America’s NSS: Domestic populism as the new grand strategy

The 2025 American National Security Strategy (NSS) is not merely another iteration in a stable series; it represents a structural rupture. For the first time since 1945, Washington has boldly subordinated its external posture to the drivers of its internal ideological battles. What was once presented as universalist leadership has morphed into a defence of a particular civilisational identity. The document is less a strategy for the world than a projection of America’s ongoing culture war onto the global screen.

Under the Goldwater-Nichols statute, the NSS is a product of inter-agency deliberation and reflects a whole-of-government view. In practice, the 2025 version bears the clear signs of competing factions—economic nationalists, security hardliners, and transactional pragmatists—each seeking to influence the text. The final product, carrying the President’s signature, is therefore as much a political artefact as a strategic one. It tells us more about the thinking of particular American constituencies than about the actual distribution of power in the Indo-Pacific or West Asia.

The language of borders, industrial revival, demographic anxiety, and hostility to “globalist bureaucracies” is unmistakable. Migration and multilateral institutions are no longer policy variables; they are framed as civilisational threats. This is not the balance-of-power realism that many in India once hoped a Republican administration might return to. It is populist nativism elevated to the level of grand strategy.

The sharpest departure lies in the way alliances are treated. The older American model rested on a mix of shared values and credible burden-sharing, with the assumption that specific commitments were near-permanent. The 2025 NSS replaces that with brazen transactionalism: partners must continually demonstrate “value”.
Europe is criticised not just for free-riding but for its internal social liberalism and demographic evolution. In effect, cultural-political conformity is becoming a
new criterion for strategic trust. This is a long distance from the inclusive, rules-based coalitions that India has cautiously invested in over the past two decades.

The document repeatedly links grand strategy to identity, demographics, and
domestic political orientation in partner nations. One is reminded of older European discourses that New Delhi has historically treated with scepticism. When loyalty
is judged less by treaty obligations than
by perceived cultural proximity, the
post-1945 liberal internationalist bargain stands redundant.

The most consequential pivot is the renewed emphasis on the Western Hemisphere at the expense of global policing. The language echoes the Monroe Doctrine more than it does the post-Cold War ambition for primacy. For the rest of the world, the “Trump Corollary” to the doctrine implies a weaker American presence and a greater expectation of self-help or regional balancing. Washington will remain engaged, but increasingly as an offshore broker rather than an onshore guarantor.

The most serious long-term consequence is the collapse of predictability. When grand strategy is so openly linked to domestic political cycles, partners cannot structure long-term defence plans around American assurances. Deterrence, arms control, and crisis stability will all suffer when policy can turn on its head every four or eight years.

What this means for the rest of the world

For countries that have relied on stability through American security policies, the implications are clear:

Assume volatility as the new normal. 

Accelerate autonomous defence capabilities and resilient supply chains. 

Diversify strategic partnerships with Europe, Japan, the Gulf states, and ASEAN as centres, because over-reliance on any single power is now hazardous. 

Negotiate explicit, legally robust agreements rather than accept rhetorical solidarity. 

Track American domestic politics with the same rigour once reserved for Russia and China.

India’s response 

For New Delhi, the 2025 NSS is a moment of clarity. The era of assuming quasi-alliance-like American support is over. Cooperation will henceforth be explicitly transactional, contingent on commercial concessions, technology offsets, or political alignment on issues Washington cares about at a given moment. The threat to India from an emboldened China freed from American overwatch is likely to escalate, and Washington may not care over-much. Crises may become bargaining opportunities for adversaries who sense American hesitation, as taught by the Sindoor experience.

This does not imply disengagement. It demands a more complex, more institutionalised framework: binding co-production contracts, technology-transfer schedules insulated from political change, pre-negotiated logistics and intelligence-sharing protocols. Soft power and shared values were always secondary; they are now clearly marginal.

Three broad imperatives are evident:

Accelerated self-reliant deterrence
and modernisation to reduce structural vulnerabilities. 

Deeper, parallel partnerships with Europe, Japan, and select Middle Eastern states to hedge against American volatility. 

A shift from declaratory diplomacy to detailed, practical, and enforceable mechanisms that will last changes of administration.

The 2025 NSS marks the end of the post-war illusion that American power could be separated from America’s
domestic ideological contests. What emerges is a more “normal” great power, pursuing advantage, leverage, and
selective engagement rather than
order-building.

For India and other middle powers, the message is unambiguous: the margin of safety now lies in our own capabilities and in the quality of our diversified partnerships. The old habit of looking over the horizon for American rescue is no longer strategically tenable. In the emerging world, resilience is not a choice; it is the only insurance policy available.

(The writer is a research fellow at the Takshashila Institution)