a time when Canada is working hard to establish alternate trade and defence relationships to wean itself from its dependency on the United States, this national security statement could not come at a more inopportune time. Nor does it offer much hope for an equitable outcome in current Canada / US / Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) negotiations. But at least we, and the rest of the hemisphere, now know exactly where we stand.