A fever does not go away by breaking the thermometer. The Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) has provoked visceral, defensive reactions within the European Union. Yet far from being a provocation, it functions as a mirror: the United States is looking after its own interests first, but it also holds up to us a reflection of our vulnerabilities – with the bluntness of plain speaking, yet also with the loyalty of an ally reminding us of our responsibilities.
By Samuel Furfari Professor of Energy Geopolitics and retired European Commission official
The 2025 NSS[1] openly and unapologetically recentres on American national interests. It announces to the world an explicit, avowed, and hardened return to the logic of the Monroe Doctrine, which it calls a ‘corollary of the Monroe Doctrine’. It also clearly grounds its priorities in a strategic vision of abundant, cheap energy – a concept that used to be the EU’s as well before its decarbonisation policy.
Geopolitics without the word
When you finish reading these twenty-nine pages, one question arises: ‘Did I see the word geopolitics?’ You reread and search: you do not find it – and that is no accident. The vocabulary of this 2025 national security strategy reveals the doctrinal recompositing underway in the United States. The text is highly pragmatic and domestically focused, to the point that the rather technical term ‘geopolitics’ is effectively banished.
The term ‘geopolitics’ (‘geopolitics/geopolitical’) does not appear, even though the content is eminently geopolitical in both inspiration and structure. Since the end of the Cold War, earlier NSS documents freely used the vocabulary of ‘geopolitics’, in a rhetoric that aspired to be both liberal and strategic. The 2025 document explicitly breaks with that tradition: it criticises elites said to have sought a ‘permanent domination of the world’ and to have moored U.S. policy to international institutions deemed transnational and corrosive of sovereignty. This is, therefore, a reaction against a language perceived as technocratic or academic – a register to which the term ‘geopolitics’ precisely belongs.
Yet the text explicitly reasons in terms of power relations, control of spaces, value chains, migration, energy, and ‘balance of power’—in other words, through a typically geopolitical lens – while refusing the term itself. The preferred vocabulary is that of national sovereignty, ‘America First,’ rejection of ‘global domination’, and distrust of international organisations. In short, it embraces geopolitics of power while presenting it as ‘national common sense’ rather than as an intellectual discipline. The aim is to speak to the domestic public: rivalries of power are described, but without the jargon of think tanks and the post–Cold War ‘grand strategist’ tradition.
The absence of the word ‘geopolitics’ signals a political choice to break with the language of globalist elites and multilateral institutions. The 2025 NSS practices geopolitics in fact – Western Hemisphere priority, rebalancing vis-à-vis China, pressure on the EU, energy as an instrument of power – while relabelling this approach as the ‘protection of vital interests’ and ‘America First’ to make it politically acceptable to the American public. For the analyst, it is indeed a substantively geopolitical text, but wrapped in the rhetoric of sovereignty and domestic security rather than in the classic vocabulary of geopolitics.
By contrast, the word ‘hemisphere’ appears around a dozen times. The ‘hemisphere’ becomes a structuring concept: it does not denote a broadened ‘West’ that includes the EU, but the American sphere in the Monroe tradition, centred on securing U.S. territory and the political‑economic management of its continental environment. The ‘Western Hemisphere’ is mobilised as a priority space to be ‘taken back in hand’, in the face of incursions by outside powers and flows deemed destabilising (migration, drug trafficking, the takeover of strategic infrastructure). This places the 2025 NSS squarely in the continuity of the Monroe Doctrine while hardening its operational content. The recurring reference to ‘our hemisphere’ enshrines a quasi‑proprietary view of this space, conceived as a precondition for America’s global freedom of action: pre-eminence must first be assured in the Americas, and only then projected toward the Indo‑Pacific, Europe, or the Middle East – and, a fortiori, toward Africa, the neglected stepchild of this strategy, to which less than a page is devoted.
