The past two months have seen much of the world coping with surprise and confusion after a series of lightning moves by US President Donald Trump’s administration, from the rendition of Venezuela’s head of state Nicolas Maduro to the attempt to force Denmark into handing over Greenland and the seizure of a Russian oil tanker on the high seas.
Yet these actions, and others, adhere closely to the US National Security Strategy (NSS) released by the White House in November 2025. This blueprint represents the views not just of Mr Trump, but key administration figures like Stephen Miller and Michael Anton, who heavily influence both policy execution priorities and the geopolitical imagination of the Maga movement.
The NSS is something unprecedented in 75 years; it explicitly declared worldwide American hegemony a dangerous and unsustainable fantasy. Instead, the US under Mr Trump is limiting its goals to dominance in the western hemisphere while working to deny unfriendly powers’ dominance over other regions, with the Indo-Pacific and Europe being the most important.
This old-fashioned, balance-of-power approach relies on regional allies, who are also expected to align with Mr Trump’s economic priorities. But Washington will not just be focused on common threats or the financial bottom line.
As the balancer of last resort, the US intends to use its power to actively manage the resolutions of conflicts in every region. Mr Trump believes that stability, profit and American power can form a mutually reinforcing upward cycle that benefits all. Put another way, even the materialisation of the long-demanded Nobel Peace Prize would be unlikely to end the President’s pursuit of ‘Pax Trumpiana’.
Naturally, it is worth closely examining what this programme intends for Asia in general, and South Asia in particular.
The most important change is that for the first time in a decade, China has not been framed as a challenger in need of containment, an irreconcilable ideological enemy or a threat to global order. Instead, it’s described as a principal actor, with whom stable relations could be possible, once the US has deterred Chinese practices that the administration believes undermine the economic health of America and its partners.
This worldview makes issues like trade balances, supply chains and investment flows far more important than, say, a Cold War-style competition for client states or the bigger nuclear arsenal.
The NSS has implications for US partnerships in the region. For example, as much as the US in a previous era might have reserved its greatest rewards for counter-terrorism assistance or operational basing arrangements, today its securing access to rare earth mining deposits, and investments into US companies to fuel the country’s lead in AI.
Nevertheless, there are still a few clear strategic military priorities. The US intends to ensure that China can be deterred from using force against Taiwan and, secondly, that it cannot close the sea lanes through the South China Sea or Indian Ocean. These are tasks where support from the rest of the “Quad” – India, Japan and Australia – is explicitly mentioned.
Strikingly, the rationale presented for these missions is not treaty obligations or the defence of democracy, but rather the impact of disruption or coercion on the US and global economy.
Canny operators like Pakistan’s Chief of the Army Staff, Asim Munir, have grasped the fundamental shift in Washington’s thinking, and Islamabad has clearly benefited from this nimble adaptation. It’s clear that the close relationship with China will pose no problems if Pakistan continues to demonstrate its active embrace of Mr Trump’s priorities ranging from his Board of Peace project to critical minerals.
Although it’s clear that defence collaboration between India and the US will remain important to both sides, India’s overall position is much harder to navigate. For one thing, any use of force against Pakistan now would bring intrusive efforts at mediation that undermines both Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s prestige and the security strategy that his adviser Ajit Doval has pursued since 2014.
India’s growing importance as a global player means that, like the EU and China, it is more likely, not less, to find itself in conflict with one of Mr Trump’s many plans and peeves. That in turn means that, just like China and the EU, India will have to find some form of economic leverage over the US that Mr Trump takes seriously. Otherwise, it will have to find a large carrot.
Another issue is that the NSS unambiguously declares the era of mass migration to the US closed. Despite the visibility of Indian-origin figures like Kash Patel at the FBI and Second Lady Usha Vance, there is significant anti-Indian sentiment brewing within sections of the “Magasphere” that are deeply uncomfortable with non-Christians. This has turned what used to be areas of alignment, such as India’s export of talent to Silicon Valley and the healthcare industry into something that is at best neutral, or even a subject to be avoided.
Despite the difficulties being experienced during this transitional period, the differences between Delhi and Washington pale in comparison to the intra-civilisational conflict over values that the NSS describes between the US and EU. In fact, leaked text from classified early drafts of the NSS even proposed replacing the G7 with the “Core Five”, which includes the US, China, Russia, India and Japan.
Obviously, with an individual as elemental as Mr Trump, the 2025 NSS is unlikely to be the last word on these matters. But on the other hand, the coherence and influence of the Maga vision of global order imagined here cannot be overlooked as the region’s capitals attempt to find a way forward in this strange new world.
