Introduction: A month ago, the White House unveiled a new National Security Strategy (NSS). This 33-page document formally encapsulates, for the first time during Donald Trump’s presidency, a vision for Washington’s foreign policy in general and security doctrine, in particular. During the first 11 months of his second presidency, Trump has pursued a highly personalised and doctrinaire approach both at home and abroad, upending many deeply entrenched cornerstones of the traditional US policies. Indeed, he has blamed the alleged decline in the US profile abroad on the flawed policies followed by his predecessors over the past three decades, claiming that his unorthodox policies are correcting them to “Make America Great Again”, or MAGA. Before the publication of the NSS on November 22, many observers believed that his foreign and security policies were merely “transactional” in nature and were eventually reversible. To find ideological underpinning for the new policies, they had little to go by: Trump’s incoherent and “truthful hyperboles”, his ghost-written four-decade-old book “The Art of the Deal” and “Project 2025”, a 900-page radical policy “wish-list” put together in 2023 by Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing Washington think-tank. During the 2023-24 election campaign, Trump repeatedly disavowed Project 2025; however, in the Trump 2.0 presidency, many of its authors were appointed to prominent positions. The NSS, an official document, bears considerable overlap with Project 2025.
2. Historical Backdrop: The United States and the West Asia North Africa (WANA) region have had a symbiotic relationship dating back to a historic meeting on 14thFebruary 1945, between President Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdulaziz Al-Saud, laying the foundation of the bilateral “oil-for-security” paradigm. Four years later, when Washington fostered the creation of the Jewish state of Israel, the paradigm widened to envelope the entire Middle East and was anchored on two objectives for the US policy for the region: security for the conservative regimes and support for Israel. These two objectives were contradictory, as the region’s Arab countries, including the conservative regimes, were against the creation of Israel at the cost of denying the Palestinians the right to their statehood. They also felt diminished by Israel’s subsequent annexation of the city of Jerusalem, where Islam’s third-holiest shrine, Al-Aqsa mosque, lies. The US has consistently tried to bridge this rift first through the Camp David Accords in 1978 and later by the Abraham Accords in 2020 during Trump 1.0 term. However, Saudi Arabia has continued to defy the US pressure to normalise relations with Israel, and the stance has hardened after the two-year-long Gaza conflict that witnessed Israel inflicting widespread death and destruction in the territory.
3. The Regional Prescript: Against this backdrop, the NSS makes an interesting reading. As the first paragraph of the relevant portion of the NSS (please see the annexe) candidly describes it, the area has been important to US foreign policy for three reasons: energy supplies, superpower competition, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. It goes on to airily claim that the first two reasons have been taken care of, and the last one is on its way to resolution. It goes on to suggest new objectives and drivers to carry the US relationship with the Middle East forward. These include shared political objectives such as ensuring that Gulf energy supplies do not fall into the hands of an outright enemy, combating radicalism and keeping open the strategic choke points, such as the Strait of Hormuz, Ba’ab al-Mandeb, Bosporus and Suez Canal. It foresees the region becoming a source and destination of international investment, and in industries well beyond oil and gas – including nuclear energy, AI, and defence technologies. While implicitly claiming continuations of the Pax Americana over the region, it cautions about the US indulging in “endless” wars over “nation building” in the region or hectoring them “into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government.”
4. Analysis: In this regard, the following comments seem relevant:
(i) Apart from the Western Hemisphere[1] the Middle East is the only exception to the general isolationist streak that runs through the NSS. This continued possessiveness about the Middle East contrasts with NSS’s own admission that past regional drivers are neither relevant nor operational. The suggested replacements are either mostly transactional or global geopolitical issues, lacking both thrust and urgency. The overall impression one gets from the relevant NSS extract is that Washington does not need either the oil or the regional geostrategic hegemony and has largely given up its transformative agenda for the region, from nation-building to resolving the Palestine issue. It is essentially comfortable with the status quo and is interested only in business opportunities arising in the region. So, the NSS directive for the region stands amended from active engagement to defensive possession.
(ii) The regional countries would receive the NSS with mixed feelings. On one hand, they would be relieved at the lifting of the heavy American meddling in the region that was often unsophisticated, bullish and manipulative. Apart from Washington executives, the US congressmen, lobby groups and media were often seen to be under the Jewish-Zionist sway, rendering them highly critical of the Arab world. They often held up military and other initiatives by the US government on extraneous grounds, raising questions about Washington’s reliability as a mentor and security provider. They would hope to have greater freedom in exercising their sovereignty and seek suitable alignments both regionally and abroad. At the same time, they would fret that this confinement of the American interests in the region would lead to the US security umbrella either folding up or getting smaller or leakier. This shift to a largely symbolic or palliative US security paradigm could encourage regional state or non-state actors to test the geopolitical vacuum.
(iii) Despite NSS’s assertion to the contrary, the region is still coping with instability and unpredictability. While a tenuous ceasefire is still holding in Gaza, it’s still a work in progress towards full implementation of the 20-point Trump Peace Plan. The situation is not yet reversible. Several regional civil wars are still raging, for instance, in Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia. One year after the change of regime, Syria is still in ferment and has witnessed American retaliatory air raids on ISIS hideouts last week. The non-state actors, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis, are down but not out. Despite the Trumpian boast about Iran’s nuclear programme being obliterated by Operation Midnight Hammer, Tehran is still standing and apparently unwavering about its nuclear option. It’s not difficult to light the fuse of one or more of these highly combustible situations and force the US to rush in. At the other end, an ultra-right-wing Israeli government has been emboldened by its spectacular victories to make hardline demands that add pressure on the Arab moderates as well as the US itself.