Sovereignty first – even in the EU
The term ‘sovereignty’ and its derivatives appear 15 times. The 2025 NSS’s insistence on sovereignty stems first from the Trump Administration’s intent to reassert the primacy of the American nation‑state in the face of what is perceived as an erosion of political authority by multilateral institutions, binding international agreements, and the expansion of global governance norms. This rhetoric fits within an ‘America First’ vision in which national security is no longer understood as the collective management of the liberal international order, but as the protection of a national political, economic, and cultural space from external constraints deemed illegitimate – be they international organisations, agreements like the Paris Accord, overly demanding allies, or rival powers. This doctrinal refocusing has a dual objective: domestically, to speak to an electoral base that sees institutionalised globalisation as the cause of deindustrialisation, the weakening of the middle classes, and the dilution of national identities (a phenomenon also observed within the EU’s population); externally, to reconfigure the hierarchy of U.S. commitments by legitimising the reduction of ‘global obligations’ in favour of defending the American economy, reindustrialisation, and control over strategic value chains, particularly vis‑à‑vis China.
In this perspective, sovereignty becomes a pivotal concept that simultaneously delegitimises European demands on climate, digital regulation, or social norms – portrayed as instruments of ‘normative capture’ of American power – and justifies a highly critical discourse toward the European Union, accused of sacrificing national sovereignties to a supranational apparatus that weakens its defensive capacity and economic dynamism. The proliferation of the term in the 2025 NSS thus serves as an ideological marker: it signals an explicit return to a Westphalian and hierarchical conception of international order, structured by a revisited Monroe Doctrine and the ‘Western Hemisphere’ as a strategic priority, while giving the U.S. executive branch a legitimising language with which to resist allied pressure, recast alliances, and ultimately subordinate any international cooperation to the national interest as unilaterally defined by the White House.
Notably, the multilateral institution par excellence – the United Nations – is not even mentioned in the 2025 NSS. This absence is no oversight, but a profound disavowal of multilateralism deemed unproductive, even counterproductive. Its invisibility reflects an implicit diagnosis: far from being the operational pivot of global governance, the UN has locked itself into a normative and procedural inflation that has neither prevented security crises (Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa) nor ensured the effectiveness of the regimes it promotes, first among them the climate COP process. In the eyes of U.S. strategists, the COPs exemplify a system where ideological climate‑ism, bureaucracy, and anti‑Americanism accumulate to yield ‘net zero’ commitments that are costly to Western economies, impose no symmetrical constraints on major emerging powers, and have little real connection to the requirements of power, energy security, and competitiveness. In this context, the 2025 NSS reaffirms the primacy of the nation‑state, the centrality of sovereignty, and a preferred recourse to bilateral arrangements or ad hoc coalitions – relegating the UN to a peripheral forum, useful at best as a communications venue, but no longer necessary to legitimise or conduct the effective exercise of American power.
This lexical choice is anything but a trivial. By rejecting the abstract language of geopolitics in Favour of a register of sovereignty, internal security, and protection of the ‘hemisphere’, the document seeks to anchor a power strategy in the rhetoric of national common sense addressed first to the domestic audience. It is precisely this tension between geopolitical substance and sovereigntist storytelling that makes the 2025 NSS a hinge document in which the United States fully assumes the logic of power while discarding the universalist and institutional language that has underpinned it since the end of the Cold War.
From Monroe to technopower
The new U.S. strategy also rests on technology, a word that appears 13 times on this 29‑page text. This noun is not an accessory; technology is the backbone of American power. Washington proclaims an ambition to remain the most advanced nation scientifically and technologically, to protect its intellectual property, and to make its standards prevail – first in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum technology. The NSS proposes reindustrialisation targeted at critical and emerging sectors, backed by tariff tools, the reshoring of value chains, and the securing of critical minerals, all under continuous monitoring by the intelligence community. ‘Energy dominance’ (to be developed in a second article) is presented as a technological force multiplier, since abundant, cheap energy must ‘help maintain the edge of frontier technologies like AI.’
In 2025 NSS, critical minerals emerge as a discrete yet central pivot of the strategy for technological power. At the intersection of reindustrialisation, supply‑chain security, and geopolitical competition, access to these minerals is crucial. The document explicitly links secure and ‘independent’ access to strategic raw materials – from ores to finished products – to military capacity, economic resilience, and the goal of no longer depending on foreign powers for essential inputs.
