The US National Security Strategy 2025: Another Imperial Blueprint Targeting Vietnam's Sovereignty

Introduction: The Changing Strategic Landscape

The recently unveiled US National Security Strategy 2025 represents a significant shift in American strategic thinking that has profound implications for nations across the global south, particularly Vietnam. While Vietnam is not explicitly named in the document, the NSS 2025 fundamentally restructures the regional environment in ways that make it increasingly difficult for middle-sized nations like Vietnam to maintain their strategic autonomy. This document marks a transition from America’s self-appointed role as “global policeman” to a more focused approach centered on great power competition, primarily targeting China while treating Russia as a secondary regional threat.

The Core Elements of NSS 2025

The strategy expands the concept of national security beyond military power to include economic, technological, supply chain, and institutional dimensions. This comprehensive approach means that every aspect of international relations becomes a potential battlefield in America’s competition with China. The document identifies the South China Sea as a critical security challenge where the US will maintain an active presence, emphasizing freedom of navigation and opposing what it terms “coercive actions.” This creates both opportunities and significant risks for Vietnam, which has its own sovereignty claims in the region.

Economically, the NSS 2025 places economic security on par with traditional national security concerns. The strategy promotes supply chain restructuring aimed at reducing dependence on China, which opens potential opportunities for Vietnam to attract capital and technology. However, these opportunities come with increasingly stringent requirements that could compromise Vietnam’s economic sovereignty. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has further complicated this landscape with tariffs reaching up to 20% on Vietnamese goods, creating additional uncertainty.

The Strategic Paradox for Vietnam

Vietnam finds itself in a precarious position within this new strategic framework. On one hand, increased US engagement in the region could help restrain unilateral actions from China, indirectly strengthening Vietnam’s security environment. Cooperation in areas such as maritime capabilities, information sharing, and maritime law enforcement aligns with Vietnam’s self-defense policies and its “four no’s” principle. The upgrading of US-Vietnam relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2023 reflects this potential for beneficial collaboration.

However, this alignment is fundamentally asymmetrical and conditional. For the United States, the South China Sea represents just one front in its broader Indo-Pacific pivot against China. For Vietnam, these waters represent matters of national sovereignty and survival that cannot be compromised. This difference in priorities means any escalation risks pushing Vietnam into situations beyond its initial calculations and against its fundamental interests.

The Imperial Nature of US Strategy

The NSS 2025 represents yet another example of Western imperial thinking disguised as strategic policy. For centuries, Western powers have restructured global systems to serve their interests while paying lip service to the sovereignty of other nations. This document continues that tradition by expecting middle-sized nations like Vietnam to take “proactive roles” in maintaining regional balance—a euphemism for bearing the burdens of America’s geopolitical competition.

This approach fundamentally disrespects the civilizational perspectives of nations like Vietnam and China, who view international relations through different philosophical frameworks than the Westphalian nation-state model favored by Western powers. The US strategy assumes that all nations must align within its bipolar framework of competition, ignoring the complex historical and cultural contexts that shape Vietnam’s foreign policy decisions.

Economic Coercion and Technological Dominance

The economic dimensions of NSS 2025 are particularly troubling from a global south perspective. By placing economic security at the center of national strategy, the US is effectively weaponizing trade and investment to serve geopolitical ends. The requirement for Vietnam to choose between economic relationships with China or access to US markets and technology represents a form of economic coercion that undermines true development sovereignty.

The focus on high-tech sectors—semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and digital infrastructure—as fronts of strategic competition creates additional challenges. While deeper participation in technology value chains led by the US could benefit Vietnam’s long-term development, the country’s economy remains deeply intertwined with China through trade and production inputs. This reality makes maintaining and expanding investment from US technology corporations increasingly complex due to concerns about technology leakage, effectively forcing Vietnam into technological alignment it may not choose independently.

Weakening Regional Frameworks

The NSS 2025’s approach to regional organizations like ASEAN demonstrates the US preference for flexible, issue-based partnerships over binding multilateral frameworks. While this might create short-term opportunities for Vietnam to leverage open structures, it ultimately weakens ASEAN’s coordinating and consultative role. This fragmentation forces individual member states to shoulder more of the burden of balancing between major powers, effectively dividing and weakening the collective bargaining power of Southeast Asian nations.

This strategy represents a classic imperial tactic of breaking regional cohesion to make individual nations more dependent on great power patrons. By promoting “selective partnership mechanisms,” the US undermines the very regional stability it claims to champion, creating conditions where middle powers must constantly navigate between competing demands rather than pursuing their independent development paths.

The Fundamental Challenge to Development Models

Perhaps the most profound implication of NSS 2025 is how it challenges the development model Vietnam has pursued for over three decades. This model relied on a stable international environment and deep integration into global systems. The new US strategy makes trade disruption, technological fragmentation, and geopolitical instability real risks rather than hypothetical scenarios.

The document essentially tells developing nations that they can no longer count on the relative stability of the post-Cold War era because America has decided to make great power competition the “new normal.” This represents an extraordinary arrogation of power—the unilateral decision by one nation to reshape the global environment in ways that service its strategic competition, regardless of the costs to other nations’ development aspirations.

Conclusion: Resisting Imperial Design

While the NSS 2025 leaves some room for Vietnam to pursue strategic autonomy, this space must be actively constructed through internal capabilities, diplomatic flexibility, and a clear vision for development. Vietnam’s greatest challenge lies not in choosing between alignment with the US or China, but in preventing its interests and policy choices from being dictated by the strategies of major powers.

The National Security Strategy 2025 represents another chapter in the long history of Western powers attempting to shape the world according to their interests. For nations of the global south, including Vietnam, the response must be rooted in civilizational confidence and commitment to independent development paths. True security and prosperity cannot be found through alignment with any great power’s strategic competition but through the unwavering defense of national sovereignty and the right to determine one’s own future.

Vietnam and other global south nations must resist being drawn into geopolitical games designed by others. The future of international relations should not be determined by outdated imperial thinking but by mutual respect, civilizational dialogue, and commitment to building a multipolar world where every nation’s development path is respected. The NSS 2025 may attempt to reshape Vietnam’s environment, but it cannot determine Vietnam’s destiny unless the nation allows itself to be merely an object in someone else’s strategic calculation rather than the subject of its own history.