The 33-page US National Security Strategy report issued a week ago by the US government was the most selfish, greedy, and short-sighted document in the 250-year history of American foreign policy.
The document praised right-wing parties emerging in Europe; condemned European Governments for allowing “civilisational erasure” for not preventing mass immigration of non-whites; and said not a word about the murderous nature of Putin’s regime in Russia but rather encouraged caving in to aggression.
Its tone was laced with America First rhetoric and arrogantly trying to impose its view of how the world should work on others.
“Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” it said.
All of it was written in dog-whistling language. The whole theme was how America could make a buck out of security paranoia.
It is best summed up by the now-famous contraction of President Calvin Coolidge’s (pictured) words in 1925: “The business of America is business.” The whole 2025 document is couched in terms of defending and promoting America’s national interests – its economic interests and the interests of its business elites, of which Donald Trump is most certainly a member.
But why should we be surprised? The idea that the post-war years in which a selfless US led a rules-based order that was natural and permanent is a delusion. At best in was an aberration in the 250-year history of the US. In fact, it was just a heavily disguised version of business as usual.
Perhaps the believers in the Enlightenment and human rights were naïve. The post-war actions of the US were not grounded in altruism and pursuit of individual human dignity. The Marshall Plan and post-war reconstruction in Japan had little to do with helping ordinary German and Japanese people who had been duped by fascist dictators.
To the contrary. The initial post-war US policy was that all Germans and Japanese were collectively responsible for the war and the atrocities committed and should pay for them. Instructions from on high to US occupying troops, contained in the booklet “Your Job in Germany”, was not to fraternise and to be suspicious. The policy for Japan was to create a textile and agricultural economy incapable of industrialisation.
Then, along came the communist threat and those policies were scrapped. Tracking down war criminals took second-place to German and Japanese reindustrialisation to help deal with the Soviet and Chinese communist menace.
The 1947 Truman Doctrine pledged US support to any nation (particularly Greece and Turkey) facing a threat from communism.
But the theme was always dominated by the protection of US business interests. Human rights, including the democratic right to choose your own government was just an incidental by-product on the rare occasions it eventuated.
Now, with communism gone, the US is going back to normal isolationism.
Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organisation, UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Council, the Paris climate agreement, and so on, are not the manifestations of a new US foreign policy. They are a continuation of isolationism going back to the Munroe Doctrine of 1823.
It has always been there. It is why, way before Trump, the US did not ratify treaties on the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea, rights of women, rights of children, rights of people with disabilities, against torture, and against land mines.
Notice how nearly all these treaties are about individual rights, freedoms, and dignity.
The US says it stands for liberty and freedom, but it is for freedom and liberty to abuse others and abuse the environment. The security strategy report is laced with those sentiments.
It talks of “returning economic freedom to our citizens”.
“The purpose of the American government is to secure the God-given natural rights of American citizens,” it says. “In particular, the rights of free speech, freedom of religion and of conscience, and the right to choose and steer our common government are core rights that must never be infringed. . . . We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies.
That is a dog-whistle for allowing Big Tech and anyone else to publish or make any racist, discriminatory, or inflammatory statement they like. God is so often invoked when repressing minorities.
The statement whinges about Europe not pulling its weight and relying on US taxpayers for their defence, calling on them to spend 5 percent of their GDP (up from between 2 and 3 per cent) on the military, like the US.
Again, it has nothing to do with collective defence against aggression that tramples on individual human rights, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has more to do with US business interests.
Trump’s policy is not to give Ukraine weapons to fight the onslaught against its people. Rather, it is for the Europeans to buy them from the US and for them to give them to Ukraine.
It follows a long history of war-profiteerism.
The US stood aloof from both world wars until German U-bots killed its nationals and threatened its trade in World War I and Japan attacked its territory in World War II. Until then, it lent money to Britain and others on desperate disadvantageous terms to buy US weapons.
President Coolidge refused to forgive the debt in 1925, saying: “They hired the money, didn’t they.” The money Britain borrowed from the US before 1942 was only finally repaid in 2006.
So much for a common cause to fight for individual freedom and democracy.
In 2024, the US arms trade was a record $320 billion. So much from Trump’s twaddle that the US is being taken advantage of with military spending. To the contrary, it is taking advantage. The profits have been immense as has been the diversion of money away from more socially useful things.
It would be better if the US reduced its spending to 3 percent from 5 per cent rather than asking others to raise theirs to 5 per cent from 3 percent.
We don’t need more military spending because we have a less secure world. We have a less secure world because we have heightened military spending.
The surprising thing is that the Europeans have been surprised and non-plussed by the 2025 strategy document.
There should be no surprise. It was like this from the inception of America in 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – unless you happen to be a black slave. And women don’t even get a mention.
It has always been about elite white males and their money.
Crispin Hull
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 16 December 2025.