- The United States’ National Security Strategy (NSS), released in November 2025, represents a decisive shift toward a sharply defined, interest-based conception of security.
- The U.S. strategy on national security has a foundation that states national security as a means for guaranteeing sovereignty, territorial integrity, economic freedom, and a unified culture.
- A characteristic element of US NSS is its attempt to integrate economic security into a national security paradigm.
- An institutionalised NSS can reshape India’s strategic governance by ensuring continuity across political cycles while preserving civilian political authority over security policy.
The United States’ National Security Strategy (NSS), November 2025, represents a decisive shift toward a sharply defined, interest-based conception of security. Framed explicitly around “America First,” the document rejects post-Cold War liberal internationalism and instead emphasises sovereignty, economic nationalism, military strength, and selective engagement. This strategy emerges in a global environment marked by great-power rivalry, economic fragmentation, technological competition, and declining faith in multilateral institutions. There is nothing about mutual win-wins. It’s all about America first and America last. While the strategy offers clarity and coherence often missing from earlier NSS documents, it also raises important questions about sustainability, global stability, and America’s long-term leadership role.
Core Objectives of U.S. Security Strategy
The U.S. strategy on national security has a foundation that states national security as a means for guaranteeing sovereignty, territorial integrity, economic freedom, and a unified culture. Both border security, military deterrence, industrial capability, and energy superiority are mentioned as being fundamental for national power. In contrast to earlier versions, which placed U.S. global leadership as a shared pubic good upheld through multilateral institutions, the 2025 NSS is a narrower conception of American responsibility focused on clearly outlined national interests.
Strategic Principles
The NSS is rooted in a series of guiding principles that shape its overall approach. “Peace through strength” is at the forefront, and it states that superior military and economic might is the best way to deter any conflicts. The NSS principles continue through a commitment to a pragmatic non-interventionist policy. It asserts that foreign action by the United States must by definition be the exception rather than the rule and must never serve ideological or humanitarian ends but solely and strictly national ones. Implicit in this shift is the acknowledgement that although the United States historically assumed extensive global responsibilities largely in pursuit of its own strategic and economic interests, it now seeks to redefine those commitments rather than continue bearing costs it no longer considers necessary.
Economic Security as Strategic Power
A characteristic element of this strategy is its attempt to integrate economic security into a national security paradigm. The call to reindustrialise, resilient supply chains, strategic use of tariffs, and preeminence in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and defence innovation is considered a matter of security. On the military side, America aims to remain preeminent in each area of national security, including nuclear, conventional, cyber and space security. The strategy urges NATO allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific regions to assume greater responsibility for their own security.
Prioritised Regions, Limited Commitments
The NSS has a regionally tiered strategy that is evident in a hierarchical structure of interests. It asserts excellence in the West, a strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific region in terms of its relations with China, stays non-interventionist in the Middle East on military matters, and has a shifting presence in Africa. This shows the pragmatic approach in the strategy and its shift from the idealistic aims to universally engage.
What’s in it for India?
For India, the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy brings a mix of opportunity and influence. By placing the Indo-Pacific at the heart of America’s long-term strategic focus and framing China as the principal competitor, the document aligns with India’s own concerns about regional stability and the need to uphold an open maritime order. The strategy’s push for partners and allies to shoulder a larger share of security responsibilities, especially in the Indian Ocean and adjacent waters, creates space for India to expand its influence without being tied into rigid alliance structures.
There is also a practical economic angle. Washington’s drive to secure supply chains, invest in critical technologies, and reduce dependence on China naturally opens doors for India to position itself as a credible alternative for manufacturing, digital infrastructure, and strategic minerals. The shift away from the United States acting as the world’s default security provider means New Delhi is viewed as a partner whose cooperation is essential to shaping the regional balance.
India’s National Security Strategy in Perspective
In 2023, the Indian government started preparing for a national security strategy, which is very important in terms of development for Indian institutions. The Indian administrations in the past decades have been following a certain national security strategy, which has always been led by their political leadership along with civilian control in their military affairs. The preparation for a national security strategy is headed by the National Security Council Secretariat in collaboration with various ministries. This is due to increased complexities in Indian security challenges, which are now interlinked.
This process does not indicate a lack of strategy in the past. Rather, it reflects the growing convergence of traditional military concerns with economic security, cyber threats, information warfare, supply-chain vulnerabilities, energy security, and protection of critical infrastructure. An integrated NSS would provide a unifying framework that can align these domains under national objectives while retaining political control over final decisions.
Security in an Era of Hybrid Competition
The Indian NSS discussion has to be contextualised in the context of an internationally evolving circumstance where great-power rivalry is increasing, the authority of multilateral institutions is waning, and the pace of geopolitical shift is accelerating. The boundaries between war and peace are unclear due to the use of cyber warfare, economic force, and information power, reshaping the nature of national security.
While great powers embark on various national security strategies that help to define their priorities and intentions, the Indian government’s move to initiate its own process is part of the need to operate within this context without compromising strategic autonomy or diplomatic flexibility.
India – Internal Coherence, External Flexibility
The National Security Strategy mechanisms are expected to strengthen internal integration rather than changing India’s international posture. The more direct effect of the National Security Strategy is to further synchronise inter-ministerial policies across defence, intelligence, economics, and technological response. Even without public release, an internally articulated strategy can enhance crisis preparedness and reduce ad hoc decision-making.
An institutionalised NSS can reshape India’s strategic governance by ensuring continuity across political cycles while preserving civilian political authority over security policy. This reflects India’s preference for strategic ambiguity, which is aimed at preserving freedom of action, making the balance between transparency and flexibility critical. If managed carefully, an NSS can enhance India’s credibility as a rising power by signalling institutional maturity without imposing rigid commitments, while enabling clearer communication of priorities to partners and safeguarding independent decision-making.
Strategic Direction for India
A dynamic framework should be adopted by the Indian National Security Strategy to ensure adaptability to evolving threats. Coordination and accountability should be emphasised while maintaining autonomy for institutions. Cybersecurity, economic security, and environmental security should be incorporated alongside traditional security concerns. Decisions regarding public disclosure should be guided by national interest rather than international opinion. Above all, the NSS should reinforce India’s core principles of strategic autonomy, political control, and calibrated engagement.
Conclusion
The U.S. National Security Strategy and India’s evolving NSS reflect two distinct responses to the same global turbulence. The U.S. approach seeks to preserve primacy through explicit articulation of interests and power, while India’s approach prioritises coherence and preparedness without sacrificing flexibility. This divergence reflects differences in strategic culture rather than capability. In an increasingly fragmented and multipolar world, India’s calibrated approach, if institutionalised carefully, can enhance strategic effectiveness while preserving the autonomy that has long defined its engagement with the international system.
Dr Lakshmi Karlekar 
Pritam Sarbabidya 
Aayush Pal