The “National Security Strategy of 2025” made public by the United States in November 2025, clearly exposes the anxiety of a power in decline, which tries to reaffirm its hegemony through unilateralism, military coercion and political pressure, reactivating old imperial dogmas. The document, anchored in premises that no longer correspond to the current international system, reveals a profound denial of multilateralism and underestimates the growing strength of sovereign processes in the Global South.
Far from offering a strategic reading of the world, the Strategy (2025–2029) is a reactive vision, which operates as a defensive mechanism against the erosion of American power. Part of a central hypothesis, the global preeminence of the United States must not only be preserved, but restored, correcting what it considers failures of previous administrations that, supposedly, “tied” foreign policy to international institutions, “peripheral” debates and a “transnationalism” that would dilute state sovereignty.
Nostalgia for a golden age that translates into an openly unilateral approach, distrust of any multilateral commitment and a logic of “prioritization” that implies abandoning entire regions of the planet, except when a “national security” interest requires intervention. The document insists that the US economic and technological advantage is “the safest path” to avoid a large-scale conflict. But this defense is formulated with a defensive tone, which betrays the fear of loss of competitiveness compared to China and other emerging poles.
Rhetoric about “state-directed subsidies,” “unfair trade practices,” or the theft of intellectual property functions less as a diagnosis than as an implicit recognition of a structural shift from the global economic center. Cooperation with allies is no longer considered as a strategic association, but as conditional subordination, political alignment and economic restrictions are required under the threat of sanctions, turning the alliance into a mechanism of control and submission, but not cooperation. The document reconfigures the American strategic geography, the Middle East ceases to be a priority, not because of an ethical turn, but because of internal energy diversification. The region is redefined as a space to “shift loads” and ensure that energy flows do not fall under the control of rivals.
Normalization between Israel and Arab States is celebrated and the monarchical order of the Gulf is accepted without reservation, describing any previous attempt to demand democratic reforms as a historical error, thus, regions end up becoming instruments. Western Hemisphere, the “Trump Corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine, now called the “Donroe Doctrine,” is unambiguously reactivated, in reference to the Donald in the White House, where the objective is to prevent extra-regional actors, particularly China, from controlling critical assets, strategic routes or technological sectors.
The region is reduced to a space of immigration containment, anti-drug control, border security and near-shoring; that is, a functional appendage of the American economy. The explicit rejection of multilateral institutions, the imposition of sole-source contracts for US companies, and the pressure to align markets and supplies only accelerate the search for alternatives among peripheral countries.
The greatest defect of this Strategy is its inability to understand the structural change of the world order, and therefore it remains tied to the paradigm of competition between great powers, ignoring that the Global South has acquired an unprecedented future path, both in international governance and in economic and political articulation. The multiplication of technological, energy and commercial alliances, outside the dollar and outside Washington, is a direct consequence of this coercive approach. The struggle for liberation, previously limited to political decolonization, today manifests itself in new forms of sovereignty, technological autonomy, food sovereignty, community management of territory, alternative economic blocks, non-Western financial networks, ecological and civilizational alternatives.
The American insistence on restoring a hegemony in crisis, in a world that has already mutated, is not only anachronistic, but also evidences geopolitical desperation. Doctrines such as the recycled “Donroe”, or the centrality of military control of productive chains, reveal a power that can no longer sustain its influence without resorting to pressure, militarization and economic blackmail.
The 2025 Strategy appears as an artifact from another era, an attempt to impose order in an international system that is moving towards plurality, multipolarity and resistance from below. Its greatest effect will not be to contain the emergence of new powers but to further promote the articulation of the peoples of the Global South, reaffirming the validity of self-determination, sovereignty and liberation struggles.
Far from projecting hegemony, this Strategy confirms its desperate tone in the face of the decline, at the same time warning of care and prevention to avoid the effects of its tailfall.
In addition to the above, we find that said “Doctrine” also brings its tone, typical of medieval times and the tax blindness of a Hitler who replaces, at all costs, law with force.
source: ELN