Three Ways to Read Trump's National Security Strategy

To the authors of any administration’s National Security Strategy—mandated for over 30 years now—it is a great state paper, a literary beacon by which government agencies can follow the president’s lead, a work of measured but forceful prose, whose lucidity is undeniable save by the malicious or irremediably malcontent. It is fair to say that no one who picks up these monographs without the painful experience of having labored on or near one shares that view. That is no criticism of their drafters, who are often exceptionally well-educated at advanced institutions of learning, where they have studied strategic