I
At 11:37 in the morning of Nov. 20, 2025, Eastern European Time, the United States Embassy in Kyiv’s X account published the following message regarding “American leadership on the world stage”:
Американське лідерство на світовій арені
«Ми хочемо допомагати нашим союзникам. Ми хочемо змінювати наших ворогів».
— Президент США Дональд Трамп
The post was accompanied by a State Department meme image of President Donald Trump, tuxedoed and striding purposefully through an arched fan-light doorway and into the White House Diplomatic Reception Room, framed by the iconic Jean Zuber et Cie Scenes of North America wallpaper that graces the hall. “We want to help our allies,” the photograph was captioned, “We want to change our enemies.” Such was the sentiment, translated into Ukrainian, being conveyed to the beleaguered people of Ukraine.
While a nameless embassy social media staffer was drafting this message, first responders were sifting through the rubble of an apartment building in the Soniachnyi district of the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil. A Russian Kh-101 missile strike had leveled the complex the night before, killing 38, including six children. The burnt bodies of Amelia “Amelka” Grześko, a seven-year-old Polish citizen, and her mother, Oksana, were eventually discovered, still holding each other amidst the wreckage. Russia had launched 476 drones, alongside 48 missiles, at Ukrainian targets that night. In the aftermath of the strikes, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson pleaded for “the uninterrupted and timely supply of aviation weapons from Western partners,” precisely the sort of help for which allies ask.
I was struck, at the time, by the contrast between the horrors inflicted on the civilians of Ternopil that night and the carefully noncommittal meme posted by the State Department the following morning. Consider the word choice exhibited in the tweet. We want to help our allies? We want to change our enemies? This is the sort of guarded phrasing usually followed by the word “but.” Surely it would have been more compelling had we plainly vowed to help our allies — and deter our enemies — instead of using the temporizing, precatory language of wants, wishes, hopes, and desires, language that, in its own way, speaks volumes about our current approach to foreign policy.
II
There are times, however, when vague prose is not the result of a lack of intelligence or diligence, but of an intentional decision to obfuscate.
In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell objected to the increasing use of mushy prose in political writing. When the political discourse succumbs to a “mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence,” he argued, it not only “anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain,” but threatens to lead the nation down the road to ruin, for the “slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” There are times, however, when vague prose is not the result of a lack of intelligence or diligence, but of an intentional decision to obfuscate. “In our time,” Orwell observed, “political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible,” but even if there are certain policies that “can indeed be defended,” it might only be “by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” A verbal false limb, a cumbersome prepositional phrase, the passive voice, the avoidance of direct, declarative, or active construction — these are not necessarily indicative of anemic or sloppy writing, or of stupidity. They may conceal unpalatable opinions, or unspeakable truths.
Given the state of the State Department’s social media feeds, it was not altogether surprising to find the recently released 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) similarly chock-full of precatory language, which recurs throughout the document like a litany. “We want the world’s most robust industrial base.” “We want to remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country.” “We want to halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy while keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open.” “We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe.” At times, the language of the strategy report is notable for its unassertiveness. In the sub-section on “deterring military threats,” the reader is informed that “deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority. We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.”
It has heretofore been our official policy to “oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side,” inasmuch as “we do not support Taiwan independence,” but “we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the 2017 NSS, the first Trump administration was even more vigorous: “We will maintain our strong ties with Taiwan in accordance with our ‘One China’ policy, including our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide for Taiwan’s legitimate defense needs and deter coercion.” (Emphasis added.) How differently the November 2025 report scans. We “do not support” a unilateral change, which is to say we neither “support” a Taiwanese declaration of independence, nor do we “support” a violent communist takeover of the peaceful, democratic island — for those are the only two choices that present themselves — and while we would like to deter a conflict “by preserving military overmatch,” the sentiment is undercut by the inclusion of the word “ideally,” another construction that unfortunately tends to imply the coming word “but.” We do not live in the ideal world, and have not since the days of the Primordial Garden.
The new NSS has been described as “less a strategy than a mood board,” and one can certainly see why. The document advances a global strategy that is “pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist,’ realistic without being ‘realist,’ principled without being ‘idealistic,’ muscular without being ‘hawkish,’ and restrained without being ‘dovish,’” but the more one parses its contents, the more one realizes that its consistent use of ambiguous language, and its avoidance of the more assertive, and concrete, or confrontational rhetoric employed by previous administrations (even Trump-led ones), is masking arguments perhaps “too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties,” as Orwell put it in his celebrated essay.
