On December 8, 2025, the White House released its long-anticipated National Security Strategy (NSS), setting off a wave of debate about whether the United States is prepared to confront the existential risks of the 21st century. Just one day later, global experts continued sounding the alarm: the world faces mounting dangers from unchecked climate change, a renewed nuclear arms race, and the dizzying advance of artificial intelligence, all while international governance and U.S. leadership appear to be faltering.
The NSS, a 29-page document shaped under President Trump’s administration, outlines a vision of American security rooted in protectionism and a policy of isolationism. The document declares, “the purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests,” and insists that “no adversary or danger should be able to hold America at risk.” However, as Alexandra Bell of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes, this logic sidesteps the reality that many of the gravest threats—climate change, nuclear proliferation, and disruptive technologies—are borderless and cannot be tackled by one nation acting alone.
Perhaps the most headline-grabbing element of the NSS is the Golden Dome missile defense initiative, announced by President Trump on May 20, 2025. The administration touts the system as the next-generation shield for the American homeland, with a purported price tag of $175 billion. Skeptics, however, argue the real cost would be much higher and warn that such a system could destabilize global security. As The Bulletin observes, “huge investments in national missile defense…would undermine the National Security Strategy’s thrice-mentioned desire to ‘reestablish strategic stability with Russia.’” The logic is simple: when one side pours resources into defense, adversaries respond by boosting their offensive capabilities, fueling an arms race rather than reducing risks.
Strategic stability is not just a theoretical concern. The last major nuclear arms limitation treaty between the U.S. and Russia, New START, is set to expire in February 2026. Yet, there is little evidence of substantive dialogue to replace it. Meanwhile, nuclear modernization and proliferation are on the rise worldwide. According to reporting from December 9, 2025, nine nuclear nations are actively upgrading their arsenals. Russia and the U.S. have even discussed resuming nuclear tests, while China expands its stockpile, Iran advances its nuclear program, and North Korea’s missiles threaten major U.S. cities. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute warns that a “dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened.”
The NSS does address nuclear risks, at least in passing. It asserts, “We want the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent, plus next-generation missile defenses—including a Golden Dome for the American homeland—to protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies.” Yet, as The Bulletin points out, the U.S. already possesses the world’s most formidable nuclear deterrent. The real danger lies in undermining the delicate balance of mutual vulnerability that has kept the peace for decades.
President Trump’s own rhetoric on nuclear threats has been stark. In a September 2025 address to the UN General Assembly, he declared nuclear weapons “the most powerful and destructive weapons ever devised by man,” warning, “if we ever used them, there would be no nothing.” Still, the NSS’s scant attention to nuclear arms control betrays a disconnect between presidential rhetoric and actual policy.
Climate change, another existential threat, fares even worse in the new strategy. The NSS mentions it only once, and then only to dismiss it: “We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.” This position flies in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus and the lived experience of worsening extreme weather. As a recent analysis published on December 9, 2025, explains, “The principal cause of global warming is fossil-fuel pollution, which accumulates in the atmosphere like a blanket covering the Earth.” The consequences—rising sea levels, violent storms, crop failures, and mass extinctions—are already unfolding.
The international community has tried, for decades, to forge a path forward. Since 1995, nearly 200 nations have met annually at UN Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to negotiate climate action. The most recent COP, held in Brazil in November 2025, was marked by gridlock. Fossil fuels still provide 80% of the world’s energy, and in 2022, government subsidies for fossil fuels topped $7 trillion. The Climate Action Tracker projects that current climate plans could push global temperatures up by 3.3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century—well beyond the 2-degree target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, from which the U.S. withdrew under Trump’s leadership.
Efforts to decarbonize are hampered by powerful fossil fuel interests. At the Brazil COP, 1,600 industry lobbyists outnumbered national delegates. As a result, even mild references to phasing out fossil fuels were stripped from the final agreement. The article published on December 9, 2025, suggests that “coalitions of the willing”—groups of countries willing to move ahead with aggressive climate action—could be a way forward, alongside trade sanctions like carbon border taxes to pressure laggards. But the absence of U.S. leadership is palpable. As the article notes, “Trump has dismantled U.S. climate science and clean energy financing programs,” leaving the world’s largest economy on the sidelines as the crisis deepens.
Disruptive technology, particularly artificial intelligence, represents a third, rapidly accelerating threat. The NSS frames this as a competition: “we want to ensure that US technology and US standards—particularly in AI, biotech, and quantum computing—drive the world forward.” Yet, the document offers little detail on how to achieve this safely. The December 9, 2025, analysis warns that “technology is moving much faster than our governing institutions and political will, especially when nations seek strategic advantage, and investors seek profit.” The race to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) raises unsettling questions about human agency, ethics, and the very future of creativity and decision-making.
While the NSS touts American ambition to lead in AI, it remains silent on the guardrails needed to prevent unintended consequences or deliberate abuse. As the analysis points out, “Our ability to foresee and avoid perverse consequences is the opposable thumb of human intellect. We should use it to grasp the future we want, where technology enhances rather than replaces the best and highest human qualities.”
The NSS’s inward turn—summed up in its assertion that “[t]he world works best when nations prioritize their interests”—may appeal to some, but for the world’s most interconnected challenges, it is a perilous strategy. As The Bulletin warns, “a world in which every country acts solely in its own narrow self-interest—ignoring the global existential threats looming over us all—is the quickest way to make sure the Doomsday Clock strikes midnight.”
The stakes could hardly be higher. As the climate warms, nuclear arsenals grow, and algorithms become ever more powerful, the need for wise, coordinated leadership is urgent. The question now is whether the U.S. and the world will rise to the challenge—or continue hurtling forward, heedless of the dangers ahead.
