The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, or NSS, creates a basis for a more chaotic and violent American empire.

Already coming under heavy criticism, with Foreign Policy in Focus publishing warnings about its implications for global development and grand strategy, the strategy remains perhaps most dangerous for its imperious dictates to the world. Behind platitudes of peace and prosperity, it provides a crude imperial logic for violence and aggression, even gesturing at a need for military interventions.

“For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible,” the strategy notes.

The Trump administration tries to distinguish itself from previous administrations by criticizing foreign policy elites for seeking “permanent American domination of the entire world,” but it displays similar ambitions, even if framing them differently. Rather than making serious commitments to peace and democracy, the Trump administration is prioritizing national power, economic expansion, and military domination, going so far as to glorify its ability to kill people across the world.

“President Trump is hell-bent on maintaining and accelerating the most powerful military the world has ever seen, the most powerful, the most lethal and American-made,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said earlier this month.

In the 21st century, the United States has presented multiple imperial logics to the world. Despite the fact that US officials have largely refrained from associating the United States with empire and imperialism, they have developed national security strategies that have rationalized the exercise of US imperial power.

After the terrorist attacks against the United States on 9/11, the administration of George W. Bush developed a NSS that provided a basis for the United States to wage wars across the world. Under a framework of a global war on terrorism, the Bush administration claimed a need to act unilaterally and preemptively against alleged terrorists anywhere on the planet, even in violation of international law.

For two decades, the United States carried out the Bush administration’s approach, wreaking havoc across the world, especially the Middle East. The United States directed major wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, spreading devastation and destruction. According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, the United States spent about $8 trillion on wars that destabilized multiple countries and killed millions of people.

The Trump administration is trying to shift the focus away from great-power competition to sell the public on a new imperial logic that rationalizes national power, economic expansion, and military domination.

Leaders across multiple administrations defended the approach, even when facing criticisms about endless war, but US strategists eventually began turning to a new logic. Calling attention to rising powers, such as China and Russia, US strategists started to argue that the United States must exercise its military might to defend a rules-based international order against rising powers.

During the 2010s, officials in Washington began embracing the new logic, gradually rolling it out to the public. They introduced it during the final years of the administration of Barack Obama and then formalized it during the initial years of the first administration of Donald Trump.

When the first Trump administration released its NSS in 2017, it declared that the United States was competing with China and Russia in a new era of great-power competition.

“This strategy recognizes that, whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of competition,” Trump announced. “We accept that vigorous military, economic, and political contests are now playing out all around the world.”

The new logic marked a shift away from the global war on terrorism, but it presented new dangers. By adopting a logic of great-power competition, the United States positioned itself for confrontations with China and Russia, two nuclear powers with growing influence across their peripheries and the world.

The new approach increased tensions with China in the Asia Pacific and rationalized conflict with Russia in Europe, particularly over Ukraine. Perhaps the greatest victim of the new logic has been Ukraine, which has suffered tremendously since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

For years, the United States and its European allies have been exploiting the war in Ukraine for the purpose of weakening Russia. They have been providing Ukraine with just enough support to defend itself but not enough to expel Russia. Their approach has kept Russian forces “bogged down in Ukraine—at enormous cost,” as Jake Sullivan noted earlier this year, when he was still national security adviser in the outgoing administration of Joe Biden.

The war in Ukraine may have resulted in enormous casualties for Russia, but it has also been devastating for Ukraine, leading current Secretary of State Marco Rubio to describe the war as a “meat grinder.”

“On the Russian side, they’ve lost 100,000 soldiers—dead—not injured—dead,” Rubio stated earlier this year. “On the Ukrainian side, the numbers are less but still very significant.”

Now that a second Trump administration is in power, it is shifting to yet another imperial logic. Facing concerns about the war in Ukraine, including the US role, the Trump administration is trying to shift the focus away from great-power competition to sell the public on a new imperial logic that rationalizes national power, economic expansion, and military domination.

Following the thinking of President Trump, who prioritizes wealth, power, and domination, the second Trump administration is embracing a cruder imperial logic that revives classical imperialism, or the use of force to open markets, seize resources, and maintain spheres of influence.

The Trump administration’s new logic takes aim at Latin America, where the United States is directing a military buildup and threatening a military intervention in Venezuela.

The NSS cites the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to provide a justification for the Trump administration’s actions. Introducing what it calls a Trump corollary, it calls for a reassertion of US military power, the control of key geographies, and the exclusion of competitors from the hemisphere.

“The United States will restore US military dominance in the Western Hemisphere,” Hegseth declared.

Now that the Trump administration has introduced its NSS, it is facing strong........

© Common Dreams