12 Dec The US National Security Strategy 2026: China and the “Woke”, the Rivals to Confront, and Venezuela, the Credibility Test
By,
Fabián Calle, Senior Fellow, MSI²
The publication of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy clearly outlines how the two-time president understands the geopolitical, cultural, and ideological challenges facing the superpower and its spheres of influence.
The battle for ideas, minds, and hearts becomes as important as military strategy. This document is undoubtedly disruptive compared to everything published by the White House since the end of the Cold War. Among its central themes are:
1. A full awareness of the end of unipolarity, which began with the collapse of the USSR.
2. The recognition of the serious errors Washington committed during those decades of near-absolute power. Among the most important were underestimating the consequences of China’s rise and failing to give greater space to seek dialogue and coordination with Russia. Without forgetting unnecessary wars like Iraq in 2003 and twenty years of military presence in Afghanistan, as well as successive NATO expansions that increasingly strained relations with Moscow, facilitating Beijing’s strategy of rapprochement and co-opting influence in Russia, and the futile attempt to democratize the Middle East after 2001, all of these were distractions that China skillfully exploited to consolidate its power in the Asia-Pacific region.
3. Undoubtedly, the central focus of Trump’s documents is the Western Hemisphere. This has not been seen since the threat posed by the fall of Cuba to the USSR in 1960. It is made clear that the region is a vital security zone for the US and that if this is not achieved, any projection of power to other areas of the world will be seriously affected. The link and intertwining of transnational threats such as mass migration, drug and human trafficking, and the hybrid warfare strategies of rivals like China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, etc., are present throughout the document. According to the new strategy, interstate geopolitics and the classic power struggle cannot be understood without a deep and detailed understanding of these crimes that cross national borders and render the supposed rigid boundaries between internal security and national defense meaningless. For all these reasons, Latin America acquires a position of paramount importance.
It is not only a matter of preventing the arrival of strategic military capabilities from China (especially), Russia, Iran, etc., in this vast region, but also of preventing these state actors from using drug and human trafficking as a battering ram against the political and social stability of the United States, as well as a source of funding for anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, anti-nationalist, anti-military, anti-family, and other movements and ideologies. This is the quintessential “woke” recipe, so widespread in the American academic world and by much of the self-proclaimed progressive press.
4. At this point, we enter a central segment of the 33-page document we are analyzing: a forceful and direct critique of European “wokeness” and its progressive and persistent demolition of fundamental Western values, including uncontrolled Islamic migration and high birth rates compared to those of European populations. The document does not shy away from hypothesizing that NATO member countries of the old continent will have predominantly Muslim populations in the coming decades. It reiterates the forceful warning that Vice President J.D. Vance issued months earlier during his tour of Europe, demanding that establishment political parties (left, center, and even center-right) cease their attacks on nationalist and right-wing parties and movements. The popular vote must be respected, as well as freedom of expression, access to the media, and the absence of censorship on social media. All of this is seasoned with the desire to end Russophobia, which only serves to facilitate the work of Chinese diplomacy and that of its allies.
It goes without saying that this description of “wokism” in Western Europe is symbiotic with broad sectors of the US Democrats. Returning to Vance’s warning, the West carries within itself the virus of its own self-destruction, and external enemies make good use of it. Fewer children, less patriotism, the denigration of traditions, national heroes, and the Judeo-Christian tradition, the stigmatization of white, heterosexual men and women, an extremist and anti-capitalist environmentalism, etc., are precious gifts to the enemy powers of the US and the Western world. As a personal reflection, it’s worth considering how Kirchnerism ended up being a peripheral version of American “wokism” and its European clones. A similar phenomenon occurs with broad sectors of the left or pseudo-left in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, etc. What were presented as revolutionary and anti-US movements and ideas end up imitating the left wing of the Empire. Poor Arturo Jauretche, if he could see it.
A final comment refers to the central test that the continuity of the Castro-Chavista dictatorship in Venezuela represents in the short term for this entire document and its focus, as rarely seen before, on Latin America. If the end of 2025 and the coming months of 2026 do not show clear and conclusive results, the extra (and intra) regional enemies of the US will know that the paper will not necessarily translate into action.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).