The United States’ National Security Strategy of November 2025 is an assessment devoid of sentimental euphemism. It opens with a realization of almost cathartic clarity, namely that the sole purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests. It is not about the propagation of universal values, the global imposition of a democratic order, or the moral emancipation of humanity, but rather the sober securing of that which a state requires to survive. Washington has unshackled itself from half a century of ideological missionizing and returned to the elemental definition of statehood. The German reaction to this document, however, reveals not the inadequacy of American strategy but a specifically German problem of a deeper, structural nature, which is the cultural inability to conceptualize national interests without suffering a moral collapse.
The document unfolds with architectural precision. It does not ask what America wishes to be to the world, but what America must be to persist as a state. The answers are cold and unmistakable: absolute control over its own borders, protection of territory against both invasion and subtle infiltration, economic autarky from hostile powers in critical sectors, regional dominance in the Western Hemisphere, and the capacity for credible deterrence against China without unnecessary provocation.
These are the cardinal goals, presented without polemical flourishes or moral wrapping. Anyone interpreting these assertions as aggressive has failed to realize that, in the current German intellectual topography, the mere naming of national interests is treated as a fundamental taboo. The German Foreign Minister exemplified this dilemma in a recent interview, attempting to justify the admission of Afghan refugees with the kind of sanctimonious rhetoric usually reserved for church conventions. The German government seems unable to draw its own borders with the clarity that Washington produces as a matter of course. Instead, it must wrap every practical action in values-based clichés of legitimacy. This is ritualized self-deception.
The National Security Strategy becomes surprisingly precise when turning its gaze towards Europe. It diagnoses not primarily military weakness but civilizational decline, citing migration that destroys social cohesion, the censorship of public discourse, collapsing birth rates, and the erosion of national identity and historical self-awareness. The document does not speak of these things indirectly or through flowery prose; it treats them as established facts. Predictably, an orchestra of indignation arose in Germany. The Union parties, represented by their foreign policy spokesperson, accused the AfD of having written the strategy, as if the recognition of reality had become the exclusive property of one party or as if realism itself had mutated into a contaminated good. The established media railed against perceived condescension. What remains overlooked is that the National Security Strategy articulates exactly what has become unutterable in German newsrooms. It takes note of what the German public is no longer permitted to see.
America is not pursuing peace agreements out of some idealistic sympathy for German truth-finding. Over the past eight months, Washington has brought eight regional conflicts to the negotiating table, spanning from Israel and Iran to Gaza, and from Cambodia and Thailand to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This was not born of humanitarian idealism but of sober interest. A self-consuming Europe, collapsing under its internal crises, is strategically worthless for American security. Consequently, the National Security Strategy urgently recommends that Europe preserve its civilizational foundations. What some scandalize as interference is, in truth, a necessary condition for being a viable ally. America is not saying ‘become like us’; it is saying ‘become yourselves again, for only then are you politically useful to us.’ This is realism, not arrogance.
‘America is not pursuing peace agreements out of some idealistic sympathy for German truth-finding’
The strategy directs its analytical focus towards China as the primary economic and future military threat. For those who read closely, this section is relentless. It cites 181 port projects in 93 ports worldwide, 40 per cent of them in European territories, all financed by Beijing for strategic ends. It points to debt traps for developing nations that hide secret contracts beneath the surface of lending, securing resource access and military presence.
The National Security Strategy does not call this competition, but rather a threat. The economic weapons of the new century are not aircraft carriers but container terminals and logistics software. America has recognized this, while Germany is still preaching universal values.
Under the new Monroe Doctrine, the Western Hemisphere is being fundamentally reconceived, not as imperial rule but as homeland security in the classical sense. 75,000 Americans die each year from fentanyl poisoning. These are people, families, and constituencies whose political fate depends on whether the state can existentially protect its citizens. This is the language of the National Security Strategy: not morally coloured but existentially grounded. The German reaction to this prioritization is characteristic, as America is accused of treating national interests too dominantly. That is exactly the point. A polity that does not protect its borders, its citizens, and its industrial base is ultimately no longer a nation. It is an administrative zone with a flag.
‘Either borders are a legitimate function of statehood, or they are a relic of the past to be overcome’
The root of European contempt for the National Security Strategy lies not in the document’s intellectual weakness but in its clarity. It renders impossible what German foreign policy has practised for decades, which is the rhetorical chasm between words and deeds. One speaks of women’s rights while subsidizing the Taliban. One invokes human rights while failing to distinguish between the refugee in need of protection and the migrant seeking economic opportunity. One invokes national sovereignty while subjecting that sovereignty to the whims of transnational bodies. The National Security Strategy, by contrast, says that either you mean it or you don’t. Either borders are a legitimate function of statehood, or they are a relic of the past to be overcome. This clarity is uncomfortable to the point of being unbearable for a country that has grown accustomed to ambiguity.
The final question is not whether the National Security Strategy is aggressive. It is not. It is precise. It identifies what America must be to survive: a great power that pursues its interests instead of subordinating them to the feelings of others. The real question is why Germany cannot do the same. Why is the notion of having and articulating national interests automatically moved into the proximity of fascism? Why does the mere mention of national interests by the AfD, the only political force that dares to speak of them, lead to automatic discredit?
The answer lies deeper than any cabinet crisis; Germany has forgotten how to think of itself as a nation. Those who cannot think of themselves as a nation cannot act in the interest of one. That it takes a foreign strategy to unmask this German incapacity reveals the true extent of the current crisis of orientation.
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