Trump's New Strategy: Russia Is an Actual Threat

Peter Bergen wrote for CNN analyzing President Trump's newly released national security strategy:

On Monday President Donald Trump rolled out his national security strategy, a key planning document that every president since Ronald Reagan has published to warn about threats to American national security and how best to respond to them.

Trump's plan is, unsurprisingly, an unabashedly "America First" strategy that, at just under 70 dense pages, is full of insights into how Trump's national security advisers see the world.

While usual suspects such as Iran and North Korea are described as threats, and campaign promises about the need for a border wall with Mexico are acknowledged, what is most newsworthy about the document is the extent to which it portrays Russia and China, America's traditional major state antagonists, as threatening. The document asserts that Russia and China "want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests," which seems quite at odds with the President's own enthusiastic embrace of Russia.