Several prominent congressional Democrats on Saturday slammed the Trump administration’s national security strategy (NSS), claiming it favors President Trump’s business interests and weakens U.S. influence abroad.
“Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy puts his family’s and friends’ business interests with our adversaries, like Russia and China, over promises to our allies,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote on the social platform X. “If implemented, this plan would weaken U.S. influence across the globe and undermine our national security.”
The strategy, a 33-page document released late Thursday night, focuses on building up a larger military presence in the Western Hemisphere, balancing global trade, tightening border security and winning the culture war with Europe. It builds on Trump’s “America First” ideology while also providing the first explicit reference to the president replicating the Monroe Doctrine, which called for U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
“It totally abandons the idea that we should stand up for freedom & human rights around the world,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, also wrote on X Saturday. “Instead, it lectures our European allies & embraces authoritarian leaders who enrichthe Trump family & their billionaire friends.”
Van Hollen is likely referring to the references to Europe in the NSS amid the president’s push to ensure NATO countries and allies that host U.S. troops pay more for their own defenses. The plan itself accuses the European Union of stifling “political liberty” and calls for European nations to take “primary responsibility” for their own defense, according to The New York Times.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth highlighted the latter sentiment during remarks given at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday, where he declared a U.S.-first defense strategy, called out allies and lambasted the foreign policy decisions of former administrations.
“Allies are not children,” Hegseth told an audience in Simi, Calif. “We can and should expect them to do their part.”
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), who has clashed with the administration recently after appearing in a video with five other Democrats — including Kelly — where the group urged servicemembers not to follow “illegal orders,” on Friday said the NSS “would be catastrophic to America’s standing in the world, and would make us less safe.”
“They want America to be smaller, weaker, and vulnerable. I will resist,” he wrote on X.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, added in her own statement Friday that the administration’s plan is “riddled with contradictions.”
“The American people deserve leadership that can deliver security and prosperity,” Shaheen said. “That means strengthening NATO, ensuring that Russia does not gain from its own war of aggression in Ukraine, competing seriously with China and stabilizing our neighborhood through law enforcement, diplomacy and development.
“Instead, President Trump has pursued a foreign policy that has left the United States isolated globally, hurt our economy, raised prices for Americans, distanced our allies and emboldened our adversaries.”
The strategy also “foreshadows setbacks,” according to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“America first is America alone, & we’ll pay the price,” he wrote Friday on social media.
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