Trump's new flexible realism
Andro
Late this past Thursday evening, Donald Trump’s Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby and team released the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS).
Mainstream pundits, with all of their apoplectic bluster, determined some kind of coup had occurred since Mr. Colby’s bugbear, China, was refashioned as an economic competitor: not an existential threat. Likewise, the brilliant defence editor Shashank Joshi of The Economist rang alarm bells that the Trump Administration established a new slogan, “Make Europe White Again”, as the NSS stated, “the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism”. Miss Bethany Allen, who combines Mr. STAR’s China obsession with typical Middlebury College social justice politics, lamented the lack of acknowledgment of the “draconian authoritarianism” of countries such as Russia & China.
Luckily for the readers of J’accuse, this publication not only hosts trenchant commentary but also the requisite sources and on-the-ground intelligence to direct you to what’s worthwhile about this document.
For some brief historical context, the NSS was implemented as a fixture of late and post-Cold War American politics through the Goldwater–Nichols Act in 1986. The document’s primary purpose is to instruct the other branches of government and the many subordinate agencies of the Executive Branch’s position in order to facilitate coherent dialogue and decision-making. Most of the near-annual publications of the Strategy have been marked by a style & approach that its authors idealize as the true essence of Cold War politicking—extensive use of process terms like “development”, “operational”, “systematization”, “mobilization”, & “game theory”. No doubt the 2025 NSS carries a similar air, but perhaps the most important coinage is that of “Flexible Realism”, a favorite of Mr. Colby and the simplest indicator that those fearing “Colby Thought” has been jettisoned are not in the game. Here is how the NSS outlines Flexible Realism:
“U.S. policy will be realistic about what is possible and desirable to seek in its dealings with other nations. We seek good relations and 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. We recognize and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours even as we push like-minded friends to uphold our shared norms, furthering our interests as we do so.”
Perhaps the primary question is how this concept fits into the tradition of realist thought. There can be little doubt this doctrine rejects “democratic peace theory” as advocated consistently from 1991 to 2016, but it also removes itself from the first Trump administration’s NSS (written by Nadia Schadlow) which assured the foreign policy establishment “America’s commitment to liberty, democracy, and the rule of law serves as an inspiration for those living under tyranny”. Moreover, it demonstrates a narrowed definition of national interest, free of the Biden-era concerns about climate change and past issues like global health, poverty, and human rights.
In many respects it reflects how the “Trump Whisperer” himself, Walter Russell Mead, characterized the Jacksonian Tradition—a hemispheric focus, broad skepticism of foreign entanglements, and transactional alliances—albeit discarding any semblance of the democratic evangelism with which Jacksonian thought has been associated.
When we turn to the Paleoconservative foreign policy approach, advocated by folks like Pat Buchanan, we see many similarities insofar as America is put first and the rules-based liberal international order is cast as idealistic folly, but great power competition is upheld as a matter worthy of American engagement. It is possible that the best historical, working model for the 2025 NSS is the Concert of Europe expanded to the globe where universal values are rejected and commerce is made the standard bearer for peace.
This commercial orientation reflects Mr. Trump’s affinity for making deals especially, since being President, with the Gulf States. It’s remarkable journalists still bring up Jamal Khashoggi as if his death has any bearing on the data center, AI-driven global economy and this, also, seems to be the understanding of the Trump administration. However the real cause for abandoning the rules-based liberal international order is not the Saudis & Emiratis but the Chinese. The beautiful thoughts of that old Hamilton Project group—the Peter Orszags, Robert Rubins, Michael Greenstones—that China, after being added to the World Trade Organization, would adopt democracy are plainly false and it’s right of the Trump administration to simply abandon that framework. If this is a “retreat” from American hegemonic supremacy then it’s not because of a voluntaristic Trump administration but due to an establishment that took Kissinger’s cynical advocacy for liberal democratic capitalism too seriously.