National Security Strategy reports are inherently political documents, of course, neither legally determinative nor of any binding effect, and may represent the thinking of a temporarily-dominant faction within the executive branch, and not that of various government departments, Congress, or the majority of the populace. Furthermore, when Japanese dive bombers are swooping down on Pearl Harbor, or a terrorist attack is underway, or when hordes of Russian barbarians are swarming across the internationally-recognized borders of Ukraine, it isn’t as if the president and the members of the National Security Council immediately start scrabbling around, looking for a copy of the most recent National Security Strategy to tell them how to react. (Maybe that’s what the new GenAI.mil platform is for.) Hence the observation that these reports are more like governmental policy mood boards. And oh, what a mood this particular report conveys.
III
Sad to relate, the new NSS is a declaration of geopolitical contraction, if not outright retreat, presaging the end of the global American empire. One can almost hear the strains of “Taps” or “Last Post” playing mournfully in the background. The prospect of American decline is nothing new in and of itself. During the Obama administration, conservatives regularly warned of declinism. “Decline is not a condition,” Charles Krauthammer insisted, but “a choice.” Since no American leader would ever admit to making such an affirmative choice, the language of strategic pullback is invariably cloaked in verbiage of one kind or another — the “Retrenchment–Protraction Doctrine,” a “recalibration of global posture,” the “streamlining of global responsibilities,” and so forth. Just the sort of jargon Orwell warned can be “used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics.”
Back in 2017, not so long ago in the grand scheme of things, the NSS was clear on the threat posed by the “revisionist powers of China and Russia,” sinister international actors that “want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests.” While “China expanded its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others,” Russia “aims to weaken U.S. influence in the world and divide us from our allies and partners.”
Although the menace of Soviet communism is gone, new threats test our will. Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America’s commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities.
Our response then was to “maintain a forward military presence capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating any adversary. We will strengthen our long-standing military relationships and encourage the development of a strong defense network with our allies and partners.” Exactly the sort of language one would expect of an administration committed to Peace Through Strength.
The approach now is radically different, representing the growing influence of isolationist hardliners in the administration, the sort who would consider the 2017 NSS overly “hawkish” or “idealistic.”
The approach now is radically different, representing the growing influence of isolationist hardliners in the administration, the sort who would consider the 2017 NSS overly “hawkish” or “idealistic.”
The approach now is radically different, representing the growing influence of isolationist hardliners in the administration, the sort who would consider the 2017 NSS overly “hawkish” or “idealistic.” Our top priorities are now homeland and economic security, followed by the Western Hemisphere (the Monroe Doctrine and its so-called Trump Corollary), and then the Pacific theater, with Europe trailing in the distance. There is to be a “readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere, especially the missions identified in this strategy, and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years.” China is primarily treated as an economic competitor — the goal is for a “genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing” — and its aggressive posture in the Pacific is considered problematic only insofar as control of major shipping lanes would have “major implications for the U.S. economy.” As for Russia, well, the goal is apparently to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”
Much is made of burden-sharing and burden-shifting, with NATO allies expected to guard Europe’s eastern border, while South Korea and Japan are called on “to increase defense spending, with a focus on the capabilities — including new capabilities — necessary to deter adversaries and protect the First Island Chain.” The 2025 NSS is not unlike the curate’s egg, portions of which are quite palatable — re-industrialization is a worthy goal, and it is true that “the future belongs to makers” — but here we encounter a portion that is much harder to swallow. European governments are accused of “trampl[ing] on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition,” although curiously no such allegations are leveled against China, Russia, Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, and the drafters of the document cheer on “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” and plan to cultivate “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”
A continent dominated by the likes of Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and Alice Weidel might be more amenable to elements within administration, but if the German AfD, the Austrian FPÖ, the Italian League party, the Dutch PVV, the French RN, and other “patriotic European parties” do manage to oust the center-right and center-left governments currently in power, it is hard to see Europe’s security architecture being strengthened as a consequence. These movements are all openly non-interventionist, pacifistic even, and exhibit a tendency towards Russophilia, making them exceedingly unlikely to assume a “primary responsibility” for the looming threat to the east. If the AfD politician Markus Frohnmaier — who notably just met with U.S. Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers and was fêted at a black-tie gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club — is really “a deputy in the Bundestag under absolute control” of the Kremlin, as documents from the Russian presidential administration made available to Der Spiegel indicated back in 2019, would you really expect Frohnmaier and those like him to take the lead in transforming Europe into a heavily-militarized anti-Russian bulwark, thereby sparing us such a burden?
