For more than a decade, Washington lived inside a familiar frame.

Different administrations used different slogans, but the structure held: China and Russia were engaged in major power competition with the United States, and America intended to contest them everywhere that mattered. China was the pacing challenge. Russia was the acute threat. Allies were force multipliers. Competition was the organizing principle.

That frame is gone.

Not softened.
Not reworded.
Gone.

The most important thing about the new National Security Strategy coming out of the White House is not its emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, the Indo-Pacific, trade, or immigration. It’s what the document refuses to anchor itself to. It never once centers great power competition. For allies, analysts, and adversaries alike, that omission has landed with a thud.

The reaction has been remarkably consistent: dismay, confusion—and quiet alarm.

Back to Geography, Back to Power

The NSS openly embraces a worldview Washington spent years pretending it had outgrown. It describes the influence of “larger, richer, and stronger nations” as a “timeless truth” and rejects the idea of global domination in favor of regional and global balances of power.

That’s realism without apology.

It explains why the document overwhelmingly prioritizes the Western Hemisphere. This is the Monroe Doctrine without the sermon—influence, exclusion, control. Keep rivals out of the Western Hemisphere. Protect sea lanes, energy flows, sanctions enforcement, migration routes, and internal stability. Treat foreign footholds in Latin America and the Caribbean as strategic threats, not secondary concerns.

If the United States is no longer trying to dominate everywhere, then home comes first.

The Indo-Pacific comes next, even if the language is restrained. China is still the pacing threat in everything but name. Taiwan remains the fulcrum. Deterrence there isn’t about ideology; it’s about preventing a war that would shatter global economics and test America’s industrial base to destruction. The NSS quietly acknowledges that mass, production speed, and supply chains matter more than elegant theories.

So far, this all tracks.

It’s Europe where the strategy breaks sharply from the last decade — and where the damage is being felt most acutely.

Europe Feels Targeted — and Not Just Strategically

The NSS doesn’t merely deprioritize Europe; it rebukes it.

European allies have reacted with dismay at the document’s tone, particularly its insinuation that Europe has broken faith with a shared cultural and “spiritual” heritage. That language is not strategic analysis—it’s civilizational judgment. For allies who have fought, bled, and aligned with Washington for generations, it reads less like tough love and more like accusation.

Then there’s the confusion.

European officials and analysts expected a strategy framed around great power competition — because that’s how Washington has described the world for years. Instead, they found a document that barely acknowledges that competition at all. China is discussed as an economic relationship to be rebalanced. Russia as a problem to be managed. NATO enlargement is quietly discouraged. The U.S. commitment to Europe’s defense is implied, but no longer sacred.

From Brussels to Berlin, the question has been the same: What game are we playing now?

Moscow Has No Such Confusion

The Kremlin read the document and smiled.

Russia has openly welcomed the strategy as “largely consistent” with its own vision. From Moscow’s perspective, the NSS validates long-standing goals: an end to NATO enlargement, a weakening — even if gradual — of America’s commitment to Europe, and the normalization of spheres of influence.

More troubling still is the strategy’s call for “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” In Washington, that may be framed as acknowledging political diversity. In Moscow, it reads like permission. The Kremlin will interpret it as U.S. tolerance — if not encouragement — of the nationalist, populist movements Russia actively supports to fracture European unity and undermine governments that have shown resolve against Russian aggression.

The White House may believe it is speaking candidly. Moscow hears opportunity.

Congress Slams the Brakes

Congress saw this coming.

Days after the NSS rollout, lawmakers passed a nearly $900 billion defense bill that explicitly prevents major U.S. troop drawdowns in Europe, locks in America’s leadership role in NATO, and reinforces forward posture. On paper, it looks like a contradiction. In reality, it’s a shock absorber.

Congress understands that allies panic when strategic narratives shift faster than force posture. It remembers Crimea. It remembers deterrence failures born of ambiguity. So it reassured Europe in law even as the White House reset expectations in doctrine.

Congress isn’t rejecting the strategy. It’s containing its risks.

The Big Gamble Beneath the Words

This NSS is making a bet — and it’s a big one.

It bets that downplaying competition will reduce escalation.
That managing relationships is safer than contesting them.
That acknowledging spheres of influence will stabilize the system.

That bet has consequences.

Allies hear distance and judgment where they expected solidarity. Adversaries hear acceptance where they expected resistance. And everyone hears uncertainty about what replaces the competition framework that structured the last decade of U.S. policy.

Wars are lost not because enemies were clever, but because leaders convinced themselves that restraint would be interpreted as goodwill.

This strategy is honest about limits. America cannot dominate everywhere forever. It must choose. The hemisphere matters. The Pacific is decisive.

But Europe isn’t just another region. It’s where ambiguity gets tested first.

Congress is trying to make sure the bridge doesn’t collapse mid-crossing. Moscow is already probing the seams. And America’s allies are left wondering whether this is a recalibration — or the beginning of something colder.

This isn’t a pivot.
It’s a break.

And the dismay and confusion surrounding it aren’t misunderstandings. They’re signals — early warnings that the world Washington is describing may not behave as calmly as the strategy hopes.

That’s when doctrines stop being documents and start being measured in consequences.

And we’re still at the opening chapter.