The recently released 2025 NSS, shows the limits of decoupling. Defending core interests while designing layered mechanisms that preserve cooperation is the only rational way for the United States and China to avoid mutual destruction and global stagnation.

The new White House National Security Strategy provides a critical window for understanding America’s view of the roles of major powers and the international order. But Donald Trump’s brash and unpredictable personal characteristics are a wild card that will keep the world in suspense.

The new US National Security Strategy is not, in any meaningful sense, a strategy. A strategy connects means to achievable ends. What President Donald Trump’s White House published last week is something else: a 33-page confession that this administration does not believe in the future – and therefore sees no point in investing in it.

Last week, the Trump administration released its new national security strategy. It was quickly condemned by the neoconservatives — perhaps because it is more realistic about multipolarity.

Reframing Europe as an example of civilizational erosion reinforces crisis narratives among conservatives in the United States while mirroring problems that exist within Europe itself. In effect, Washington is using Europe’s crisis to tell a story about America.

The Trump administration’s emphasis has shifted toward homeland security and the security of the Western Hemisphere. At the same time its deeply contradictory and confused mindset on Taiwan is dangerous and could lead the military astray.

Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party faces mounting political turmoil and scandal, weakening its ability to govern despite recent electoral wins. At the same time, doubts about U.S. security support under Trump leave Taiwan increasingly vulnerable amid rising tensions with China.

If the Trump administration remains oblivious to the dangers and provocations of Lai Ching-te’s policies, the confrontation between Beijing and the United States over the island will intensify.

The incoming administration in the United States is expected to intensify export controls on China and strengthen measures to block overseas markets for Chinese technology products. However, Donald Trump’s new team, steered by his pragmatic approach, may ease the pressure in some sectors.

To a large degree, the new agglomeration is the result of Washington’s “great power competition” strategy. While it looks a bit like the military-industrial complex of the Cold War era, it is truly a different entity, but it’s one whose long-term impact on China-U.S. ties must be understood.