As for the Pacific theater, when the formidable new Japanese prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, adopted a more combative tone on the Taiwan question in response to a string of reckless Chinese provocations, she was reportedly told by the American president “to lower the volume” and “not to provoke Beijing on the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty.” Our European and Asian allies could be forgiven for questioning the nature of this new burden-sharing arrangement, particularly as Washington pursues normalized relations, “strategic stability,” and “genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship[s]” with its geopolitical rivals, all the while waging sustained trade wars against its more traditional partners. (RELATED: Don’t Go Wobbly on China)
There is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy at work here, with protectionist or isolationist policies breeding further isolation. In response to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s assertion that the rules‑based global trading system is “dead,” former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Christopher Padilla considered the possibility of “America First” turning into “American Alone,” given the striking manner in which
other countries have responded to the Trump administration’s tariff barrage. Most have not rushed to retaliate with tariffs of their own — because they know that doing so would damage their own economies. Instead, they’ve taken a far more strategic path: deepening trade ties with each other rather than with the United States. Just this year, EU–India free trade negotiations have concluded, and a long-dormant EU-MERCOSUR agreement is moving toward ratification. The CPTPP — the trans-Pacific trade pact the U.S. walked away from — has gained renewed energy and new applicants. Countries across Asia, Latin America, and Europe are stitching together bilateral and regional agreements that deliberately route around the United States. In other words, the world is not retaliating — it’s reorganizing in a way that does not involve the United States …. The irony is that the United States, by insisting that the rules‑based system is dead, is increasingly isolating itself from the very network that it once led.
Protectionists may view this as a feature, not a bug, but it would be very surprising indeed if the construction of “new supply chains, new partnerships, and new trade architectures” without the involvement of the United States will redound to our overall benefit, just as new security architecture in Europe and Asia is unlikely to safeguard international peace and security as well as the old system, whatever its flaws may have been.
IV
The most telling passage in the recently-published strategy report can be found in the aforementioned section on burden-sharing and burden-shifting. “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” Quite a proclamation. Orwell, in “Politics and the English Language,” lamented the use of “dying metaphors,” and this must qualify as one of them. It might be slightly pedantic to remind the reader that the Iapetid Atlas did not actually hold up the world, as is so often supposed, but the concave vault of the heavens, and that through his noble efforts he became “the personification of navigation, the conquest of the sea by human skill, trade, and mercantile profit,” in the words of the German philologist Karl Heinrich Wilhelm Völcker. It would be less pedantic to point out that Atlas the Endurer, the “grim being” (ὀλοόφρων) who “knows all the depths of the sea, and keeps the long pillars which hold heaven and earth asunder,” earned his punishment when he and his brother Menoetius sided with the Titans in their failed war against the upstart Olympians.
The United States was not forced, after its defeat, to prop up the entire world order. It created the world order in the aftermath of the Second World War, and defended it throughout the Cold War and beyond, resulting in a global hegemony unknown in human history. The U.S. dollar became the most widely-held reserve currency. The American military achieved unparalleled dominance through immense spending, a powerful alliance system, a network of hundreds of military bases all over the world, and a keen technological edge. The American economy represents roughly a quarter of global economic output. Americanization, defined by the economic historian Harm G. Schröter as the “adapted transfer of values, behaviours, institutions, technologies, patterns of organization, symbols and norms became an unrivaled primary soft power method,” has completely transformed the entire globe.
And now it seems, judging by the 2025 NSS, that we are utterly exhausted, be it morally, spiritually, or economically, and genuinely rattled by the rise of China. Militarily, we see a massive Chinese 200-1 advantage in shipbuilding, and a seemingly insurmountable advantage in drone manufacturing. The People’s Liberation Army, Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute has warned,
already has roughly 60 modern AWACS, all equipped with the latest active electronically scanned array-type radars and advanced data link and satellite communications capabilities to act as network nodes. More are being produced each year. By contrast, the U.S. Air Force has only 16 serviceable AWACS, and these are the nearly obsolete and badly worn-out E-3G Sentry. The plan to acquire the Boeing E-7A Wedgetail to replace this rapidly shrinking fleet was canceled by Hegseth in June 2025, citing concerns over cost overruns, delays, and operational vulnerability.
We look on in dismay as China develops hypersonic missiles and glide vehicles that could make mincemeat of our carrier groups, we pore over the outcomes of various Indo-Pacific war games with a mounting sense of pessimism, and naturally, we begin to wonder whether military overmatch is a thing of the past. From an economic perspective, we observe China’s industrial might, and its resultant control of global supply chains, and we may be forgiven for thinking that a “genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing” would be a best-case scenario. “Ideally.” Even the 2025 report admits that our trade wars with China have not gone as planned:
China adapted to the shift in U.S. tariff policy that began in 2017 in part by strengthening its hold on supply chains, especially in the world’s low- and middle- income (i.e., per capita GDP $13,800 or less) countries—among the greatest economic battlegrounds of the coming decades. China’s exports to low-income countries doubled between 2020 and 2024.
