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2:06 pm, December 19th, 2025 - 18 comments
Categories: Abuse of power, assets, defence, democracy under attack, Diplomacy, Disarmament, Donald Trump, Free Trade, history, military, Pacific, Peace, Peace, Russia, us politics, war -
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“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.” NSS 2025.
The US has always had two central instruments of domination: overwhelming violence and unrivalled ability to project and control narratives. The bedrock of the whole edifice is, of course, the immense material resources that the American state can deploy. All three are being challenged by centrifugal forces (rise of China, resurgence of Russia, emergence of the BRICs, alternative media, etc) that are slipping beyond the US’s ability to control. The National Security Strategy released this month is, in part, an admission of this, and, in part, a denial, as its authors cleave to a mythology of exceptionalism and eternal greatness.
In the first part of this series I explored the underlying messaging in the Strategy’s statement: “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.”
The Strategy’s narrative effectively says, it is time for the US to set down this all-too-heavy burden of propping up the entire world and focus its attention and resources on what is best for the US. The Strategy makes clear that Europe and the Middle East, much-loved though they are, are of diminishing focus for the US. The Americas are on notice that the Monroe Doctrine is back with a vengeance (defined as The Trump Corollary, no less). Great emphasis is also being placed on the Asia Pacific region: and the US administration stresses that countries like Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan will need to militarise as never before in peacetime to keep China in its place.
The White House Strategy is, unsurprisingly, groaning under the weight of contradictions. On one hand it castigates previous administrations for chasing “permanent American domination of the entire world”. Yet, whilst laying down its Atlas-like burden, it nonetheless states: “The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests”.
This is, of course, straight out of the Wolfowitz Doctrine – commitment to global hegemony – and represents what Brian Berlectic suggests is “continuity of agenda” (that is, don’t believe the rhetoric, look at where the missiles are falling). Time will tell if US liberal interventionism is really in the rear view mirror. Presidents Maduro, Putin, Pezeshkian and Xi would certainly wish it so.
The White House acknowledges that “the Indo-Pacific is already the source of almost half the world’s GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP)” and that whilst that necessitates staying in the region, its strategy should be deterrence to avoid war.
“A favorable conventional military balance remains an essential component of strategic competition,” the Strategy says. ”There is, rightly, much focus on Taiwan, partly because of Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production, but mostly because Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters. Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the U.S. economy. Hence 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.”
The Sea lanes of the South China Sea and the island of Taiwan are where the new policy could meet its most serious resistance from a China unwilling to see continued American overlordship of Asia.
The genocide in Gaza and the West’s war in Ukraine have emptied the shelves of the US military industrial complex. The US’s new approach, repeatedly referred to as Burden-Sharing in the Strategy, makes clear that vassals need to do more to support the empire.
New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Japan and whoever else the US can control will be forced to spend more and more on militarising against China. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says AUKUS is going ‘full steam ahead’, including a $386 billion Australian commitment to the project. New Zealand is spending billions more on defence and, somewhat ludicrously, touts itself as a force multiplier for the alliance.
Political thinkers in Australia, New Zealand and the wider Asia Pacific region are divided between those that cleave to the “With the US come-what-may”, and those trying to steer a path between the two behemoths.
If war comes it will be China and regional countries, including Australia and even New Zealand, who could pay the heaviest price. If – as most military analysts assess – China prevails, but at great cost, they will feel highly justified in exacting a terrible toll on any country that sided with the US.
White solidarity is one thing; wrecking your country’s future is another. Former New Zealand PM Helen Clark, a perennially sound and sober thinker, has long argued that Australasia should be friends to all, enemies of none, and should pursue a more independent foreign and defence strategy that doesn’t threaten China which is our biggest trading partner. Similar thinkers are pressing governments throughout the region.
Africa gets a slender half page out of the 33-page document and the focus is primarily on commerce and resource extraction. Aid is out of favour.
“An immediate area for U.S. investment in Africa, with prospects for a good return on investment, include the energy sector and critical mineral development. Development of U.S.-backed nuclear energy, liquid petroleum gas, and liquified natural gas technologies can generate profits for U.S. businesses and help us in the competition for critical minerals and other resources.”
Trump triumphant, declares recent US-Israeli successes across the Middle East have enabled the US to focus on its own hemisphere.
“The days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over.” Given the vice-like grip Israel has over the US elites I suspect this is more in hope than expectation.