With this in view, Washington intends both to broaden U.S. access to critical minerals and to counter predatory economic practices that seek to lock up these resources for the benefit of adversaries. To that end, it plans to use trade diplomacy, tariffs, public finance, and economic intelligence offensively to monitor supply chains and reduce vulnerabilities. Africa and the wider Global South are integrated into this approach not as objects of aid, but as targeted investment arenas in energy and critical minerals for the benefit of American companies. The objective is to outcompete established external suppliers, more tightly bind these countries to the dollar and to U.S. technologies, and turn the minerals question into a durable instrument of geopolitical anchoring to a U.S.‑led order. U.S. officials posted abroad are encouraged to play a proactive role in helping American firms invest in these mining operations.
On the military front, investment in artificial intelligence, quantum, and autonomy; a revitalised industrial base; and public‑private cooperation in cybersecurity is meant to sustain a deterrent grounded in technological superiority. Finally, the United States seeks to convert this led into influence through standards and through export‑control coalitions and high‑tech cooperation that condition access to markets and capital. In other words, the ‘power of standards’ and of technological ecosystems becomes the keystone of a geo‑economic ‘America First.’
The EU: cherished ally, but told to grow up
The section devoted to the European Union is titled ‘Promoting Europe’s Greatness.’ Washington says it loves Europe, wants its prosperity, and seeks a reliable partner to meet global challenges ahead. However, the EU is not the centre of the strategy, contrary to what some suggest: 868 words are devoted to it, compared with nearly 2,000 to Asia – clearly indicating the order of priorities.
The tone regarding the EU is rough. The document depicts a continent weakened by mass migration, demographic aging, certain climate policies, and a growing control over speech and thought – to the point of evoking a risk of ‘civilisational erasure’ if nothing changes. This stern warning, however, fits within a coherent logic: the United States wants partners who share responsibility for their own defence, energy security, and prosperity. For its own commerce, it needs a prosperous EU.
At the same time, the 2025 NSS professes an explicit attachment to Europe, described as ‘strategically and culturally vital’ and a pillar of transatlantic prosperity. Washington says it wants to ‘help the EU’ become stronger, preserve its freedom and security, and recover its civilisational confidence (‘America is, understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent – and, of course, to Great Britain and Ireland’). But that support comes with an expectation of power: an EU that is economically more robust, more autonomous in military terms, and an active partner in preventing any hostile domination of the continent. The insistence on a ‘strong EU’ that is autonomous in defence and not dominated by an adversary suggests, implicitly, a durable desire for co‑prosperity and co‑security with the EU.
However, this goodwill is accompanied by scepticism toward the European Union as a transnational body, seen as infringing on sovereignty. Trump’s America favours an EU of nations – united by interests, exchanges, and defence – rather than by institutional integration. In short, the strategy praises the EU and the transatlantic relationship while conditioning this ‘capital of affection’ on an EU that is more self‑confident, sovereign, and contributory to the common effort.
This worrisome situation is also acknowledged in other quarters. Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, America’s largest bank, offers a severe assessment of the EU, which he now regards as the weak link of the West. In his view, the real danger to the Western world comes neither from China, nor from artificial intelligence, nor even from cyberattacks or Russian threats, but from the EU itself, weakened economically and strategically. As the Trump Administration, he believes this fragility exceeds the regional frame and directly affects U.S. interests, because a weakened European ally reduces America’s capacity to defend its own interests effectively. He points to the EU’s declining attractiveness for businesses, investment, and innovation, despite its achievements in social protection.
European capitals have not reacted in unison. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, hailed a strategy that ‘only tells the truth, ‘About the EU’s weaknesses. Latvia calls for ‘reading the NSS as a whole’ and for ‘translating words into action’ on defence. In Warsaw or Athens, there is an effort to reconcile attachment to the American security umbrella with the strengthening of a credible European pillar.
By contrast, Brussels (EU institutions), Paris, and Berlin denounce language they deem offensive and reject any external interference in the EU’s internal politics. Yet if it listens to its own citizens, the EU knows that its political and energy project has reached its limits, and that its security model has become untenable without a refoundation.
