Week signals: The strategy that didn’t bark in the night
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Goldwater–Nichols Act
14 min read
The article mentions this 1986 Act as the legal mandate requiring the National Security Strategy. Understanding this landmark defense reorganization legislation provides crucial context for why these strategies are produced and how US military command structure was reformed.
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Monroe Doctrine
12 min read
The article references a controversial 'Trump corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine and mentions 'Donroe' as a neologism. Understanding the original 1823 doctrine and its historical corollaries (Roosevelt, etc.) illuminates the current debate about US hemispheric policy.
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Salt Typhoon
12 min read
The article discusses halted US sanctions against China for this hacking campaign described as 'a wholesale attack on US infrastructure.' This specific cyber espionage operation targeting US telecommunications provides concrete context for US-China tensions.
Hello,
In this week’s edition of Week Signals:
IN REVIEW. The missing link in the NSS, bipolar plans in a multipolar world, four trajectories, and a grand strategy we can believe in.
UP AHEAD. Wadephul goes to Beijing, negotiators go to Delhi, the Fed, SOUTHCOM, and Lukoil.
And don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Week Signals is the Saturday note for clients of Geopolitical Strategy, also available to GD Professional subscribers on Geopolitical Dispatch.
The Week in Review: Much G2 about nothing
The week began with peace talks in Russia and an election in Honduras. It ended with Donald Trump winning a prize from a football association and Honduras’s election tally still being counted. The great and the good decried it all as fraud, shame and nepotism.
Yet this was no ordinary week. In the small hours of Friday morning, with little fanfare and no Truth Social, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy, as mandated by the 1986 Goldwater–Nichols Act. It is expected to soon be followed by a National Defense Strategy and a classified National Military Strategy.
The appearance was mysterious, but the reaction was predictable. Commentators leapt on its internal contradictions, its thinly-veiled white nationalism, its contempt for the European project, and the contentious “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. Not since Meghan Markle’s holiday special on Wednesday, had something so thin and so ephemeral attracted so much controversy.
For us, there’s little to add to the debate, other than to say the administration’s contempt for a liberal Europe can probably be seen in much the same way as Vladimir Putin hates a democratic Ukraine or Xi Jinping hates an independent Taiwan – the EU presents an unacceptable alternative to Trump’s concept of Western civilisation, just as Kyiv does for the Russkiy mir or Taipei for Han China.
As befits any public-facing document that may be entirely at odds with the underlying classified version (and a political document that often bears little resemblance to policy as practised), it was of course partisan, self-congratulatory, stitched-together, compromised, and vague.
It should be of no surprise that parts resembled an extension of JD Vance’s Munich speech, and parts an apologia for current activities in the Caribbean, which may or may
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