Trump recasts US allies as tools to counter China in security playbook: analysts
SCMP
The strategy urges wealthy allies to increase defence spending, align more closely with Washington on measures such as export controls, and take greater responsibility for their regions, a shift that recasts long-standing alliances as tools in great-power competition.
The 33-page document declares that the era of the US “propping up the entire world order like Atlas” is over.
“The United States must work with our treaty allies and partners – who together add another US$35 trillion in economic power to our own US$30 trillion national economy (together constituting more than half the world economy) – to counteract predatory economic practices,” it states.
Its goal is explicit: “to help safeguard our prime position in the world economy and ensure that allied economies do not become subordinate to any competing power.”
It adds, “We will also work to align the actions of our allies and partners with our joint interest in preventing domination by any single competitor nation.”
The strategy identifies China as a near-peer competitor and emphasises US efforts to counter its economic, technological and military influence.
Experts see this as a dramatic shift. In a social media post, Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute highlighted a “big shift” in the “language on allies”, observing that “allies are depicted as a means to an end”.
He emphasised the centrality of China in the strategy, saying it remains the “biggest focus in Asia (and elsewhere)” and that the “Trump team [is] clearly seeing all of Asia through the lens of China”.
Cooper also highlighted omissions, noting, “Asia gets the most pages, but nearly all are about China. US treaty ally Philippines isn’t even mentioned! ... Pacific Islands are also nowhere to be seen.”
The national security strategy’s broader message to allies is uncompromising: “We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defence.”
The strategy also lays out clear incentives. Nations that “willingly take more responsibility for security in their neighbourhoods and align their export controls with ours” will receive “more favourable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing and defence procurement”.
Evan Feigenbaum of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace described the strategy in a post on social media as showing “a lot of preening about American primacy”, adding that it “will leave many in Asia cold at a time when the US has withdrawn from rule setting, refused to forge (much less actually join) regional trade pacts, calls Asian allies predators, and treats allies largely as instrumental players in a US proxy competition with China”.
In Friday’s document, the US calls on India to contribute more to Indo-Pacific security and work with other allies “in preventing domination by any single competitor nation” and to “enlist” New Delhi, among other allies, “to cement and improve our joint positions in the Western Hemisphere and, with regard to critical minerals, in Africa”.
The transactional approach is not limited to Asia.
The document also scrutinises US allies in Europe. Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, noted on social media that the language “reflects an administration that believes a weak EU is in America’s interests”.
The strategy criticises Europe’s migration and defence policies and suggests that the US should prioritise “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”.
It warns that “their economic decline is eclipsed only by the real and stark prospect of civilizational erasure. If present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years”, underscoring a strategic scepticism towards even America’s oldest allies.
Trump’s strategy plan has also drawn immediate domestic criticism.
Representative Gregory Meeks, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, condemned the document in a statement as emblematic of a “cynical, dog-eat-dog philosophy” and said it signals to allies that “the US is no longer a reliable partner”.
Meeks, a Democrat from New York, argued that the document “discards decades of values-based US leadership in favour of a craven, unprincipled world view”.
He added that the administration’s “America first” framing “is not a strategy” and “disregards the country’s democratic values, network of like-minded allies and multilateral institutions that have historically supported US global leadership”.