That aside, the most interesting component of the China analysis is the recognition that China adapted well to the Trump-inspired tariff regime:
“China’s exports to low-income countries doubled between 2020 and 2024. The United States imports Chinese goods indirectly from middlemen and Chinese-built factories in a dozen countries, including Mexico. China’s exports to low-income countries are today nearly four times its exports to the United States. When President Trump first took office in 2017, China’s exports to the United States stood at 4 percent of its GDP but have since fallen to slightly over 2 percent of its GDP. China continues, however, to export to the United States through other proxy countries”
First, this shows the Trump administration is not quite as sycophantic and blind as most pundits like to believe. Rather they’ve adopted flexibility and a “break things fast” approach more recognizable of a business founder than a subversive, secret-USSR-loving Pentagon and State bureaucrat. The NSS does not imply full amicability with the Chinese, instead viewing the country as an economic competitor that requires a league of states to oppose for the sake of rebalancing economic power. On an actual defense of Taiwan, the Flexible Realist doctrine does not necessarily advocate backing the countries at-hand, but it is remarkably clear that America is committed to defending the relevant sea lanes.
The pressing question here is how to expand American influence and reduce Chinese influence within the Americas. Bessent’s $20B currency swap line via the Exchange Stabilization Fund is a general indication for political intervention throughout older American allies and those within our immediate sphere of influence. That is, the Trump Corollary certainly seeks to invest and support abroad but only for direct partisan allies. The Venezuelan controversy has shown this best. Bessent and team would never seek to bail out or financially support the Venezuelans on account of drug trafficking, sure, but also because the Maduro government is fundamentally unreliable within a Trump-led Americas on account of their mixture of antagonistic economic policy and Russian support.
Of course, employing Europe and a right-shifting South America is crucial to this endeavor; however, it’s the focus on India that might give cause for alarm to some in our circles. One might wonder how America can “continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security” without significant concessions to so-called “high skilled” legal migration. Regardless of online right wing pushback, the Indians surely view lists published by Xitter accounts such as “World updates” as indicative of America’s friendliness with the subcontinent. In other words, economic partnership against China could be preserved if Indian leadership is willing to accept a scaling back of the mass importation of low level H1bs provided it doesn’t impact high profile corporate executives
Speaking of immigration, it’s impossible to ignore the phrase “mass migration” which is used four times across the document. The NSS lists both normal national security concerns, such as the importation of “terrorism, drugs, espionage, and human trafficking”, and also domestic concerns, such as straining “domestic resources, increased violence and other crime, weakened social cohesion, distorted labor markets”, as reasons to oppose mass migration. More broadly, immigration restriction is argued to be “fundamental to the survival of the United States as a sovereign republic”.
The great question, as mentioned, is how to guarantee economic partnership with these countries while also rejecting their emigrants. Nevertheless, for too long America acquiesced to remittance interests in order to expand access to markets. Since the logic of free trade has not gone hand-in-hand with keeping foreigners at home, it is wise the administration has both received and pursued foreign investment as a method to secure partnership. On this topic, the NSS contains many promising lines about European immigration. While I’m sure that is well intended, Republicans and the appointees at State need to understand that virtually everything the GOPe touches turns to shit.
Americans, for whatever reason, refuse to comprehend that the American demographic situation is near-infinitely worse than most of Europe. The GOPe is structurally incapable of promoting any kind of ethnic nationalism in Europe and a far worse fate looms if the American brand of civic nationalism, where “patriotic Indians” crap on, for instance, Pakistani immigration, is realized through recent guest worker programs that have propped up in central and East Europe in particular.
If a restriction-giddy political appointee class has truly taken over State then it is in both their best interests and those of friends in Europe to limit activity to direct funding to the right people and groups, to restrain American media influence, and to make the corresponding American embassy (occasionally the most secured buildings in European capital cities) a reliable friend to these groups. It cannot be emphasized enough how difficult it is to identify the right people to realize restrictionist goals. It requires lots of work, so I’d like to put out a formal offer to Darren Beattie that, if you need us, we can find availability.
I cannot prod the J’accuse readership much more; we must address the European defense posture. Here is the broad policy announcement:
Reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia;
Enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power;
Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations;
Opening European markets to U.S. goods and services and ensuring fair treatment of U.S. workers and businesses;
Building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges;
Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance; and
Encouraging Europe to take action to combat mercantilist overcapacity, technological theft, cyber espionage, and other hostile economic practices.
Contrary to most pundits screeching about Ukraine, it is clear Trump and team seek to bolster the countries within Russian orbit. A fundamental difficulty is the simultaneous desire to do that while also adopting George Kennan’s approach to scaling NATO back following the Cold War. Putin’s expansionism, while often overstated, certainly has truth to it and the gambit of the Trump administration is that embracing commercial relations above all else will tame Putin. How this can be done while also selling arms to friendly East European countries is not obvious, but, considering the NSS is in many ways rhetorical, the administration must be Janus-like to at least curry some favor with the Europeans.