At home the focus will be on what is clearly American-style Christian nationalism, exorcising society of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies) and achieving what the document describes as the “restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health.” This is foundational to long-term security. Making America Great Again means forging an America that “cherishes its past glories and its heroes.”
It doesn’t take much to de-code the Strategy’s message to the rest of the Americas: if you’re not ready to be our poodles, be afraid, be very afraid.
“The Western Hemisphere is home to many strategic resources that America should partner with regional allies to develop.”
“We will assert and enforce a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed.”
The seizing of an oil tanker off Venezuela, the military build-up, the killing of Ecuadoran fishermen, Colombian civilians and god-knows who else on the boats the US blew out of the waters of the Caribbean recently are all signals that the US has learnt all the wrong lessons from 200 years of brutal interventionism in the Americas.
Oft quoted but always worth contemplating is Antonio Gramsci’s quote, so apt as we stand on this bank and shoal of time between Atlas America and a new multipolar world order: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”.
Just listen to Auntie Helen.
If I saw this turned in as an assignment in a Political Science or International Relations 101 class, it might just squeak through as a C–.
Yes, there’s an attempt at something approximating analysis of US foreign policy, but the author doesn’t seem able to pick an argument. Instead, we get authoritative-sounding word salad and a scattergun approach: throw a bunch of mutually contradictory claims at the problem and hope something sticks.
Pick a lane. Either the US is a terrifying global hegemon, capable of imposing itself through force and coercion more or less at will. Or it’s a decaying superpower without the industrial depth, political will, or strategic competence to stave off a rising China.
You can argue one or the other. Arguing both, without explaining the mechanism or the limits, is just incoherent.
The piece also reduces everyone who isn’t the United States to a kind of passive scenery: “vassals” and “poodles” with no agency, no domestic political constraints, and no interests of their own. In reality, even small states hedge, bargain, stall, defect, and manoeuvre. They make trade-offs under uncertainty. You don’t have to like their choices to acknowledge they exist. But this analysis can’t seem to describe them without reaching for caricature.
And that points to the deeper problem. This is yet more evidence of the modern left’s original sin on foreign policy: an inability to see the world through any lens more complicated than “America bad.”
That reflex doesn’t just produce bad analysis. It makes us look unserious at the exact moment the world is galloping into a foreign policy crisis driven by populism, strategic competition, and the slow erosion of multilateral institutions.
Finally: cool, you understand Gramsci. But once you get past first-year political philosophy, you’ll find there are whole shelves of thinkers, and a plethora of different theories that help you build coherent arguments that actually survive contact with reality.
You should really try reading them at some point.
"Pick a lane. Either the US is a terrifying global hegemon, capable of imposing itself through force and coercion more or less at will. Or it’s a decaying superpower without the industrial depth, political will, or strategic competence to stave off a rising China."
Perhaps you could do a post that explains the increasingly erratic behaviour of a still powerful US, still able to wield economic force through its dollar dominance and "exorbitant privilege",.At the same time experiencing internal fractures, loss of soft power globally, a return to the Monroe doctrine,and serious breaches of international law, without making the claim that America is still our best bet….in other words, America is less bad than the rest and once Trump is gone….
I would be interested in your take on that ,I didn't realise you were a professor of Political Science and International Relations, do you mark your own papers?
can you please dial back the attack on an author. It's actually not necessary to make your points about what you see as the limitations of a post.
Noted. I was maybe a bit more waspish than I needed to be.
Why can't the US be both?
I'm not saying it's impossible that both are true.
Just suggesting that it isn't borne out by the evidence. If it was the case the USA would have invaded Venzeuela by now while also withdrawing from strategic competition with China.
The fact that even Trump is reluctant to see American boots on the ground in Caracas but is very intetested in "beating" China suggests his foreign policy is being shaped by some pretty specific contingencies
The piece also reduces everyone who isn’t the United States to a kind of passive scenery: “vassals” and “poodles” with no agency, no domestic political constraints, and no interests of their own. In reality, even small states hedge, bargain, stall, defect, and manoeuvre. They make trade-offs under uncertainty.
I've been seeing this sort of argument for at least a couple of decades on various issues. Yes there is some room to manoeuvre. But that has severe limitations.
It gives us on the left of politics some hope for change. However, in fact, what I've been seeing over the neoliberal era, is the power of the right wing, locally and internationally, have been gradually shifting politics and society to the right, with more privatisation, greater & greater gaps between the wealthy and the least well-off, continuing wars of aggression being led by the US, often with the UK in lock step, and also from the likes of Russia and Israel.
