“Life without a functioning state isn’t a human rights paradise; it’s Hobbes made flesh. Of course, the state is both monster and midwife. It is the one force that can strangle rights and the only force that can uphold them.” (Sharp, 2026)
“The purpose of the American government is to secure the God-given natural rights of American citizens. To this end, departments and agencies of the United States Government have been granted fearsome powers. Those powers must never be abused…” (National Security Strategy, 2025)
In many ways, the Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy can be viewed as progressive. In this essay, I will show where the Strategy makes sense, or indeed leads, and where it falls short. Of course, whether this Strategy proves a net benefit to the world depends on how its strategy is implemented.
The foundation of the United States of America’s National Security Strategy is made explicit in its title. The Trump Administration’s Strategy states this overtly:
The world’s fundamental political unit is and will remain the nation-state. It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty. The world works best when nations prioritize their interests. (National Security Strategy, p. 9)
However, the above statement is false. It is false because the two premises, that the nation-state is the world’s fundamental political unit and that nation-states will indefinitely remain, are not true. The second claim in the passage is also false. It is false because this statement is based clearly on rational choice theory, which has not proven to be true. (Sen, 1977, 317–344)
What the Administration is actually communicating with this statement is that it intends to continue to promote and defend the nation-state as the fundamental political unit in the world. This owes obviously to the Administration’s stated opinion that the United States of America is the greatest nation in the world and the Administration’s associated desire for it to remain so. This position is ahistorical, with history demonstrating that hegemony waxes and wanes, with powers growing more belligerent, particularly toward their own citizens, as their period of dominance and influence declines. (Karatzogianni, 2021) While this requires that we take a longer and more progressive view of both the situation and the nation-state, it does not necessarily mean that the Strategy lacks merit.
Following the imagined end of the Cold War, many in the academic, foreign policy, and human rights community felt “the nation-state was a relic of history to be left behind by the enlightened citizens of a rising global order” (Sharp, 2026). While this view of the nation-state is indeed correct, few were able to abandon their customary ties to the nation-states that had long predominated their lives. Only a thin stratum of truly global elite, leaders of transnational corporations and extra-governmental bodies, were able to make the leap.
These elites have become the whipping post and scapegoats of the Trump Administration. The November 2025 National Security Strategy calls them out explicitly:
Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. (National Security Strategy, p. 1)
Viewed charitably, it is clear that the Trump Administration agrees with Dustin Sharp when he says, “Sovereignty and nationalism are not antagonists to the human rights project; they are its unacknowledged foundations.” (Sharp, 2026) The 2025 National Security Strategy aligns with the opinion that “the nation remains the largest form of belonging capable of sustaining the loyalty required to deliver social services, enforce laws, and preserve basic order.” (Sharp, 2026) As such, the Strategy affirms that “The United States will unapologetically protect our own sovereignty. This includes preventing its erosion by transnational and international organizations” (National Security Strategy, p. 10).
Up to this point, nothing about the Strategy runs counter to progress. Echoing Sharp’s assessment, in the Trump Administration’s view, the nation-state and its sovereignty are foundational, the building blocks from which human rights are derived and maintained. Thus, it is not surprising that “We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty” (National Security Strategy, p. 9). From this perspective, it also stands to reason that “The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests.” (National Security Strategy, p. 10) The pursuit of progress even admits that “As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others.” (National Security Strategy, p. 10) However, it is with the following statement that the Strategy becomes problematic:
“In our every principle and action, America and Americans must always come first.” (National Security Strategy, p. 11)
This position is exceedingly problematic for the cause of progress. The equitable mediation of US interests and the sovereign rights of nations, particularly in cases where pursuit of US interest infringes upon the sovereign right of a foreign nation, is not possible if “America and Americans must always come first.” Its case for the nation-state as the necessary foundation for the provision of human rights is eroded by its rhetoric of unilateral nationalism and sovereignty. “American policy will be pro-worker, not merely pro-growth” sounds progressive, until one grasps that said policy will solely “prioritize our own workers” (National Security Strategy, p. 10).
This prioritization of American interests runs counter to the progressive elements of the Administration’s Strategy. In the Strategy, the Trump Administration lays claim to a “predisposition to non-intervention” (National Security Strategy, p. 9). This position aligns with progress, generally speaking. Historically, the United States, like all imperialistic empires before it, has pursued a policy of intervention. A predisposition to non-intervention is, therefore, progressive.
