What the US National Strategy Might (or Might Not) Mean for the UN and humanitarian community : Tom McDermott

When I first set out to review the new US National Security Strategy, I expected to make a straightforward critique of its inconsistencies. Instead, I found myself writing an extended article too long for this blog. As a result, I decided to make a short summary and link it to the longer article.

Some commentators have noted what they see as an unfortunate 'consistency' in the approach the Trump administration has taken in global affairs. That claim strikes me as so disconnected from reality that I was tempted to write a satirical review. 

The US strategy is not consistent—it's a catalog of contradictions. These likely reflect the unsettled nature of the administration itself, where policy often shifts with bewildering speed.  Positions change faster than analysts can track them. I don't envy those whose job requires monitoring Trump's social media pronouncements to divine what constitutes "policy" on any given day.

Yet these rapid shifts matter as much to vulnerable populations as do the administration's more deliberate decisions—shuttering USAID, terminating PEPFAR, defunding UNRWA. For people whose lives depend on these programs and the countries they serve, the chaos is not abstract. It's life and death.

What follows is my attempt to make sense of a strategy document that simultaneously claims to withdraw from Middle East engagement while undertaking Gaza's largest reconstruction effort, condemns multilateral institutions while creating new ones it chairs, and pledges non-interventionism while deploying US forces to oversee nation-building. The contradictions are not incidental—they are the strategy.

The full analysis is longer than I intended, but the implications for humanitarian action and children's welfare demanded thorough treatment. A brief summary follows below, with a link to the complete document.

Trump's National Security Strategy: What It Means for Humanitarian Action and the UN

Tom McDermott

December 8, 2025

Click here for the article

For the full US national security strategy document, click here

Summary

The Trump administration's National Security Strategy, released December 4, might be dismissed as purely political, economic, and military in scope. That would be a mistake for those committed to multilateral action on development, humanitarian response, and human rights. The strategy openly condemns "supranational and multilateral institutions" as undermining national sovereignty.

The document signals major risks to both development aid and humanitarian crisis response. US support for humanitarian action in Gaza, Sudan, Syria, and Myanmar is conspicuously absent. Development assistance is now explicitly tied to countries accepting a US-dictated agenda on trade and security—illustrated by the December 4 Kenya health agreement ($2.5 billion) linked directly to Kenya providing police for Haiti. While transactional aid is not new in US policy, the quid pro quo has never been this explicit.

The strategy reveals fundamental contradictions between stated non-interventionism and actual engagement. While declaring the Middle East "over and done with," the administration chairs a UN Security Council "Board of Peace" governing Gaza's $50 billion reconstruction—precisely the "nation-building" it claims to reject. Ambassador Mike Waltz announced withdrawals from WHO and UNRWA, with 2,600 UN positions eliminated, 15% budget cuts, and 25% peacekeeper reductions.

A review of all international treaties begun earlier this year to determine which are "contrary to US interests"—combined with US withdrawal from the Human Rights Council and open hostility toward "supranational" oversight—may threaten US support for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Refugee Convention, and other ratified human rights treaties. This lack of clear commitment may well embolden other nations to question their own commitments to international human rights law.