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.

The Trump administration’s transactional diplomacy in Central Asia comes with both reconfiguration and constraints. It has broadened the scope of U.S. engagement, yet its depth and structural impact on regional geopolitics are limited.

Europe’s dissatisfaction, anxiety and dependence will continue to shape the next stage of transatlantic relations. The rift may not lead to a break. But it will likely lead to a relationship that becomes ever more transactional, more realist and ultimately more fragile.

U.S. leaders consistently lack strategic empathy, failing to consider how their actions are perceived by other nations. This longstanding blindness has fueled past conflicts and now risks sparking new crises with Russia and China.

Maximum pressure, transactional thinking and an emphasis on spheres of influence all define Donald Trump’s approach to diplomacy and give concrete form to his “America first” ideology. In a world undergoing turbulent change, the impact and destructive effect of this approach demand vigilance.

The U.S. president is attempting to create his own brand of diplomacy for the Western Hemisphere, but it’s hard to find the right words to describe it. While the United States hopes to reduce its burden for safeguarding the international order, what it wants in its own neighborhood is only expansion.

As Trump’s administration barrels forward, what seemed like a potential era of isolation has become a series of interventions that seemingly have come with one single calculation resting on America’s peerless power.

The United States faces a profound domestic governance crisis compounded by a loss of international credibility. This is undermining policy cohesion and eroding the foundation of America’s long-term strength and global influence.