The UK and Trump’s National Security Strategy

26 Jan 2026 01:22 PM

Europe will require new leadership as the US tilts from law to power.

The current Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy can best be described as a sober look in the mirror by the American administration to realistically observe the state of the nation and its readiness to assert global influence. Having looked in the mirror, the strategy suggests the United States needs a major make-over. Put in that context, there is a framework of logic to the new National Security Strategy that seeks to reinvigorate American capacity to address the nation’s most fundamental security interests, to assert global influence, and to build stronger alliances to exercise global leadership together.

Whether the administration follows the strategy in its international undertakings is another matter. Donald Trump has been described as a President who seeks under all circumstances to preserve as much decision space for the oval office as possible. Translation? His decisions may be mercurial and will not always align with the strategy. But the strategy should nonetheless serve as a general guide to how the broader administration will conduct policy. Now, having had time to process and reject the some of the strategy’s clearly objectionable rhetoric, it is time to ask what is the Trump administration’s strategic framework, and what are the implications for the United Kingdom and for Europe?

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