But China is a vital market for our soybeans and Nvidia H200 advanced AI chips, so we are told to “lower the volume,” much to the chagrin of China hawks who would rather see the communist dictatorship contained. (RELATED: America’s Strategic Blind Spot in the Global Chip Race)
As for the diplomatic front, let us recall a 2023 speech delivered by then-Senator JD Vance, in which the future vice president bemoaned the state of America’s foreign policy, so often predicated on “hectoring” and woke ideology, while the Chinese “have a foreign policy of building roads and bridges and feeding poor people, and I think that we should pursue a diplomacy of respect and a foreign policy that is not rooted in moralizing, it’s rooted in the national interest of this country.” The Chinese government, mind you, is certainly not averse to hectoring or cracking down on foreigners who wish to investigate China’s human rights record, or organize museum exhibitions about Genghis Khan or the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, or simply put on a film festival about everyday life in China, as we have so frequently discussed in these pages. They are in fact quite sensitive about those sorts of things, but setting that aside, Vance correctly highlighted the fact that China serves as a one-stop shop for developing countries interested in infrastructure and economic development, viz. the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative, and other xiao er mei, or “Small and Beautiful” projects. (RELATED: Foreign Affairs Features a Recipe for Defeat in Cold War II)
There is, unfortunately, a non sequitur in Vance’s assertion. China is achieving diplomatic success with its efforts to improve infrastructure and feed poor people all over the world, so in response, we should pursue a policy of “national interest.” This, in the current administration’s view, does not involve us building highways and bridges and feeding the hungry, which we struggle at times even to do at home, but instead advancing an agenda of economic protectionism and strategic retrenchment. Regardless of one’s feelings on that definition of “national interest,” nothing about it is going to counteract China’s growing influence throughout the world. It can only clear the field further for our increasingly assertive rival across the Pacific.
And now it is closer than ever to seeing its vision realized, with the 2025 NSS likewise envisioning a multipolar world divided into various spheres of influence, and a United States, its strength ebbing, turning inward.
It is the rare National Security Strategy of the United States of America that is received with a rapturous welcome in the Kremlin. “The adjustments that we see,” according to Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, “correspond in many ways to our vision.” Ever since Putin’s speech at the 43rd Munich Security Conference in 2007, when the Russian dictator called for a multipolar world and criticized “one state — the United States” for having “overstepped its national boundaries in every sphere,” the Kremlin has been hoping for a change in America’s international posture. And now it is closer than ever to seeing its vision realized, with the 2025 NSS likewise envisioning a multipolar world divided into various spheres of influence, and a United States, its strength ebbing, turning inward. The 2025 NSS is not quite “the kind of signal a dying whale sends out,” in the immortal words of The Thick of It’s Ollie Reeder, but it is an alarming document all the same.
But the NSS is not legally binding. It is a glorified white paper, 29 pages long, with a generously large font size reminiscent of undergraduates trying to reach a mandated page length for an assignment. What is legally binding is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed in the House on December 10, 2025, by a vote of 312-112, and being advanced by the Senate as I write these very words. This 3,086-page bill provides for a record $901 billion in annual military spending and represents something of a rejoinder to the 2025 NSS. It authorizes some $400 million in funds for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (despite the administration requesting no money for that program whatsoever), prevents the Pentagon from reducing troop levels in Europe and South Korea below certain levels, and codifies the Baltic Security Initiative, the purpose of which is “developing security cooperation with the military forces of the Baltic countries” who find themselves dangerously close the frontlines of Russia’s barbarous war on civilization.
It is always welcome, these days, when Congress reasserts its authority and provides a modicum of oversight, and it is good to know that the isolationist cabal in the executive branch does not have carte blanche to completely demolish the security architecture built up over the last 80 years. Still, the 2025 NSS, for all its flaws, at least serves as a tocsin warning of the very real dangers faced by our nation. Realists and idealists, isolationists and interventionists, liberals and paleo-conservatives and neoconservatives alike can all acknowledge that we are being gored on the horns of a dilemma. Divided at home and challenged abroad, we remain a global hegemon, just barely, and are faced with a choice between imperial overstretch and under-stretch, between costly continued interventions and a retreat, excuse me, a “readjustment of our global military presence” back to our own hemisphere, where it is appreciably easier to rattle sabres at Venezuela and Colombia than it is to stare down the nuclear-armed, revanchist, and increasingly brazen Sino-Russian axis.
