An effective balance of power rests on the management of strategic uncertainty, whereas Donald Trump’s approach actively manufactures uncertainty. It cuts against the core tenets of traditional theory. His style is unlikely to endure.
On December 5, 2025, the Trump 2.0 administration released the new National Security Strategy (NSS).
In the updated National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy of the White House, the long-dormant concept of balance of power is invoked repeatedly. In Trump’s discourse, balance of power signals a reorientation of U.S. hegemony: Rather than seeking an omnipresent and absolute hegemony, the United States aims to maintain a new equilibrium in key regions—one that prevents any single adversary from achieving predominance.
Balance of power is by no means a concept invented by Trump. The idea emerged as early as ancient Greece and was later developed by the British Empire in its later period, notably through its so-called “offshore balancing” strategy, whereby European great powers were encouraged to check one another to preserve Britain’s influence over the European continent. In the late Cold War, Henry Kissinger applied this logic to the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, using triangular diplomacy to reshape the global configuration and produce a pattern of great-power relations more favorable to the United States. These historical experiences suggest that balance of power often emerges when a hegemonic state comes to recognize that it cannot—and does not wish to—continue bearing all responsibilities unilaterally. The United States today is precisely in that position.
However, in policy practice, Trump’s version of balance of power differs markedly from the historical precedents discussed above, principally in three respects:
First, with respect to its scope of application, Trump’s version is not a general rule but rather a form of selective balancing. His policy practice displays clear regional discontinuities. The National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy state that the United States will pursue a balance of power at both the global and regional levels in order to deter dominant rivals, while requiring regional allies to assume primary responsibility for addressing threats. Yet the language concerning the Western Hemisphere and the Americas is entirely different. In these regions, the United States adopts an exclusionary “Donroe Doctrine”—that is, the region is presupposed to be an exclusive U.S. sphere of influence within which other great powers are not permitted to have a voice.
This constitutes a paradox in strategic logic. The world is divided into regions where balancing is feasible and regions where it is not. In the former, the United States accepts multipolar competition and burden-sharing; in the latter, it seeks not balance but unilateral, comprehensive dominance and the exclusion of competition. This form of hemispheric exceptionalism more closely resembles a balance-of-power approach infused with Trump’s real-estate mindset. It draws a clear distinction between what counts as core assets and what constitutes parcels that can be sold. In practical terms, such a balance of power does not necessarily generate either the equilibrium of forces or even stability. In those parcels that Trump deems sellable, the intensity of great-power competition is likely to rise markedly.
Second, in terms of the means employed, Trump’s balance of power gives military power special privileges, relying on coercive threats of force against other states to shape and sustain regional stability. The Trump administration’s repeated emphasis of “peace through strength,” demanding that allies keep pace with the United States in force development, substantially increases defense spending and strengthens forward deployments. The National Security Strategy repeatedly references the “first island chain” in the Indo-Pacific, designating the region as the forward edge of U.S. strategy and calling for increased military deployments there. The National Defense Strategy invokes the concept of “denial defense,” that is, enhancing deterrence against military adversaries through offensive weapons, thereby producing a “balance of terror” akin to “mutual assured destruction.”
Under this understanding, the United States sheds responsibility for maintaining regional stability and instead becomes an arms merchant that profits from selling advanced weaponry to regional allies, thereby distorting the balance of power into an instrument of strategic leverage. This approach may indeed reduce U.S. fiscal outlays and increase U.S. arms-export revenues. In practice, however, this logic ignores the inherent dynamics of the security dilemma: Forcing allies to become stronger will inevitably intensify threat perceptions and trigger a spiraling arms race. Such an approach cannot produce stability; rather, it raises the baseline level of regional tension and increases the risk of cascading effects arising from misperception and accidents.
Third, in temporal terms, Trump’s version of the balance of power neither seeks to sustain a durable and stable international distribution of power nor aims to build the corresponding institutional arrangements. Unlike the balance-of-power system envisaged by strategists such as Henry Kissinger, the Trump administration’s approach is notably lacking in preparation for long-term institution-building. A classical balance of power comprises a set of supporting mechanisms, including effective channels of communication, widely accepted rules of the game, crisis-management agreements and a degree of tacit recognition of one another’s core interests. Its ultimate objective is to establish a strategic framework with a measure of resilience and predictability, thereby ensuring a smoother transition in international politics following hegemonic decline.
By contrast, Trump’s version of the balance of power makes no mention of comparable institutional arrangements. The United States neither proactively promotes consensus on rules nor accepts international norms that might constrain its behavior; still less does it acknowledge and accommodate other countries’ legitimate concerns. Trump’s version may be overturned at any time. It can be revised, and it can even be traded. Its objective is to replace the postwar international order with a historical concept that appears unlikely to disrupt the stability of today’s world. Yet this new order more closely resembles a “law of the jungle” rooted in hard power.
In sum, Trump’s version of power balance is marked by a pronounced utilitarian and transactional logic, which runs counter to the core tenets of traditional balance-of-power theory. An effective balance of power rests on the management of strategic uncertainty, whereas Trump’s approach in practice actively manufactures uncertainty. Such a balance is therefore unlikely to endure. For the United States, this model may generate tactical gains in specific domains, but those gains come at far greater strategic cost.
