What does Trump's new US security strategy mean for Asia?

The new National Security Strategy (NSS) released by the Trump administration last Thursday sent shock waves through Europe, putting into writing what amounts to a fundamental shift in trans-Atlantic ties.

Regarding Asia, the strategy looks more consistent with previous policies, and includes familiar tropes emphasising the importance of a "free and open" Indo-Pacific and working with a "network of alliances" to contain and manage China.

But the 2025 NSS does reveal a shift in how President Donald Trump's second administration sees the US-China rivalry, framing the "ultimate stakes" for the future of Asia as centered on business deals, securing trade routes and "maintaining economic preeminence".

Even as Trump's chaotic tariff policy has rattled US partners in Asia, the new security document argues that economic stability, with the US in the lead, is the best basis for deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.

"We will rebalance America's economic relationship with China, prioritising reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence … Our ultimate goal is to lay the foundation for long-term economic vitality," it says.

The strategy outlines how the US can leverage business, technological and military power to bring both allies and adversaries into line with US interests, and is loaded with "America First" rhetoric.

Who needs democracy?

Gone is the emphasis from Trump's first security strategy in 2017 on "great power competition," which warned China and Russia both were seeking to "shape a world antithetical to US values and interests." Also missing in the new 33-page document is the long-running portrayal of China as a systemic rival pushing an alternative world order.

The document is instead full of praise for Trump, claiming the US president "single-handedly" reversed decades of "mistaken American assumptions" about China, namely the idea that free trade would lead Beijing toward adopting liberal values.

It is also packed with far-right talking points, railing against "sovereignty-sapping incursions" of "intrusive transnational organisations."

"It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty," it says.

The US will avoid "imposing democratic or other social change" on other countries while pursuing "good and peaceful commercial relations."

"The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations," the document adds.

It is a markedly different tone from the 2017 NSS that singled out China for "expanding its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others."

"The democracy agenda is clearly over," Emily Harding, director of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, writes in her analysis of the document.

"Beijing will love the explicit declaration that the US preference is noninterference in other nations' affairs and the clear statement about respecting states' sovereignty," she says.

Taiwan's microchips on an island chain

When China talks about sovereignty, it is often in reference to Taiwan, a democratic island claimed by Beijing, which has vowed to "reunite" Taiwan with the mainland, by using force if necessary.

The NSS devotes a considerable amount of space to Taiwan. And although the new US security document depicts the importance of Taiwan as essentially a floating semiconductor factory with a strategic position in the South China Sea, Taipei was still happy to see the US saying it will deter a cross-strait conflict.

"Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority," the document says. "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."

Although the US does not formally recognize Taiwan, Washington is the island's main security benefactor.

There has been some consternation among experts that the new security strategy has softened its tone, by saying that Washington "does not support," rather than "opposes" unilateral change, as had been written previously. However, this is a far cry from speculative fears that the Trump administration would cave in to Beijing's wishes and declare "opposition" to Taiwanese independence.

Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo on Saturday welcomed the NSS as "vigorously promoting that the countries in the Indo-Pacific region work together to establish an effective form of collective deterrence."

"The US side should ... handle the Taiwan question with the utmost prudence, and stop indulging and supporting 'Taiwan independence' separatist forces in seeking independence by force or resisting reunification by force," Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Monday.

Pay up and join in

With Taiwan's strategically critical position on the South China Sea's shipping lanes having "major implications for the US economy," the NSS warns a "potentially hostile power" could "impose a toll system" on the waterway or even "close and reopen it at will."

Here is where the strategy calls on US partners in Asia to "step up and spend—and more importantly do—much more for collective defense."

Japan and South Korea are briefly mentioned here in the context of increasing spending and defense capabilities to "deter adversaries and protect the first island chain," which is a strategic term describing Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines as forming a barrier keeping China's navy out of the open Pacific.

However, the threat to Japan and South Korea from North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program is left out of the document.

Also missing is the role of the Philippines as a key strategic partner, which frequently hosts US military assets and has a decades-long mutual defense treaty with the US.

India's only mention in the document also comes in the context of Indo-Pacific deterrence through economic cooperation. By improving "commercial (and other) relations with India" the US aims to "encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security." This also includes India's continued participation in the "Quad," a US-led regional strategic forum that includes Japan and Australia.

In one of the many apparently contradictory statements found in the NSS, the document also calls for the US to "consolidate" its "alliance system into an economic group" via "private sector-led economic engagement" — contrary to the Trump administration's distaste for multilateral forums like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

Huong Le Thu, deputy director for Asia at the International Crisis Group, told DW News last week that the document makes it clear the Trump administration believes "keeping an economic edge is the way to deter conflicts in the Indo Pacific."

She added most US Asian allies are "ambivalent" about the document overall, as it did not contain any major surprises.

Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, China expert David Sacks criticized the Indo-Pacific strategy as too "China-centric."

"Other countries in the region are valued insofar as they can help the United States win an economic competition with China and deter a conflict with Beijing," he writes.

"The Philippines, a US treaty ally, is not even mentioned. Nor are the Pacific Islands or most countries in Southeast Asia. A strategy that played to US strengths, though, would make US allies and partners the starting point and nest China within a broader Indo-Pacific strategy."

Trump's 'Monroe doctrine'

However, perhaps more concerning for Beijing than Washington's continuation of Indo Pacific deterrence, should be the security document's central theme, a strategic reorientation towards the Western Hemisphere, with an accompanying pledge to curb the activities of "non-Hemispheric competitors," i.e. China.

It emphasizes that the US will leverage its power to form alliances in Latin America contingent on "winding down adversarial outside influence — from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets."

"This makes explicit a long-running reality of the US competition with China: Beijing seeks to distract the United States from maintaining the status quo in the Indo-Pacific by pursuing adversarial activities in the Western Hemisphere," writes Alexander B. Gray, a nonresident senior fellow with the GeoStrategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

The NSS is not a legally binding document and serves more as a signal to domestic audiences, allies and adversaries than a prediction of action. It nevertheless illustrates the transactional direction US foreign policy is heading.

Harding from CSIS writes that although Trump was elected on such promises, "today's self-interested choices may lead to a far lonelier, weaker, more fractured future."

Wesley Rahn is an editor and reporter focusing on geopolitics and current affairs.

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on DW, and is published by special syndication arrangement.