The 2025 NSS is the work product of so-called realists who are finally in a position to pursue American retrenchment, thereby paving the way for the rise of multipolarity and the demise of the international rules-based order established after the Second World War. They are quite open in their wish to see Atlas set down his burden, so let us return to the metaphor of Atlas. Ovid, in Book Four of the Metamorphōsēs, provides a variation on the Atlas myth. He tells of a land where
Atlas reign’d, of more than human Size,
And in his Kingdom the World’s Limit lies.
Here Titan bids his weary’d Coursers sleep,
And cools the burning Axle in the Deep.
The mighty Monarch, uncontroul’d, alone,
His Sceptre sways: no neighb’ring States are known.
One day, Perseus, son of Zeus and Danaë, visited the “gigantick Prince,” the Titan Atlas, who “ghastly star’d,”
Mindful of what an Oracle declar’d,
That the dark Wombs of Time conceal’d a Day,
Which should, disclos’d, the bloomy Gold betray:
All should at once be ravish’d from his Eyes,
And Jove’s own progeny enjoy the Prize.
Atlas bade his uninvited guest depart, only for Perseus to produce the foul head of Medusa, transforming the Titan into the mountain range that still bears his name.
It is a cautionary tale, appropriate for the perusal of strategists from the Augustan Age to our own. No one, not even the mightiest Titan, is invincible. Empires rise and fall. There are times when, as Oswald Spengler so memorably put it, “optimism is cowardice,” and we must plan for terrible eventualities. But if America is Atlas, are the Chinese really so much like Perseus, or are they an industrial economy that is “deteriorating on several fronts,” with a “broad-based weakening [that] spans consumer spending, investment, real estate,” governed by an oppressive, inhumane ideology, and prone to beating the war drums despite an untested military, all the while precariously perched atop a demographic time-bomb? And as for the Russian Federation, its performance in its depraved war against Ukraine is not indicative of a rising military power, but a spent force desperate to reassert some modicum of control in what was once its “near abroad.” North Korea is a bizarre hermit kingdom. Iran has been chastened by the Israeli Air Force and American Massive Ordnance Penetrators, and at present faces civilizational collapse in the form of an unprecedented water crisis. Do those threats really add up to a Gorgon Medusa that turns us to stone and puts an end to our global ambitions?
There may come a day when the United States will be forced into a policy of retrenchment, but we have not arrived anywhere near such a historical juncture. A disorderly American global retreat from global leadership, an abrupt contraction of our international commitments, a precipitous strategic pullback in the face of China’s assertiveness, without so much as a shot fired, would be catastrophic for the free world. Therefore, as we digest the most recent NSS, it is worthwhile to consider one of its predecessors, promulgated by the Reagan administration in 1987. Demonstrating a commitment “to the goals of world freedom, peace and prosperity,” the 1987 NSS advocated for “strong and close relationships with our Alliance partners around the world,” “active assistance to those who are struggling for their own self-determination, freedom, and a reasonable standard of living and development,” and a “willingness to be realistic about the Soviet Union, to define publicly the crucial moral distinction between totalitarianism and democracy.”
While the United States has been the leader of the free world since the end of the Second World War, we have not acted alone. During that war and in the succeeding four decades, our strategy has been based on partnership with those nations that share our common goals. As the world has changed over the years, the differences between nations striving to develop democratic institutions and those following the totalitarian banner have come into sharp focus. As future changes take place in human rights, advanced technology, quality of life, and the global economy, our example will continue to exert tremendous influence on mankind. The United States is on the right side of this historic struggle and we have tried to build a lasting framework for promoting this positive change.
The world has changed a great deal since the days of the 1987 NSS. It has even changed a great deal since the 2017 NSS. But it has not changed so much that these words of President Ronald Reagan no longer resonate or retain relevance.
There are those ruin-mongers who would like to see Atlas succumb to the weight of the cosmos, never seeming to consider what would actually happen if the sky was falling, just as there are purported realists who never quite get around to explaining the far-reaching consequences of abandoning “strong and close relationships with our Alliance partners around the world” and the “crucial moral distinction between totalitarianism and democracy.” Rejoice at the envisioned end of the rule-based international order all you like, but the multipolar world that would arise from its wreckage will not be to your liking, and it will be very hard indeed, at that point, to defend the indefensible, vague platitudes, dying metaphors, and jargon notwithstanding.
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