The hope, what really underlies this whole “Make Europe White Again” concern, is that a change in domestic governments towards Reform, AfD, RN, FPÖ, and other corresponding parties will put the Russians at ease. Many of these types of parties, like the Polish variant, are gung-ho about defending themselves from Russia, but if the broader policy can be implemented there is good reason Russia need not worry as much about such nationalistic concerns. The NSS announces a 2027 deadline for a European-led NATO which is essentially a bet on the European right wing parties to win their respective elections while the Trump administration is still in power.
This shift should enable the Americans and Europeans to recalibrate national security towards commerce to the extent that any individual domestic reversion to “liberal internationalism” or “democracy exporting” will be effectively counteracted. As long as this advance of commercial interests does not significantly convert to military technology trade it is plausible, but the likelihood of this being effected are very close to nil. In sum, Flexible Realism seeks to re-establish Western economic prowess such that any further Russian aggression would not only be seen as more seriously unjustified but also could be genuinely combated.
The Ukrainians have put up an unbelievably tough fight, but the lesson the Colby-written NSS hopefully has taken away is that, despite perceived technological advantage, the West has neither the kind of grit (such, at least, is my understanding of invoking “civilizational erasure” and “civilizational self-confidence and Western identity”) or military-technological flexibility as the Ukrainians. The Hegseth prioritization of speed above other concerns in defense technology procurement makes all the more sense in this framing. News reports from a week ago have indicated that Anduril-supplied drones have been more or less ineffective in Ukraine and so, in theory, the acceleration of procurement and adjustment of contracts should prove itself but the jury is still out.
There is much to praise in this document, but one glaring difficulty is the management of the Middle East, whose section is comparably short especially when put in the context of previous NSS releases. Essentially, Colby and team think Middle Eastern sovereign governments should be respected for what they are and the justification for bombing Iran is that the Iranians seek to foment American opposition and disrupt commercial relations in the region.
This is more or less fine, though one might wonder why a secularizing Iran, increasingly free of terror networks, which has been facilitated in no small part by China’s far more effective commercial strategy, ought be opposed at all costs. It is possible that amelioration at this juncture is simply impossible, but sacrificing Iran entirely, a major economy and defense exporter to Russia, risks undermining Flexible Realism and a commercially-driven international order as mere talk. More to this point, in discussion of the Houthis and the crisis at the strait of Hormuz, one is left to ask what “address[ing] this threat ideologically” means if they are also seeking to avoid “decades of fruitless ‘nation-building’ wars”. Does this imply continued ideological war on Islamism? Anarchic states as such? We not only lack an answer here but also a definitive statement on Gaza.
At this time, the Gazan conflict is the only substantive issue which has galvanized the Left. The Trump administration’s general policy, with the grandeur of a Gaza Strip Trump Hotel, follows the general strategy outlined in the NSS, but it seems necessary the document address how the history of its relationship with Israel has defined much of the American-led international order.
Trump stated in one of the original 2016 RNC primary debates that, if he had to go into Iraq, it would have been for the oil—a refreshingly honest take—but, after the fracking revolution and the development of economic relations with the Gulf States, a new understanding of the Israeli state bears mentioning and it’s a missed opportunity for the Trump administration to clarify why Israel in particular must “remain secure”. This hard stance being taken for granted, without further justification, is one thing, but quite another insofar as Israel is the only individual state in the region to be identified as worthy of this guarantee. As long as Israel occupies headspace, both for the Left and the skeptical Right, as a pure exception within the Flexible Realist outlook, this new doctrine maintains a shaky leg that may hinder its conceptual advances elsewhere.
As a final word, we ought be cautious about describing the National Security Strategy of 2025 as a pure revival of the Monroe Doctrine. Though the Middle East and Africa are the shortest geographic sections, the so-called “Trump Corollary” is a genuinely international posture undergirded by commercialism above all. An acknowledgment of multipolarity does not confine the United States simply to the “Americas”. If a New Monroe Doctrine also implies continued engagement, support, and political reformation of Europe, South Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa then it really cannot be called such a thing. Whether it’s Anne Applebaum declaring this Trump’s attempt to burn all of America’s international assets and influence or the isolationist Right cheering on the destruction of American moralism, there are many “analysts” who have missed what the strategy entails altogether. J’accuse would never make such a blunder.
May we conclude by noting the final basic principle of Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy is “Competence and Merit”. Long may he reign.