Furthermore, the Strategy states that the Trump Administration will “oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties (the rights of free speech, freedom of religion and of conscience, and the right to choose and steer our common government).” (National Security Strategy, p. 12) While not necessarily progressive, this position at least preserves the liberal status quo. However, how the Administration intends to remain non-interventionist while opposing restrictions on core liberties “in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies” (National Security Strategy, p. 12) is decidedly unclear.
It is difficult to argue that “In the long term, maintaining American economic and technological preeminence” is not “the surest way to deter and prevent a large-scale military conflict.” (National Security Strategy, p. 23) US hegemony has indeed produced The Long Peace, the longest absence of direct, open conflict between world powers since the Pax Romana. However, the evolving global landscape – the rise of the BRICS nations in particular – demands that the United States of America adopt a conciliatory posture of restraint if open international warfare is to be avoided. In an era of increasing tension and power symmetry, it is incumbent upon us to lead by example, to abandon the notion of competition between nations most notably, if progress is expected to continue.
We should “build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere”, not only in the First Island Chain (National Security Strategy, p. 24). However, progress insists that aggression include our own. Progress would preclude a “vigilant posture in the Indo-Pacific, a renewed defense industrial base, greater military investment from ourselves and from allies and partners” with the aim of “winning the economic and technological competition over the long term.” (National Security Strategy, p. 24) While it is true that “Strong measures must be developed along with the deterrence necessary to keep those [sea] lanes open, free of “tolls,” and not subject to arbitrary closure by one country” it does not necessarily require “further investment in our military—especially naval—capabilities”, but rather “strong cooperation with every nation that stands to suffer, from India to Japan and beyond.” (National Security Strategy, p. 24)
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy is not of this bent.
Instead, the Strategy aims to “re-secure our own independent and reliable access to the goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life.” (National Security Strategy, p. 13) To do this, “We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.” (National Security Strategy, p. 15)
It is here that the paradoxical nature of the Administration’s Strategy becomes apparent. With the preceding pronouncements, the Strategy admits that the US simply does not contain the goods it needs to preserve its way of life. These goods, raw materials mostly but technological produce as well, come from other countries, and their procurement cannot be assured except by threat of force. As such, we are not able to “ensure that our country is never again reliant on any adversary, present or potential, for critical products or components” (National Security Strategy, p. 14) while maintaining the sanctity of national sovereignty to which the Strategy aspires.
It is unclear how this intention can be reconciled with a predisposition to non-intervention and, thus, the project of progress. Intervention appears to be foundational to the Strategy. The purportedly sovereign nations of the world on whom we rely can expect that we will exert undue influence upon them. The Strategy advises them of this.
“The United States boasts the world’s leading financial and capital markets, which are pillars of American influence that afford policymakers significant leverage and tools to advance America’s national security priorities.” (National Security Strategy, p 13-14.)
Within this statement is found the Strategy’s means for subverting the limitation it places on itself with its “predisposition to non-intervention”. Its position of non-intervention refers to physical military intervention only, and even that seems suspect. The Strategy deems financial coercion and other forms of economic intervention in the interest of national supremacy legitimate. In fact, it calls for their employment explicitly. In doing so, any claims to progress are abandoned.
While the statement “American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy” (National Security Strategy, p. 26) is an admirable assertion, the National Security Strategy fails to uphold it. Instead it undermines the concept of national sovereignty that gives rise to the nation-state, the purported necessary precursor to human rights, in the pursuit of American preeminence.
In the end, you cannot call the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy progressive. It is at best reactionary and quite possibly regressive. In all probability, it will only accelerate the United States’ hegemonic decline. If it doesn’t lead to total nuclear annihilation first.
References
National Security Strategy. (2025, Nov). The White House. Retrieved January 12, 2026, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
Sharp, D. N. (2026, Jan 16). Why Human Rights Depend on the Nation State. American Purpose. https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-human-rights-depend-on-the-nation
Sen, A. (1977). Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 6(4), 317–344.
Karatzogianni, A. (2021). From Innovative Democracy to Warfare State: Ancient Athens as a Model of Hegemonic Decline. (Vol. Ancient Athens as a Model of Hegemonic Decline: Innovation, Democracy and War). Palgrave Macmillan.