Human rights: strategy in Washington, ideology in Brussels
This preference for an EU of nations reflects a broader principle that Donald Trump intends to apply everywhere: the primacy of nations. According to the NSS, the fundamental unit of political life remains the nation‑state. It is ‘natural and right’ for each country to put its own interests first and protect its sovereignty. Washington will encourage its partners to do the same, while opposing the encroachments of the most intrusive transnational organisations.
In the Middle East, this logic is coupled with an explicit refusal to impose Western models: the United States intends to turn the page on injunctions to abandon traditions and historical forms of government, to ‘encourage and applaud’ reforms when they arise organically, and to ‘accept the region, its leaders, and its nations as they are’, cooperating first on shared interests. This is not the same as renouncing any discourse on freedoms, but the robust defence of ‘fundamental freedoms’ is largely reserved for democracies and U.S. allies, not for a universal export of norms to the Middle East – and by extension to Africa, where many countries hold ethical values are quite different from those prevailing in Paris. In this context, it is reasonable to infer a reduced willingness ‘to impose a Western way of life’ and a priority placed on the political and cultural sovereignty of states.
This is the practical application of a ‘flexible realism’ aiming to establish peaceful and commercial relations without imposing ‘democratic or social changes’ contrary to local histories and cultures. In other words, from the Western Hemisphere to the Indo‑Pacific via the Middle East, the strategy privileges the internationalism of sovereignties: state‑to‑state relations based on explicit interests, selective cooperation, and norms that first strengthen nations’ ability to decide for themselves – while reserving the vigorous defence of ‘fundamental freedoms’ for the democratic world and our allies.
Migration and security: the EU with its back to the wall
On migration, the NSS even states that ‘the era of mass migration is over’. This position resonates with the concerns of European public opinion. Refusing to act, as part of the Brussels – Strasbourg elite does, only deepens the malaise. Italy and Hungary bear witness: their frontal resistance to the Commission’s injunctions illustrates the fracture between the EU rooted in realities and an ideological EU. Hungary pays one million euros per day, on top of an initial fine of 200 million euros, for refusing to dance to Ursula von der Leyen’s tune. I have just returned from Budapest, where the contrast with Brussels – in the streets and in the metro – is striking.
According to the NSS, reaching 5% of GDP is a political condition for remaining credible within NATO. Strategic autonomy is not synonymous with anti‑Americanism, but with political maturity: European sovereignty is proven first through the capacity to defend oneself, not through the proclamation of new ideologies.
The lesson of the NSS is crystal clear: believing that a disarmed continent, dependent on energy, mired in an economic crisis, and hampered by its own bureaucracy could weigh against powerful states is naïve. To achieve a genuine renaissance, we must return to the spirit of the pre‑Maastricht European Community, privileging cooperation over ideological compulsion.
The NSS shows that the EU was once founded on peace, reconciliation, and prosperity – made possible by abundant, cheap energy. Today the Union has drifted from that founding spirit, forgetting prosperity and the improvement of its people’s standard of living, as stipulated in Article 1 of the Euratom Treaty – a text many of the Commission would like to see disappear. This situation has bred popular disenchantment: citizens have understood that the Commission cares more about globalisation and various ideologies, particularly the climate one, than about their purchasing power.
As the Book of Proverbs reminds us, ‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. ’ By shaking the EU, the United States is providing a salutary service: it reminds us that freedom of expression, sovereignty, security, energy, and prosperity are inseparable. Breaking the thermometer to ignore the fever will not make the EU stronger.
In this first part, we have focused on the foundations of the 2025 NSS, highlighting the internal coherence of this strategic vision and the hierarchy it establishes among instruments of power – diplomacy, defence, sovereignty, economy, and technology. While energy clearly occupies a central place, serving as the real through‑line of American strategy, a detailed analysis will be the subject of a separate essay devoted to energy dimensions and their geopolitical implications.
Samuel Furfari
Last book: The truth about COPs. Thirty years of illusions.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
