Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - Evaluating Biden's published National Security Strategy.

Assessing the new National Security Strategy of the US.

• After two years of delay, the Biden admin has finally released its National Security Strategy.

• Now, open to public, the NSS is not an actual strategy playbook - it is rather, an effective signaling device intended for multiple important stakeholders, and most importantly:

• 1) To allied nations - for it is one thing to make promises in private, and quite another to affirm these commitments loudly in public. This very act puts America’s credibility on the line, and consequently, automatically adds weight to the promises made, and;

• 2) To the DC foreign policy strategy establishment & the military-industrial complex: to get everyone on the same page, provide grand objectives to filter and evaluate the admin’s actions through, and help anticipate the military-industrial needs of the government.

• The whole document is 48 pages long and contains many familiar themes reiterated over the past two years: outcompeting adversaries, investing into strategically important spheres, achieving a higher level of alignment with allies and cooperating with adversarial nations where possible & needed to counter common challenges like biosafety, public health, transnational crime, and climate change.

• We will skip the well-established and repeated themes, and delve into certain areas that stood out: there were quite a lot of things that the NSS got right, and yet few areas of overreach, certain inadequate attitudes and omissions stood out too.