Former deputy national security adviser rejects criticism that Trump policy means global retreat

Critics are off the mark when they claim the Trump administration’s foreign and national security policy is centered on the idea of “retreating globally,” according to Nadia Schadlow, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute who served as a key adviser to Mr. Trump during his first term.

Ms. Schadlow, who was a primary author of Mr. Trump’s first National Security Strategy (NSS) in 2017, says the newest version of the document released last month clearly outlines the current administration’s focus on “maintaining regional balances of power” and “preventing adversarial domination” by other global players such as China.

She also suggests the brazen U.S. military operation that apprehended Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who had been growing ties with China, Russia and Iran, will send a powerful message to Washington’s rivals.

Ms. Schadlow made the comments during an appearance this week on The Washington Brief, a monthly online forum discussion hosted by The Washington Times Foundation, during which she argued that the 2025 NSS isn’t all that different from the one she authored nearly a decade ago.

“Critics raise concerns that the document is too inward-focused, less ideological regarding China, and emphasizes the primacy of the nation-state over global institutions. I see these not as weaknesses, but as a realistic assessment of today’s strategic environment and a different approach to cooperation,” said Ms. Schadlow, who served as deputy national security adviser for strategy in 2018.

“Caring about what happens in our own region does not mean we don’t care about the rest of the world,” she said, adding that the new NSS “also makes clear that we want to help positive alignments emerge globally.”

The document has raised eyebrows in the international community by confirming that the U.S. would shift its military and economic focus to the Western Hemisphere, hoping to establish a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine — a dual reference to the 19th-century proclamation by President James Monroe that Europe should stay out of Latin America, and the Roosevelt Corollary, named for President Theodore Roosevelt’s insistence that the U.S. would act as international police in the region.

The U.S. has for months ramped up its military presence in the waters around Venezuela, conducted dozens of deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the region and, on Jan. 3 carried out the brazen military operation that captured Mr. Maduro in Caracas.

Mr. Trump and his allies allege that Mr. Maduro’s government was a key player in a massive drug trafficking organization involved in transferring deadly drugs to the U.S. The U.S. and other international organizations also maintain Mr. Maduro is an illegitimate leader.

Critics argue the U.S. military raid that captured the Venezuelan president could inspire U.S. rivals to carry out similar operations on their own desired targets. A specific concern is that China, the primary U.S. rival in the Pacific and in South America, could use the precedent set by the Maduro raid to target Taiwan with similarly aggressive tactics.

Ms. Schadlow dismissed claims that China’s relationship with Taiwan and Russia’s relationship with Ukraine are at all similar to the longstanding danger posed to the U.S. by the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

“Protecting ourselves from bad actors emanating from nearby regions is the dynamic at play here. This also means making clear to China that operating in ways that are detrimental to U.S. interests in this region is something we will watch closely,” she said. “And Taiwan is not a threat to China.”

Her comments sparked debate during the Washington Brief forum. Alexandre Mansourav, an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a regular member of the forum, questioned whether the Venezuela operation might give China confidence to conduct similar operations in its hemisphere.

“I like what President Trump did because it sent a powerful message: don’t play games with America. What we say, we mean. That message was needed after a period of weak leadership,” Mr. Mansourov said. “But if we turn the tables, do our actions in Venezuela give Russia the moral right to eliminate Ukraine’s leadership? Or China the moral right to do the same in Taiwan?”

Even before the Venezuela operation, China was ramping up its aggressive tactics against Taiwan, an autonomously governed and U.S.-aligned island democracy that the Chinese Communist Party claims to hold sovereignty over. Last week, Chinese military forces surrounded Taiwan with warships and fighter jets in a two-day-long exercise that experts have viewed as a substantial show of force.

On a separate front, many believe China is unlikely to relinquish all of its influence in Venezuela, in spite of the Jan. 3 U.S. raid. China has invested billions in economic and infrastructure development programs over the past decade in Venezuela and other South American nations in hopes of gaining a secure foothold, and growing Beijing’s influence in the region. Chinese diplomats held a summit with Mr. Maduro just hours before he was captured by U.S. forces.

Mr. Trump’s 2025 NSS specifically says that U.S. policy will focus on pushing China out of Latin America, but does not lay out specifically how that will be accomplished.

Ms. Schadlow told The Washington Brief that “the United States has a right to protect its citizens from drugs and from destabilizing states in its own region.”

“There is also a positive goal here — creating economic and political conditions in the Western Hemisphere that allow people to live without fear of cartels,” she said.