Cato Podcast Strategy Without Strategy: Inside the New NSS
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Dec 9, 2025 Katherine Thompson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former Defense Department official, teams up with Josh Shifrinson, a University of Maryland professor and expert on grand strategy, to explore the intricacies of the National Security Strategy. They delve into controversial concepts like 'civilizational erasure,' critique the document's contradictions, and scrutinize its handling of U.S.-EU relations. The discussion highlights the NSS's economic focus on China and explores the balance of diplomacy versus military force in the Western Hemisphere, suggesting a push towards more restrained foreign policy.
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NSS Chooses Clear, Exclusionary Focus
- The NSS defines strategy narrowly and exclusionarily to clarify core national interests.
- That approach signals a stronger separation between priorities and peripheral Washington programs.
Rhetoric Collides With Internal Contradictions
- The NSS contains internal contradictions between stated principles and policy choices.
- Those contradictions reflect the broader difficulty of converting rhetoric into coherent strategy.
Civilizational Erasure As Political Signal
- The phrase "civilizational erasure" targets EU institutions and migration as threats to identity and sovereignty.
- Speakers saw it partly as political signaling to win certain domestic constituencies.