‘National’ Security Strategy?
J. R. Sommer critically reviews the newly released US National Security Strategy, arguing that its elements of realism accurately diagnose globalism and mass migration, but ultimately reinforce the same materialist paradigm of nation-states connected to the spiritual problem underlying civilizational crisis.
Imagine someone, eyes wide after having sliced a carotid artery in a fit of suicidal hysteria, panicking to plug the hole and stop the bleeding. The damage has been done; there’s no stitching it shut now. This is the current state of the West.
The White House released its congressionally mandated National Security Strategy (NSS) on December 5th, a day after President Trump presided over the ratification of an “historic” accord between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. While the NSS is dated “November 2025,” its release was presumably delayed until Rwanda and DRC could formally accept the treaty—since the peace is specifically mentioned in the document. The peace, which is hardly settled amidst fighting that has raged since the deal was first agreed to in June 2025, was formalized at the newly minted Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. It remains to be seen if the deal endures or is, as some have said, only a patchwork designed to favor immediate economic interests over lasting stability (“Everybody’s going to make a lot of money,” President Trump insisted). Notably, the NSS also highlights both the Israel-Iran and Gazan wars as being “ended.” The Israel-Iran fight is anything but over, with fighting likely to resume within the next year, while Israel and Hamas haven’t stopped trading uneven barbs since the nominal ceasefire in October 2025.
All of this to say that the cosmetic appeal of Americanism is on full display—and the living corpse continues to bleed out.
Digging into the NSS, we find much to admire. First, it is well written — clear, concise, and appropriately urgent. Next, we find a refreshing tone and focus that hasn’t been present in the last several versions. Thematically, it says many things a people beset by globalism would welcome. I suspect its principal author is the Honorable Elbridge Colby, Under Secretary of War for Policy, whose grandfather was a onetime Director of Central Intelligence, and whose father was an investment banker. But such documents are, if not written by committee, certainly proofread by committee, so we can be sure the overall geopolitical-realist tenor accords with the administration as a whole.
Observing this realism, a colleague of mine seemed convinced the NSS was “Mearsheimerian”—i.e., in the spirit of John Mearsheimer, the structural realist who has been highly critical of the postwar world’s globalist hue. However, Mearsheimer has been nothing if not doubly critical of the “Israel Lobby” and its overwhelming influence on American foreign policy; meanwhile, the NSS closes with the proud proclamation that “America will always have core interests in ensuring … that Israel remain secure.” Perhaps we can conclude that the NSS is not precisely Mearsheimerian after all. This, of course, adds to the admirable veneer: But if it is not genuinely realist—in the sense of favoring competition over cooperation, even among the closest allies—then what is it?
If it is admirable, then why? What are its goals? And if it is only a panicked spectacle, then what can be done?
The NSS begins auspiciously enough, calling out “elites” who acted on behalf of a globalist world order instead of national interest:
After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests. Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to [forever shoulder] global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest.Most globalism skeptics swoon when they hear such talk. And why not? It captures perfectly what many see as a crippling foreign-policy problem: crushing the citizens of countries for the benefit of a sometimes shadowy, sometimes puppet-on-a-string elite.
But there is a seed of trouble inherent to the statement: the self-interest of elites is criticized while national self-interest is implied to be good. Elites are always seen as canny and cosmopolitan—in a word, globalist. National interest, or nationalism, has its root in blood—but this can hardly be considered the case now. As it exists now, national interest hardly means more than the economic interest of a legally bound collection of atomized individuals. Many subsequent NSS statements attest to the economic focus of the American strategy. Money, of course, has no borders, and a borderless basis for any state—national or global—means a borderless manifestation. Thus, it becomes easy to see why, no matter the talk or appearance, globalist money tints the character of national action, which is why the talk can only be seen as empty, as veneer for a more sinister reality.
What could the reality be? The NSS declares “the era of mass migration” to be over:
“We want a world in which migration is not merely ‘orderly’ but one in which sovereign countries work together to stop rather than facilitate destabilizing population flows, and have full control over whom they do and do not admit.”
Many Westerners might like to hear this and rightfully so; after all, it is the West that has been inundated with non-Europeans for generations, and it is the West that stands to lose its “national” character for good. National must be in quotes here because we already know the “nation” has passed. Liberal-Marxism, in its past and present forms, has intentionally diluted the blood of the nations it hardly even pretended to consider. Whether the intention was economically or spiritually driven, its application and effect were and are ideological: If truly national communities are disintegrated, then borderless money exchange can direct populations more easily; moreover, those who manage the money can model corporate states as they see fit.
