She’ll Be Right, Mate: The New U.S. National Security Strategy and the Pacific
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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The End of History and the Last Man
12 min read
The article directly references 'the End of History we all hoped for' - Francis Fukuyama's influential 1992 thesis that liberal democracy represented the endpoint of ideological evolution. Understanding this theory provides crucial context for why the current 'America First era' represents such a dramatic departure from post-Cold War expectations.
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National Security Strategy (United States)
15 min read
While the article discusses the 2025 NSS extensively, readers would benefit from understanding the historical evolution of these documents since the Goldwater-Nichols Act mandated them in 1986, providing context for how this document differs from predecessors and why these strategies matter.
Ultimately, there’s plenty to work with in this grab bag of ideas. But like its predecessors, this is less a strategy than a mood board. Editorial Board, Washington Post, 5 December 2025
In the past 24 hours, the Trump administration released its new National Security Strategy. This is a declaratory policy, and a document, that think tanks, national security practitioners as well ad America’s friends and allies have been waiting on for some time. Like most recent M. Night Shyamalan movies, the initial reviews are hardly glowing. As one reviewerwrote in War on the Rocks:
The new National Security Strategy is out, and it’s a shock to the system. It is not just the latest public articulation of principles, ambitions, and priorities around which the United States organizes its foreign policy. Instead, it reads like a manifesto for a radically different American project. It is narrower, more partisan, more inwardly focused, and more personalized than any of its predecessors.
The strategy probably marks a epochal shift from the national security policy of American administrations after the end of the Cold War. Indeed, this new document probably marks a new phase of the post-Cold War era. Let me explain.
Initially, there was a decade long Era of Euphoria where America strode tall across the world stage. It had won the decades-long cold war, its tech industry was delivering new riches to the nation and America military power was at its zenith. This era came to an end with the 9/11 attacks. This saw the dawn of the 9/11 era of post-Cold War history, where counter terrorism operations, national building and the rise of social media, distrust in institutions and the growth of the power and influence of authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia.
The 2025 Trump National Security Strategy ends that 9/11 era. We are now in a more chaotic and transactional era. It is the America First era. And it is likely to be a transitional era as the major powers – China, Russia, India, America, Japan and Europe – undergo a rebalancing in global power, prosperity and influence. This new America First era will last years, if not decades. But the competition, cooperation, and conflicts we are likely to see in this era will likely give birth to the new world order promised at the end of the Cold War. It
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