Look West, Not East: What Washington Wants from Pakistan

The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) under the second Trump administration does not focus on Pakistan as a priority area of foreign policy interest, but many of the primary policy objectives of the NSS could give observers an idea of where Pakistan is heading in terms of its political and security imperatives broadly and, specifically, its ties with the US.

The key hint rests in the following excerpt of the NSS:

“The days of the United States propping up the entire world like Atlas are over. We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense…Continuing President Trump’s approach of asking allies to assume primary responsibility for their regions, the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter. This approach ensures that burdens are shared and that all such efforts benefits from broader legitimacy. The model will be targeted partnerships that use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability…The United States will stand ready to help—potentially through more favorable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, and defense procurement—those countries that willingly take more responsibility for security in their neighborhoods and align their export controls with ours.”

The excerpt most obviously alludes to the decades-long tradition of many of the world’s powers, especially Canada and Western Europe, leveraging a peace dividend on the back of longstanding U.S. security leadership. The Trump administration is winding that dependency back and, in turn, has tasked its NATO partners to not only reach the minimum defence spending target of 2% of GDP, but now look towards reaching 5% of GDP (via 3.5% on core spending like building and maintaining capability, and then another 1.5% to elevate issue-specific capacity like countering the Russian threat). Western Europe’s leading powers are being left with not only managing their regional security interests, but doing so in a manner that still aligns with fundamental U.S. interests, like maintaining regional stability.

The same logic extends beyond NATO. Besides offloading security responsibility to wealthy European allies, it is constructing a global architecture where regional powers anchor their own neighborhoods. For Pakistan, this means a specific role within that architecture, one that American policymakers have historically preferred but never articulated quite so explicitly.