On Monday, February 2, 2026, our Mershon Monday brought together five panelists who approached the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) from interdisciplinary perspectives. Together, their insights contextualized the NSS’s history and analyzed its implications.

Christopher Nichols began the discussion by offering historical background on the NSS. He highlighted how this document diverged significantly in tone and substance from strategies released by previous administrations, even the NSS released during Trump’s first term in 2017. Citing contradictions between the text and recent foreign policy developments, Nichols warned against viewing the document as a definitive ideological commitment in foreign relations. Nevertheless, he identified several recurring themes. Compared to past documents, Nichols observed that there was a lack of specificity as well as an absence of commitment to moral exemplarity and collaboration, and, even more surprisingly, a lack of emphasis on great-power competition. 

Laura Dugan discussed the implications of the document for domestic politics, focusing on how the language in the document invoked underlying ideas without directly stating them. For example, she identified how references to “strong, traditional families” and “an America that cherishes its past glories and heroes” alluded to a nostalgic and reactionary politics, and how rhetoric of “no one sitting on the sidelines” drew upon stereotypes of those abusing the welfare system. She also highlighted how the document’s securitization and criminalization of migration contributed to a broader narrative of existential crisis.

Helen Murphey explored the NSS from the perspective of comparative populism and foreign policy. She drew continuities between the document’s rhetoric about refraining from compelling other countries to adopt “social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories” and right-wing populists’ approach to international human rights, which often appropriates anti-colonial motifs. At the same time, she discussed how the concern with “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity” points to a broader pattern of civilizational populism, which extends the exclusionary categories of right-wing populism—and the constitutive populist dichotomy of the ‘people’ and ‘elite’—across borders.

Julia Marino focused her remarks on the NSS’s claim that “economic security is fundamental to national security.” She argued this concept functions less as a doctrine than as a political tool, invoked by firms to secure subsidies, then discarded when public money comes with strings. Tracing this dynamic from 1980s protectionism to 1990s tech libertarianism, she contended the cycle has returned with the CHIPS Act: Washington frames semiconductors as strategic national security infrastructure while firms remain globally entangled. Citing the recent restructuring of the federal government’s CHIPS subsidies for Intel, Marino concluded by asking whose security is truly being secured if public funding lacks enforceable commitments to workers. 

Alexander Thompson emphasized that the NSS is thin on substance and shrugs at international institutions, treating multilateralism as disposable and the rules‑based order as an afterthought. He also characterized the U.S. strategy of exiting from UN and other international bodies as a performative maneuver that still carries real financial costs. Even when withdrawal doesn’t happen, Thompson warned, the posture suggests “staying only to disrupt, not to lead.” Most troubling, the NSS is somewhat blurry: it has no real distinction between allies and non‑allies, no line between lawful and unlawful—precisely the categories a strategy should sharpen. That is why, in his view, this is not realism at all. Unlike realism, he argued that Trumpism is transactional and largely driven by domestic politics. Within this framework, institutions become props, “sovereignty” becomes a gesture rather than a calculation, and strategy collapses into a posture of American strength.

In sum, our speakers emphasized that the NSS is less a roadmap than a political artifact, urging caution against mistaking the document’s rhetoric as a settled policy doctrine. That said, the panelists also agreed the document cannot simply be dismissed, for strategies shape expectations of the United States’ role on the world stage. As we look ahead to the rest of the second Trump administration, we must continue to track the gap between words and policy as the international environment looks increasingly uncertain. 

By Helen Murphey, Julia Marino and Nicholas Nyachega.