THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH-APRIL 2026 13 for NATO, the NSS endorses limiting further alliance expansion and calls for “strategic stability” with Russia, diverging from prior bipartisan policy and earlier Trump-era strategies that explicitly identified Russia as a malign actor. Critics note that the document largely omits references to Russian cyber operations, political interference, or influence campaigns, framing the war in Ukraine primarily as a European concern. More broadly, the strategy formalizes the administration’s “America First” worldview into doctrine. It rejects democracy promotion and the rules-based international order as organizing principles of U.S. policy, stating that the affairs of other countries warrant U.S. involvement only when they directly threaten core national interests. Border security and demography are elevated to central national security priorities, with the document declaring that “the era of mass migration must end.” At the center of the strategy is what it terms a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 (aka the Donroe Doctrine), which argues that U.S. security depends on restoring U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere. The NSS calls for reorienting military posture toward the region, expanding maritime and border enforcement, and limiting the influence of external powers—particularly China. This new doctrine was manifested on January 4 when President Trump announced that the United States would place Venezuela under temporary U.S. control following a raid that captured President Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges.
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