In late 2025, the Trump Administration released its 33-page National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS). The 33-page document is a departure from NSS releases of the past, playing up MAGA themes and often sounding like a speech by President Donald Trump.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, is highly critical of the Trump NSS — which, he argues, underscores major problems with the Trump Administration's military and national security policies.
"National strategy documents matter because real actions flow from them: budgets, force design, training and operational priorities, engagement with key allies, readiness models, and leader requirements, to name a few," Herling explains in an article published on January 28. "Ideally, any White House National Security Strategy defines the foreign policy goals for the whole government, and then sets about reasonable, if not specific, plans to achieve those goals. The follow-on National Defense Strategy then tells the Department of Defense how the military will work to help implement those plans and achieve those goals. When done well, this process disciplines choices. When done poorly, it creates confusion that echoes for years across the military force."
Hertling adds, "That is why the 2026 NDS is so concerning. Not because it sets changed or ambitious goals, but because it repeatedly substitutes political rhetoric and untested assumptions for the strategic guidance the military requires."
Defense strategy documents, Hertling emphasizes, should not sound like "campaign speeches" or "party propaganda."
"From its first pages," Hertling observes, "the 2026 NDS devotes considerable and valuable space to openly and directly criticizing previous administrations. The very first sentence of Secretary Pete Hegseth's cover memo…. is retrospective and retributive, rather than prospective and mission-oriented… Strategy documents…. are not vehicles for settling political scores; they are meant to speak to a professional force tasked with executing national objectives under extreme risk."
Hertling continues, "To put it another way: To an admiral responsible for responding to encroachment and aggression by the Chinese Navy, Hegseth's opinion of the foreign policy of the Clinton Administration — when that admiral was probably a lieutenant in the middle of the ocean somewhere — isn't really important. What this administration wants him to do about China, and what resources it's going to give him — that's what’s important…. In dangerous times, clarity is a form of protection. The 2026 National Defense Strategy offers far too little of it."
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.