We need far more wide-reaching strategies from the left rather than tinkering around the edges. Now the world seems to me to be in a pretty dire situation, with the US using it's wealth to attack and undermine the ICC, and the lack of any real pretense from the US govt about what their aims are in Gaza, and the Caribbean and Sth America.
There may be limits to the US govt power, especially these days, but they still have an enormous amount of wealth and power internationally. China & the BRICs also have an increased amount of power to challenge the US, but that just makes the whole situation extremely dangerous for small countries.
To me it seems a very worrying time.
I actually agree with a lot of what you've said. These are increasingly dangerous and uncertain times for small states, and the left is really struggling to articulate a compelling and serious foreign policy alternative.
But whatever that may be, this is not it.
We have to be prepared to be pragmatic. Engage with the world as it is rather than try compress every actor and every decision into a neat little morality play.
By all means we should oppose US imperialism and adventurism. But that isn't the same as abandoning the institutions it created. The same institutions we still rely on
Well, I'm certainly all for not just maintaining, but improving some of the institutions we rely on locally & internationally – including public services, democratic checks & balances in so-called democratic societies eg preventing the abuse of urgency, and voter suppression), improving the UN, supporting the International Criminal Court.
A lot of these things have gradually been chipped away at over the last few decades. And at the moment, the right wing in NZ and internationally seems to be on a mission to demolish what is left of such things legally, illegally, or by subverting democratic processes. And they have the wealth & power over communication systems, eg social media & mainstream media, to intensify the propaganda to support their mission.
Pragmatically engaging with the world as it is can mean many things, including making the sort of compromises the left has been making too often in recent decades that has been ultimately to the benefit of right wing politics and power.
Incrementalism has got us here. We need something bolder, especially from Labour parties here and abroad, and the US Democrat Party.
We also need to engage the general public more with a clear, accurate and easily digested narrative that will help pull us away from where things are currently going. Maybe you would see that as party of some 'morality play"?
Pirate Trump looks suitably staunch & shrewd, a trad combo that always comes across well if done right, so my compliments to the creator of the image.
Unlike Res, I had no problems with the essay on an intuitive level & I'm too old to default to nit-picking to demonstrate righteousness. T's removal of Maduro's regime will be an entertaining mix of machismo and subtlety, I expect. A mix of random cluelessness by some key players and effective leverage. I suspect Maduro's cleverest move will either be the trad retirment to Moscow option or volunteering to get back into bus-driving for a career change. Sedate benign elderly statesman role-modelling.
I must acknowledge that Helen Clark got that policy right, demonstrating credibility to a surprising extent for a change. Doing multipolar geopolitics is technically possible for rightists at all times but group-think often incapacitates them, so odds are even I reckon re T's ability playing Xi & Putin. A credible western leader is an empty space currently, but I don't rule out Albo or Starmer. People rise to the challenge of a crisis or not, and social/political darwinism hinges on the doing at the time.
Very generous of you DF – might your sour Clark gripes be sweetening for Xmas? 😉
One must give credit where due. Nothing wrong with her playing the role of elderly stateswoman, eh? Yet merely one piece on the chessboard.
Must one? Still, a credible policy considering Helen's many cerebral handicaps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Louse
So how do You think NZ should position itself DF?
You agree with Helen Clark's take?
Or you feel we have to arm up and strengthen our NATO
Partnership ….though NATO without the US..?
Unwise to be prescriptive, Francesca. Both/and logic is always a good framing tool: agree with Helen plus do a good-enough simulation of western solidarity a la William James' pragmatism. I basically see our foreign policy as having to be pluralistic or multi-dimensional, whilst using holism as operational constraint.
Diplomats would benefit from traditional wisdom if the academy were to do a u-turn and start providing it. Yet we must all contribute personal views as to the wisdom we see in applying it to current situations. That's the principle of collective intelligence at play, or if one is doing the deep green view of life, social darwinism. Utility value of that is constrained by idiosyncrasy (inability to anchor on common ground).
I think it's inevitable that we have to invest a great deal more in our defence capability.
Mainly to ensure we have something tangible to offer our allies and therefore remain a viable partner.
At the same time, we should look to find and build linka with states that share our values and are willing to engage in long-term, stable relationships as insurance against US fickleness.
Like Denmark speaking out against the US decision to impose sanctions on 2 more ICC judges – and Finland.