Subsequent to its denunciation of mass migration, the NSS is candid about the future:
“… it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”
Principal among the “certain NATO members” are the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. This is not a question; this is reality and there is no reversing it. Or should we expect generationally demoralized Westerners (i.e., people of European descent) to suddenly develop the spiritual anchor necessary to produce viable and empowered offspring in the midst of a socioeconomic structure that disincentivizes procreation among productive classes?
Offering rhetoric about the “end of mass migration” is much too little, far too late.
“We want Europe to remain European,” continues the NSS, no doubt thinking of the West as a whole, “[we want it] to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”
Francis Yockey considered the two World Wars to actually be civil wars, and indeed they were. Blood fought blood—and for what? For money; for geopolitical and ideological jockeying that would sustain or establish more enduring markets. So much for “civilizational self-confidence”—such a thing tends to dissolve when money replaces spirit, and blood is indeed spiritual, as a people’s core.
But why regain such confidence anyway? Naturally, it is to enhance economics. The message is: Ward off civilizational disintegration to best maintain the capitalist infrastructure. Ultimately, there are three main foci of the NSS: tech, defense, and capital. The three are so entwined that the more a modern state has of one, the more there will be of the others. Defense, its technological basis, and civilizational integrity all coalesce into the principal focus of increasing capital.
Yet, bloodless capital cares only for the integrity of its future preponderance; thus, despite rhetorical flourishes, only money spans generations. “Cultivating American industrial strength must become the highest priority of national economic policy,” reads the NSS in the context of a defense apology. And perhaps workers might still be empowered with upward mobility in an exploitative system; one can only hope. But to what end? To the end of expropriating resources (“everybody’s going to make a lot of money”) and enriching those most deeply entrenched with the governing class; hence the paramountcy of “reviving” (though it never died) the “defense industrial base.” In short, more defense tech is needed to secure the resources necessary to improve the quality of life for, not so much all people, but those at the top of the heap.
And the top of the heap is reserved for those with the most capital. Quoting the Declaration of Independence, the NSS attests to a nation’s entitlement “by the laws of nature and nature’s God to a separate and equal station with respect to one another”—i.e., to sovereignty. The United States asserts its “predisposition to non-interventionism,” but this only goes so far as “interests” will allow:
“For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible. Yet this predisposition should set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention.”
This is aspirational and certainly would be admirable if it described a future that could possibly be any different from the past. Meddling, intervention—such is the nature of exploitative systems. History has shown that “national” sovereignty ends where capital begins.
Invoking geopolitical realism again, the NSS envisions
“good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”
Should a state or non-state actor stray too far from US “interests,” it will be immediately labeled and portrayed as a terroristic threat. Disrupt economic growth, upend usurious channels and the predisposition to non-interventionism must stand aside. This is the “flexible realism” of the modern state—same as it ever was.
In its description of a new “balance of power,” the NSS affirms:
“The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries.”
This is significant because, later in the document, a former “rules-based international order” is decried; but a rules-based international order—one in which the US must remain dominant—is exactly what’s described!
Although lip service is paid to respecting state sovereignty and rejecting “the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, [the United States] must [nevertheless] prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others.” This defines an international order—one which is headed by the world’s greatest trove of capital. And, if the point weren’t clear enough, the NSS offers something of an ultimatum:
“The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world.”
This is America-approved sovereignty, which, if adopted, will pave the way for accepting the “inherent greatness and decency” of the anything-but-new order.
While this has been a review of America’s National Security Strategy, it applies to every corporate state—particularly to those with the most capital, since they hold the most power in our technicized age. What we daily witness and experience is not a geopolitical or strategic problem, but a human one. We have assumed a system that prioritizes materialism and monetary gain over spiritual development; and when we are so profoundly rooted into the system, we fight doggedly to maintain it, thereby perpetuating exploitation. Thus, we proffer and support “rules-based orders” that we are sure couldn’t possibly be just what we’ve set out to stop.
The solution to the eternal confusion can be found in the inward turn, a development of the spiritual self that must be undertaken to finally realize genuine freedom. This, or we stay plagued and enchained to a forever-failing drift into dehumanized oblivion. I detail what must occur in my Arktos trilogy.1 Yet even if—despite our individual stumbling into a release from the exploitative cycle—yes, even if we find an end to the external order, all might still be lost. Lost for the all, but perhaps not for the self—because the greatest victory is always spiritual.
In the end, the hysterical suicide simply bleeds out; and without good blood, one couldn’t possibly be a “nation,” let alone be capable of finding the self.