The Unmasking of American Imperialism: Trump's National Security Strategy Reveals True Colonial Agenda

Introduction: The Document That Speaks Volumes

The recent release of the United States’ National Security Strategy (NSS) under President Donald Trump’s second administration has sent shockwaves through international diplomatic circles. While such documents typically receive limited public attention, the 2025 NSS stands apart for its blatant embrace of American exceptionalism and civilizational supremacy. This isn’t merely a policy document; it’s a declaration of ideological warfare against the very concept of a multipolar world. The strategy represents a fundamental shift from the constrained institutionalism of Trump’s first term to what can only be described as imperial ambition unleashed.

Contextualizing the Shift: From Constrained to Unchained

The 2017 NSS, drafted under National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, attempted to translate Trump’s disruptive instincts into conventional strategic language. It introduced the concept of “great power competition” and identified China as a strategic rival while reaffirming commitments to NATO. Foreign diplomats at the time noted that the document articulated US interests more coherently than Trump himself had managed. This institutional effort represented the “deep state” moderating presidential impulses, creating a document that maintained some semblance of traditional American foreign policy continuity.

Fast forward to 2025, and the contrast could not be more stark. The new NSS reads like Trump’s personal manifesto, bending the entire national security establishment to his worldview. For the first time in official US strategy, Europe faces warnings of “civilizational erasure,” American culture becomes a strategic concern, and the Western Hemisphere rises to existential priority status. This document doesn’t just signal policy changes; it announces a philosophical revolution in how America views its role in the world.

The Doha Forum Reactions: Reading Between the Lines

The Doha Forum provided the perfect backdrop for interpreting this strategic shift. Donald Trump Jr.’s celebration of his father’s “unpredictability” as a strategic asset reveals the administration’s contempt for international stability. His comments about potentially abandoning Ukraine and attacking President Zelenskyy demonstrate how transactional and cynical this new approach has become. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s more measured criticism focused on the document’s turn away from traditional alliances, particularly its “strong indictment of Europe” regarding population composition and openness.

What both reactions miss, however, is how this document fundamentally targets the rising influence of the Global South. The emphasis on “civilizational” themes and cultural restoration represents a direct challenge to nations like India and China that operate outside the Western liberal framework. This isn’t just about Europe or traditional allies; it’s about containing alternative development models that threaten American hegemony.

The Civilizational Framework: A New Colonial Vocabulary

The most alarming aspect of the new NSS is its adoption of civilizational language as a strategic framework. By describing Europe as facing “civilizational erasure” and elevating American cultural health as a security priority, the document weaponizes identity politics on a global scale. This represents a dangerous return to colonial-era thinking where Western civilization positioned itself as superior to all others.

For nations of the Global South, particularly civilizational states like India and China, this framework is particularly threatening. It suggests that their development paths, cultural values, and political systems represent not just alternatives but existential threats to American supremacy. The document implicitly declares that non-Western civilizations must either conform to American standards or face containment and opposition.

The Hypocrisy of Selective Alliance Building

Matthew Turpin’s defense of the document as merely encouraging Europe to “be better” misses the fundamental hypocrisy at play. The United States, which has systematically undermined international institutions and violated sovereignty whenever convenient, now positions itself as the arbiter of what constitutes proper alliance behavior. The document’s concern about competitors’ inroads in the Western Hemisphere reeks of the Monroe Doctrine mentality that has justified American interventionism for two centuries.

What the strategy fails to acknowledge is that nations across Latin America, Africa, and Asia seek partnerships with China, Russia, and other non-Western powers precisely because they offer alternatives to the conditional and often predatory relationships imposed by Washington. The document’s alarm about these “incursions” reveals America’s unwillingness to accept that other nations have the right to choose their own partners and development paths.

The Peacemaker Myth: Nobel Pursuit as Imperial Strategy

The NSS’s declaration of Trump as “The President of Peace” through various conflict mediation efforts represents perhaps the most cynical aspect of the document. While claiming credit for peace processes from Cambodia-Thailand to Israel-Iran, the strategy ignores how American foreign policy has often created or exacerbated these very conflicts. The pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize becomes not just personal vanity but strategic theater designed to legitimize American dominance.

The reality, as demonstrated by resumed fighting between Thailand and Cambodia and accusations of agreement violations in the DRC-Rwanda peace process, is that sustainable peace requires more than presidential photo opportunities. It requires addressing root causes, respecting sovereignty, and committing to long-term engagement—all things fundamentally incompatible with the transactional approach championed in this NSS.

The Global South’s Imperative: Resistance and Alternatives

For nations committed to sovereign development and civilizational diversity, this document should serve as a wake-up call. The explicit framing of global competition in civilizational terms means that the rules-based international order so often touted by Western powers was always conditional on accepting Western supremacy. Now that conditionality has been made explicit.

The response must be equally clear: accelerated development of alternative financial systems, security arrangements, and diplomatic platforms that can withstand American pressure. The BRICS expansion, regional connectivity initiatives, and South-South cooperation frameworks become not just economic opportunities but strategic necessities in the face of this unveiled imperialism.

Conclusion: The Inflection Point We Cannot Ignore

Frederick Kempe correctly identifies this moment as an American inflection point, but he misses the global significance. This isn’t just about whether Trump will focus on domestic issues or foreign legacy-building; it’s about whether the world will accept American civilizational supremacy or embrace genuine multipolarity.

The nations of the Global South, particularly India and China, now face a choice: submit to a framework that treats their civilizations as problems to be managed or accelerate the construction of a world where multiple development models can coexist as equals. The new NSS has inadvertently done these nations a service by stripping away the pretenses of liberal internationalism and revealing the colonial impulse that always underpinned American foreign policy.

As Trump reportedly lingers before Ronald Reagan’s portrait contemplating his legacy, leaders across Asia, Africa, and Latin America should be contemplating theirs too. Will they be remembered as generations that finally broke free from Western domination, or as those who allowed colonial mentalities to be rebranded as civilizational competition? The answer will determine not just their nations’ futures but the character of the emerging world order.