Where Does Advancing Freedom Fit into the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy?

We live in an age of authoritarian aggression conducted by American adversaries. This did not begin with the Trump Administration but in fact helped set the stage for Trump’s 2024 election. Exit polling on Election Day showed that getting a grip on a more dangerous world was a factor for voters in a way not previously featured.

Deterrence began eroding after President Obama refused to enforce his red line in Syria, leading Vladimir Putin to believe that Russia could swallow Crimea and the Donbas without consequence. Joe Biden’s chaotic abandonment of Afghanistan in 2021 produced scenes of anarchy and terror that shocked many Americans and emboldened Putin to assume that America—having abandoned its Afghan allies—would not defend its Ukrainian ones. The February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated an acute failure of deterrence in Europe, producing the biggest war there in 80 years. The October 2023 attacks on Israel demonstrated the erosion of deterrence in the Middle East, placing America’s core ally there at existential risk.

In 2024, President Trump proposed a platform of “peace through strength” and pointed out that none of these conflicts happened on his watch, promising to be a “president of peace” who would restore American power. The first year of his Administration was accompanied by a flurry of peace deals settling various international conflicts, from eastern Congo to the Thai-Cambodia border to Azerbaijan and Armenia.

In November 2025, the president’s cover letter announcing his administration’s new National Security Strategy argued: “After four years of weakness, extremism, and deadly failures, my administration has moved with urgency and historic speed to restore American strength at home and abroad and bring peace and stability to our world.” The Republican Party Platform at the 2024 convention had pledged: “The Republican Plan is to return Peace Through Strength” including by “promoting American values.”¹

Unlike the 2017 Trump Administration National Security Strategy, which pledged that “the United States will always stand with those who seek freedom,” President Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy treads lightly on this topic, prioritizing a harder-nosed approach of being “principled without being ‘idealistic.’”² It states, “we want to maintain the United States’ unrivaled ‘soft power’ through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our influence.” Unfortunately, polls show a global collapse in American soft power as measured by other countries’ citizens’ approval of the United States in 2026.³

Where does this leave America’s historic commitment to advancing freedom in the world? It is useful to contrast the NSS’s parsimony on this topic with the practice of the second Trump term. In January 2026, the United States captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and put him on trial in New York for narco-trafficking. In February 2026, President Trump called on the people of Iran to overthrow their government in conjunction with U.S.-Israeli military action. In March 2026, reports surfaced that the Cuban dictatorship was negotiating a political and economic transition with the Trump Administration, backed by an American energy blockade and the threat of U.S. military force. In Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, the president and his senior officials have spoken of “regime change,” even if defined more narrowly as a change from anti-American to pro-American leaders rather than as a transition from autocracy to democracy.

The National Security Strategy prioritizes state sovereignty and rejects compelling countries toward “democratic or social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.” However, the NSS makes an exception to the principle of non-interference in the affairs of other nations when it comes to Europe. The strategy pledges to cultivate and support “patriotic European parties” as part of an explicit policy to support leaders who will protect against Europe’s “civilizational erasure.”⁴

In the highest-profile case of this policy in action, the Trump Administration’s endorsement of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was followed by the defeat of Orbán’s party by a two-thirds majority in Hungary. Similarly, Vice President Vance’s explicit support for Germany’s alt-right AfD party was followed by the AfD calling for the expulsion of all American forces from Germany during the 2025 bombing campaign against Iran—a U.S. operation that would not have been possible without the staging and rear-area support provided by American bases in Germany.

While the NSS forecasts a strategy of military restraint, the Trump Administration in practice has been highly interventionist against anti-American autocracies in Latin America and Iran. The NSS signals a policy of political interventionism in Europe, but with rather limited results. If the record is mixed and administration policy remains more fluid than the NSS suggests, what should the administration do to uphold peace through strength and make America great (again)?

First, any successful foreign policy is grounded in public support from the American people. Reagan Institute polling shows that 84 percent of self-described MAGA Republicans believe that the United States should support democracy and human rights wherever possible in the world.⁵ Standing up for freedom is not a political liability but a political winner, which American leaders like President Reagan understood.

Second, Trump’s leadership in confronting anti-American autocrats may not be judged by history to be successful if anti-American regimes populated by different leaders remain in place to deploy an apparatus of repression to tyrannize pro-American political and civic forces. Polling by the International Republican Institute along with recent mass popular uprisings show that citizens in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran hate the governments that oppress them and wish to liberate their countries.

Supporting democratic forces in these countries will be essential to any transition that delivers on American interests in stability, security, and economic opportunities. Indeed, Venezuelans have already voted for democratic leadership in 2024 national elections that the dictatorship in Caracas did not honor. It is the people of Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran who can deliver the objectives Trump has laid out for their countries—if the United States stands with them to support their aspirations for freedom.

Third, authoritarian adversaries led by China are conducting campaigns to erode the U.S.-centered international order and replace it with one aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. Countering China’s global campaign requires a strategy. The freedoms of the American people will not be safe in a world where China dominates the technologies of the 21st century, conducts transnational repression and economic coercion against free societies, erodes and neutralizes the American alliances that multiply our power and influence, or imposes its hegemony on a world economy increasingly centered in the Indo-Pacific.

President Trump says that his NSS is “a roadmap to make sure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on Earth.”⁶ But protecting freedom at home requires preventing the exportation of authoritarianism, censorship, surveillance, and repression abroad.

President Trump deserves the full support of Congress for dramatically increasing U.S. defense spending in a dangerous world. But China is using a non-kinetic toolkit to expand its influence at America’s expense. The Trump Administration can counter China’s campaign with:

·      Democracy assistance to help developing nations protect themselves from Chinese corruption and cooptation, and to build property rights, rule of law, and governing institutions that make them better partners for American companies;

·      Support for freedom fighters in anti-American autocracies, as a bottom-up form of “maximum pressure” that along with economic sanctions and military deterrence can help bring about positive political change that diminishes the threat posed by hostile regimes to U.S. national security;

·      Technical assistance to help developing nations sign investment deals based on transparency, accountability, and market principles rather than secret deals that undermine their sovereignty and security;

·      Sharing of secure technologies to build digital supply chains and communications networks that are free from Chinese surveillance and control but protect the interests of freedom-loving nations;

·      Enhanced forms of international broadcasting (including digital) to help people living behind internet Great Firewalls receive accurate information about the United States and hostile anti-American regimes; and

·      Advocacy for the release of political prisoners, including those imprisoned for championing religious freedom in China.

For all the talk of “soft power,” supporting freedom in the world advances hard American interests. The closest U.S. military allies are democracies; our biggest trade and investment partners are democracies; our most acute national security challenges stem from autocracies; and dangers from uncontrolled mass migration, transnational crime, and violent extremism flourish in countries where democratic institutions are absent. Helping promote responsible self-government abroad is a prudent investment in the foundations of American security and prosperity at home.

In his 1982 Westminster Address, at the height of the Cold War, President Reagan drew upon our founding principles to make the moral and strategic case for advancing global freedom. The soft power toolkit his Administration designed with Congress, including the National Endowment for Democracy, helped empower people behind the Iron Curtain to peacefully bring down the Soviet empire and subsequently build prosperous societies that became important American allies.

A truly historic Trump national security approach would recognize that a core component of America’s competitive advantage vis-à-vis its authoritarian adversaries is the American public’s historic support for freedom in the world, the fear American adversary leaders hold of their own people’s yearning for liberty, and the reality that democratic alliances magnify American power. Deploying America’s toolkit to advance freedom could yield extraordinary returns to American security and prosperity, as well as to the prospects for peace.