Trump's security strategy pledges to shift away from Middle East, Africa

President Donald Trump's administration set forth a new national security strategy that shifts attention away from the Middle East and Africa, paints European allies as weak, and aims to reassert America's dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

The Middle East section, titled Shift Burdens, Build Peace, and the Africa section, mark a significant shift in how the United States views the Middle East and Africa, arguing that both regions should no longer dominate American foreign policy and instead become arenas for limited commitments, strategic burden-shifting, and expanded economic partnerships.

The document contends that the Middle East, long treated as the centre of U.S. global engagement, no longer warrants such prioritisation. Energy diversification, America’s return as a net exporter, and Trump’s claimed revitalisation of ties with Gulf states, other Arab partners and Israel have, it argues, changed the strategic landscape.

While conflict persists, the strategy says regional threats have diminished: Iran has been “greatly weakened” by Israeli operations since 7 October 2023 and by Trump’s Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, which degraded Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The administration also credits Trump with progress on the Israeli-Palestinian file after the ceasefire and hostage release he brokered. Syria, once a major source of instability, is described as a country that could “stabilise” with coordinated support from the United States, Arab governments, Israel and Turkey.

As Washington rolls back what it calls restrictive energy policies and ramps up domestic production, the strategy argues that America’s historic rationale for intensive Middle East engagement will continue to fade, opening the door for the region to become a destination for investment in nuclear energy, artificial intelligence and defence technologies.

At the same time, the document calls on Washington to stop “hectoring” Gulf monarchies over governance and to accept regional governments “as they are,” praising what it describes as a growing local commitment to countering radicalism.

It reaffirms several enduring U.S. interests: preventing hostile control of Gulf energy supplies, keeping the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea open, avoiding the emergence of terrorist safe havens and guaranteeing Israel’s security. Expanding the Abraham Accords remains a stated goal. Trump’s ability to “unite the Arab world” at Sharm el-Sheikh, it says, will allow the United States to rebalance its foreign-policy priorities.

In Africa, the administration again criticises what it calls decades of U.S. overreach and misplaced ideological focus. American policy, it says, has too often centred on foreign aid and liberal political advocacy. The strategy instead calls for selective partnerships with “capable, reliable” states willing to open their markets to U.S. trade and investment. It highlights opportunities to negotiate settlements in ongoing conflicts — including DRC–Rwanda and Sudan — and to prevent new ones in the Horn of Africa.

The document urges a transition from an aid-driven model to one based on investment, especially in energy and critical minerals, framing U.S.-backed nuclear, LPG and LNG projects as profitable ventures that can also strengthen America’s position in global competition for resources.

While warning of resurging Islamist militancy, the strategy stresses that the United States should avoid any long-term military commitments on the continent.

Europe

The document released Friday by the White House is sure to roil long-standing US allies in Europe for its scathing critiques of their migration and free speech policies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.

It reinforces, in sometimes chilly and bellicose terms, Trump’s "America First" philosophy, which favors nonintervention overseas, questions decades of strategic relationships and prioritizes US interests above all.

The US strategy "is motivated above all by what works for America — or, in two words, 'America First,'" the document said.

This is the first national security strategy, a document the administration is required by law to release, since the Republican president's return to office in January.

It is a stark break from the course set by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration, which sought to reinvigorate alliances after many were rattled in Trump's first term and to check a more assertive Russia.

The United States is seeking to broker an end Russia’s nearly 4-year war in Ukraine, a goal that the national security strategy says is in America's vital interests.

But the document makes clear the US wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending that war is a core US interest in order to "reestablish strategic stability with Russia."

The document also is critical of America's European allies. They have found themselves sometimes at odds this year with Trump's shifting approaches to the Russia-Ukraine war, and are facing domestic economic challenges as well an existential crisis, according to the US.

Economic stagnation in Europe "is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure," the strategy document said.

The US suggests that Europe is being enfeebled by its immigration policies, declining birthrates, "censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” and a "loss of national identities and self-confidence."

"Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies," the document said. "Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence."

Despite Trump's "America First" maxim, his administration has carried out a series of military strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean while weighing possible military action in Venezuela to pressure President Nicolás Maduro.

The moves are part of what the national security strategy lays out as "a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine." The 1823 Monroe Doctrine, formulated by President James Monroe, was originally aimed at opposing any European meddling in the Western Hemisphere and was used to justify US military interventions in Latin America.

Trump's strategy document says the US is reimagining its military footprint in the region even after building up the largest military presence there in generations.

That means, for instance, "targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades," it says.