Much as the Trump administration’s policies toward vaccines or climate change or economic policy ignore history, science, and basic math in ways that actually harm the interests they are supposed to advance, so too does the new U.S. National Security Strategy reject the lessons, principles, and facts associated with two and a half centuries of America’s relations with the world, in ways that will put our country and our allies at potentially grave risk.

Indeed, the document, released by the White House on Thursday, reads as if it were dictated by the Kremlin, much as our recent “peace proposal” for Ukraine turned out to have been. Or, perhaps more accurately, it reads like the product of a collaboration between Vladimir Putin and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff for nativist hate.

Whereas past U.S. National Security Strategies have focused on advancing U.S. values like democracy and the promotion of the rule of law, this document is infused with contempt for democracy, an implicit rejection of core principles of international law, and a studied softness bordering on admiration toward global bullies.

The result has been that whereas in the past such strategies have been seen as little more than yawn-inducing exercises in pro-forma wonkery, the latest edition is producing alarm and criticism worldwide, primarily from U.S. allies.

Indeed, while one might hope this document too is ignored in the way its predecessors have been, because it so closely tracks with the practice of Trump foreign and national security policy since January, it cannot and should not be shrugged off so easily.

The introduction to the document, ostensibly written by President Trump, provides the usual litany of dubious assertions we have come to expect. The president, who has blown up the world trading system, withdrawn from key alliances and organizations, gutted our diplomatic resources, and exchanged insults with our allies, asserts that he has restored American strength and leadership. The man who has threatened allies with invasion and boasted of attacks around the world, and who has a carrier battle group waiting to attack off the coast of Venezuela, has claimed once again that he is a peacemaker. But........

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