Trump's National Security Strategy: A Plan to Contain China or Carve Up the World? | Jamie Metzl

In Episode 454 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with author, futurist, and U.S. foreign policy expert Jamie Metzl about the aims and objectives of the 2025 National Security Strategy and its implications for American prosperity and power in the 21st century. Jamie and Demetri spend the first hour of this conversation digging into the Trump administration's 2025 National Security Strategy and the story that the administration is trying to tell to the American people and to itself about America's place in the world, where it went astray, and what needs to be done on a strategic planning level in order to "Make America Great Again." From there, Metzl and Kofinas debate whether the strategy amounts to a "containment" of China or something closer to a 19th-century balance-of-power where the largest and most powerful countries—namely the United States, Russia, and China—will be granted the freedom to operate with impunity within their own spheres of influence, dealing a final death blow to the international rules-based liberal order that the United States sought to universalize after the fall of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago. The second hour is a wide-ranging tour…