The US, China and Russia have been locked in a grand-strategic ‘stand-off’, with the US focused on sustaining its primacy against its great-power competitors, Russia focused on NATO encroachment and China on blocked economic expansion and international investment – and all three applying unique asymmetric projections outward, writes Bonnie Butlin, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Security Partners’ Forum (SPF).
The 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) may represent a grand-strategic break from the great-power asymmetric ‘stand-off’ and a re-alignment toward a more symmetric strategy that will affect security in the Americas.
The NSS, using a race analogy, describes the US as ‘jockeying in first place,’ alongside other states, in the race for economic growth, investment, technology, AI, critical minerals and energy. It tilts the perspective from a vertically rising China and Russia, against a declining American leading power, to a horizontal plane with the US in the lead.
This new balance of power aims to prevent would-be competitors from advancing to threat level and extinguishes smaller escalatory conflicts.
It affords the US time to build its prosperity and strength and advance its technology and military for the future (as are Russia and China), while deconflicting the war in Ukraine and deescalating the potential nuclear crisis.
This includes through negotiation between nation-states, including Russia (which others have eschewed), using a concentrated, non-traditional diplomatic style – “Presidential Diplomacy”: pragmatic, realistic, principled, muscular and restrained.
The NSS’ ‘America First’ Foreign Policy positions the US more symmetrically alongside Russia and mirrors its ‘immutable sovereignty’ – characterized by Russian exceptionalism and defence of its near-abroad, with nation-state focus.
Similarly, the NSS will protect America’s extended near-abroad with a Monroe Doctrine strengthened by the Trump Corollary – i.e. an American-controlled hemisphere, framed by American security interests, priorities and power.
The US is strategically retrenching within the Western Hemisphere, shedding the economic weight of foreign wars and disproportionate supports to allies, partners and regions.
It is re-aligning national security with the national interest – which had de-coupled over time as National Security objectives and scope expanded.
Refocusing on re-industrialization, economic growth, broad-based prosperity at home, cultural and intellectual renewal, balanced trade and technological and military strength, the NSS moves from asymmetric power projection to positive, soft power influence, with the US presenting as a more mercantilist partner of choice for nation-states (the NSS-defined fundamental political unit).
This brings the US symmetrically alongside China, as both seek to gain access, resources (including critical minerals) and investment globally, without pushing values and democracy.
While reducing risk at the grand-strategic level, stabilizing the Americas may be complicated by an “America First” Foreign Policy, US re-industrialization, tariffs and expectations to use US technology and standards e.g., for AI, quantum computing and biotech.
Individual nation-states’ existing diplomatic and business relationships and their own sovereign interests and vision for the future may not coalesce with an ‘America First’ Foreign Policy.
The Americas may face increased competition (Brazil is a member of BRICS) or become a theatre of conflict (e.g., Venezuela).
Canada may already be in a complex, multi-vector ‘proxy war’ between China and the US.
Uncertainty around renewal of the USMCA trade agreement may further isolate Canada if the framing changes from North and South America to Canada in the North and Latin America in the South – counterintuitive to a hemisphere strategy.
Known around the world as “Canada’s First Lady of Security”, Bonnie is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Security Partners’ Forum (SPF), a first-of-its-kind agile international network of security and resilience associations, institutes and professionals, bridging all domains and disciplines of security.
Under the SPF banner, she created the Women in Security and Resilience Alliance (WISECRA), which engages a growing network of women in security and resilience associations and groups globally.
Since 2013, Bonnie Butlin has received some 30 international and national-level awards, accolades and recognitions related to security, resilience and leadership.
She is a Security Risk Management Certified Professional (SRMCP), holds Fellow status within the Australian Risk Policy Institute (F.ARPI), and is a Fellow of ISC2.
This article was originally published in the February edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.