The U.S. National Security Strategy: A Strategy for U.S. Security or a Plan for U.S. Monopolies?

[Elke Schwarz is a professor of political theory at Queen Mary University London]

The U.S. National Security Strategy is a strange document. Many have commented – favourable or disparagingly – on its brevity and its accessible language. The form of the document is a simple, 33-page delineation of ‘What America Wants’ and ‘How it Will get It.’ It is a policy report of sorts, but it does not present a strategy for national security. Rather, it reads like the vision and mission section of a business plan, a kind of plan that is scant on details, but rich in bravado. Not unlike the swagger common in the tech culture that this administration and its affiliates are so partial to, that is to say, entangled with. 

As a policy document, the national security strategy is replete with unusual and contentious claims. It is, for example, unusual for a strategy document to include so many explicit references to a particular president, let alone statements proclaiming the legacy of a sitting president as  “The President of Peace” – a self-appointed title is hardly a ‘legacy’. It is also unusual for a strategy document to so selectively engage political relations and their history, and to disparage a long-held and important ally based on spurious claims about said ally’s “loss of civilizational self-confidence” – an observation that is largely not shared by those actually living in the region. I am referring to the incendiary section on Europe.

It is also a document filled with contradictory declarations. The stated principles espouse a “predisposition to non-interventionism” and a “primacy of nations”, suggesting a more hands-off approach to international relations and an appreciation of “the sovereign rights of nations”. But this non-interference in sovereign affairs only seems to extend to a nation insofar as it works hand-in-glove with U.S. ideology, or, at the very least, invests in U.S. products. If this is not enabled, the U.S. “will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere and the rest of the democratic world”. It is not clear how such ‘opposition’ could manifest, but there is a latent threat in the repeated allusion to military power and ‘peace through strength’. Perhaps we see this ‘opposition’ play out in the extrajudicial lethal strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers in Caribbean waters. 

The U.S. national security strategy also explicitly rejects “the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself” and therefore others, but it also declares that the U.S. must maintain “the strongest economy, […] the most advanced technologies, [and] the world’s most capable military” so it can project “peace through strength” in the pursuit of “preserving and growing [its] dominance.” And for all the talk of non-intervention and non-domination, there is also the stated aim to forge “peace deals” in order to “strengthen America’s global influence, realign countries and regions toward our interests and open new markets.” 

This aim to open global markets, to expand U.S. access to raw materials and minerals, to prioritise investments in U.S. defence and other products and industries runs through the entire document. And perhaps this strategy is best read not as a political security strategy at all, but rather a strategy to expand America’s share of a total addressable market (TAM) – by carrot or stick. 

At its heart, the document is about money and the possibility to tap into, or facilitate, more investment and dependencies on U.S. products to create a monopoly position for U.S. technologies and industries to benefit private actors and investors. It is a strategy to make American companies thrive globally. Any positive effects on security are welcome but epiphenomenal. Unlike a business plan or an private sector disruption strategy, the U.S. has the ability to force its way into favourable positions with the latent threat of interference, including through physical force. 

America wants to be a partner of “first choice” and actively seeks to discourage collaboration with others. It wants the world to accept that “American goods, services and technologies are far better in the long run”. This, in essence is a strategy to expand American business, to increase the TAM for U.S. companies. Ambassadors and government workers become enlisted as sales force. The following passage makes this clear: “All our embassies must be aware of major business opportunities in their countries, especially major government contracts. Every U.S. Government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.”

The strategy seeks to disrupt China’s global economic influence and replace its economic soft power with expanded American trade relations in Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The strategy is not yet clear on how best to do it, but notes clearly that this is an incredibly lucrative opportunity to be wrestled from China’s hands. 

America and its allies have not yet formulated, much less executed a joint plan for the so-called ‘Global South’, but together possess tremendous resources. Europe, Japan, South Korea and others hold net foreign assets of $7 trillion. International finance institutions, including development banks, possess combined assets of £1.5 trillion. [… T]his administration is dedicated to using its leadership position to implement reforms that ensure they serve American interests.

The whole globe and its governments as addressable market. In a business environment, a total addressable market (TAM) presents the total revenue opportunity within a specific sector, industry or market, that is, if a particular business could capture close to 100% of that sector or market. In parts, the strategy sounds like a market size scoping exercise, with the aim to capture more of a global market share of government contracts than U.S. companies currently hold. In normal business practice, a company can expand its TAM by either finding new markets, expanding a product range or adjusting one’s pricing strategy. In the world of venture capital, expanding the TAM requires more drastic measures and usually involve a more disruptive strategy to help wedge open markets and shape future needs. 

As a global pro-American business strategy it follows the Peter Thiel pro-monopoly mantra: “competition is for losers”, and it seeks bend the parameters of global relations, and global institutions to forge favourable conditions for U.S. businesses toward a monopoly position. This means enrolling states into a U.S. technology dependency from which it will become difficult to extricate oneself. Such dependencies on U.S. tech products are already well-underway. And with this in mind, we might better understand the hostile positioning not only against China, but also against Europe, which shows some resistance against unfettered U.S. technology product adoption. One might argue that the mandate for NATO member states to work swiftly toward the 5% GDP contribution goal serves the U.S. aims to sell more defence products to European states, rather than bolster a shared defence landscape (one might also argue that this move weakens internal security of European states considerably). But with Europe’s robust and conscientious regulatory frameworks, there is friction in enabling the same pace of business expansion as is customary in the U.S. This is a thorn in the side of American business, hence the strategy’s emphatic demand that Europe “abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation”. The explicit demand is that Europe opens its “markets to U.S. goods and services and [commits to] ensuring fair treatment of U.S. workers and businesses.” To facilitate this, the strategy issues a warning: Europe must correct its current trajectory (that is to say adjust its values to align with the civilizational idea(l)s of the current U.S. administration), or expect interference. 

The strategy document affords much more latitude to the Middle East, which will no longer be chastised by America about its own “traditions and historic forms of government”. This may well have something to do with the deepening of investment relations and deals the U.S. has forged with various Gulf nations, which “finally prioritize American interests”. 

It might behove us to take the political ideologies of those swirling around within the close orbit of the Trump administration at face value. These ideologies suggest that states should be run like startups, that all is fair in business, and if this means disrupting entire polities and destroying historical alliances and forgoing new ones that hold the promise of significant gains, so be it.  That this logic might extend to a state’s foreign policy approach follows naturally. The strategy’s bottom line seems to be: we seek good relations with other states, so long as they facilitate investment in U.S. products and allow our pursuit of global market dominance. Where this possibility is jeopardised, expect U.S. disruption, possibly through military means. A form of political bullying, by now a familiar trope in contemporary U.S. politics. 

Pete Hegseth recently presented his defence procurement and acquisition overhaul strategy to a room of defence industry leaders with a similar ethos: get ready to do things differently, “move fast and invest more […] or we just might make you”, because, he says, “we are capitalists after all”. The U.S. National Security Strategy has all the hallmarks of such a radical capitalist manifesto with a sharp focus on monopolistic market domination and little regard for actual political communities, histories and non-financial relationships. Implicitly, this strategy leaves significant space for violence in order to get What America Wants. The sooner the international community realises this, the better.