Released in November, the document called the National Security Strategy of the United States (US) exudes significant aspects.

Regarding foreign, defence and intelligence policies, the document emphasises national interest. The document admits that, during the Cold War era (1946-1991), the past US governments had broadened the scope of national interest, leaving no space unattended and no issue unaddressed. Now onward, the scope of national security divorces the Cold War era and marries to the post-Cold War world, and hence narrows the scope to consider only core national security interests. It simply means that all those countries, including Pakistan, which used to see their relations with the US in the context of the Cold War, would stand disappointed. Pakistan will have to be responsible for its own security.

The document falls back upon the Declaration of Independence, laid down by America’s founders, and underlines the policy of predisposition to non-interventionism in the affairs of other nations. It is acknowledged that although “rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible, yet this predisposition should set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention,” as an expression of the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The preferred policy would be non-intervention but with the possibility for a justified intervention, thereby meaning that the stream of intervention will continue, though at a limited, restricted level. This point indicates the economic strain that the US economy has been facing in running its foreign policy. Certainly, the drain caused by........

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