(iv) While the Trump administration has indulged with friendly regional regimes, the latter have not foreclosed their options: Most have China as the largest trading partner, and the UAE and Turkey, in particular, have very close ties with Russia as well. Moreover, the UAE has often unilaterally pushed the envelope of its sovereign freedom of action: from Sudan to Libya and from Iran to China. Similarly, Turkey has mollycoddled with both Russia and Iran. By publicly restricting the usage of coercive instruments in the region in the NSS text, Washington may risk increasing marginalisation, especially with an oil glut looming next year.
(v) Other major foreign powers, such as the European Union, China, India and Russia, would note NSS for indicating a diminished geo-strategic interest in the Middle East and would not mind filling up the vacuum. While the US is preponderant in weapons supplies and investment flows, the first three of the four countries have higher trade with the Middle East than the US. China is fast emerging as a cutting-edge technology provider and could eventually replace the US in this aspect for the region.
(vi) The regional countries would have also noted that their region is an outlier to the NSS general recommendation of leaving large chunks of the global arena to the regional satraps: it largely abandons the EU and NATO to their own devices, thereby emboldening Russia to dominate. Similarly, a loose modus vivendi is proposed for China, elevating it to the level of a G2 Summitry. The same formula could eventually be in place for the Middle East, where smaller sins of commission and omission by major regional powers such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and the UAE may singly or in concert run the fiat. This could entail its own risks, particularly if Iran joins the contest. In general, the regional powers may conclude that the NSS exceptionalism for their region stands on tenuous ground and could erode with time and lower oil prices. This could tempt them to further intensify their search for diplomatic and security options both within and outside the region – taking care not to cross the US redlines.
(vii) While the NSS does not specifically mention and security linkage between the Middle East and South Asia, it implies different pathways for India and Pakistan. India could gain through economic heft and potential[2]. Further, the new US drivers that NSS proposes for the region, such as nuclear technology, AI, etc., would open opportunities for our domain experts. On the other hand, Pakistan would gain handsomely by acting as the US security surrogate in Gaza as well as in the GCC states. To this end, Asim Munir has become Trump’s favourite Field Marshal by signing a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia and agreeing to contribute a brigade for the proposed International Stabilisation Force in Gaza. Pakistan has been in this Gulf security ambit many times and is none the better for it. In this respect, NSS conforms to the French adage: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” or “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
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[1] Where a so-called “Trump Corollary” has been overlayed on the two-century-old Monroe Doctrine
[2] IEA expects India to be the largest driver of the global oil demand till 2035
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ANNEXE
RELEVANT EXTRACT FROM THE US NSS:
D. The Middle East: Shift Burdens, Build Peace
For half a century at least, American foreign policy has prioritized the Middle East above all other regions. The reasons are obvious: the Middle East was for decades the world’s most important supplier of energy, was a prime theater of superpower competition, and was rife with conflict that threatened to spill into the wider world and even to our own shores.
Today, at least two of those dynamics no longer hold. Energy supplies have diversified greatly, with the United States once again a net energy exporter. Superpower competition has given way to great power jockeying, in which the United States retains the most enviable position, reinforced by President Trump’s successful revitalization of our alliances in the Gulf, with other Arab partners, and with Israel.
Conflict remains the Middle East’s most troublesome dynamic, but there is today less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe. Iran—the region’s chief destabilizing force has been greatly weakened by Israeli actions since October 7, 2023, and President Trump’s June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer, which significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains thorny, but thanks to the ceasefire and release of hostages President Trump negotiated, progress toward a more permanent peace has been made. Hamas’s chief backers have been weakened or stepped away. Syria remains a potential problem, but with American, Arab, Israeli, and Turkish support may stabilize and reassume its rightful place as an integral, positive player in the region.
As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede. Instead, the region will increasingly become a source and destination of international investment, and in industries well beyond oil and gas — including nuclear energy, AI, and defense technologies. We can also work with Middle East partners to advance other economic interests, from securing supply chains to bolstering opportunities to develop friendly and open markets in other parts of the world such as Africa.
Middle East partners are demonstrating their commitment to combatting radicalism, a trendline American policy should continue to encourage. But doing so will require dropping America’s misguided experiment with hectoring these nations—especially the Gulf monarchies—into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government. We should encourage and applaud reform when and where it emerges organically, without trying to impose it from without. The key to successful relations with the Middle East is accepting the region, its leaders, and its nations as they are while working together on areas of common interest.
America will always have core interests in ensuring that Gulf energy supplies do not fall into the hands of an outright enemy, that the Strait of Hormuz remain open, that the Red Sea remain navigable, that the region not be an incubator or exporter of terror against American interests or the American homeland, and that Israel remain secure. We can and must address this threat ideologically and militarily without decades of fruitless “nation-building” wars. We also have a clear interest in expanding the Abraham Accords to more nations in the region and to other countries in the Muslim world.
But the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over—not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was. It is rather emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment—a trend that should be welcomed and encouraged. In fact, President Trump’s ability to unite the Arab world at Sharm el-Sheikh in pursuit of peace and normalisation will allow the United States to finally prioritize American interests.
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The previous issue of UNSCR 2797 Nudges Western Sahara Dispute Towards a Solution are available here: LINK
