From the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, American foreign policy was oriented toward a singular goal: defeating Soviet communism. 

In the 21st century, however, the greatest threat to core American interests is no longer located on the borders of Europe. Instead, it resides in the Indo-Pacific, where the People’s Republic of China is the United States’ most formidable adversary, both economically and militarily. It has been nearly a decade since Beijing debuted its Made in China 2025 initiative, by which China aims to supersede the United States in nearly every critical industry and sector imaginable. Communist China is our challenge. 

President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have long understood these geopolitical realities. An America-First foreign policy is one based on prioritizing tangible American interests—not empty abstractions. For decades, American leaders have told European leaders what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. The kid-glove treatment is over.

The foreign adventurism of the last 30 years has not been “conservative” at all. It’s Wilsonian liberalism in new clothes. The Wilsonians—neoconservatives and neoliberals alike—used to dominate both party establishments. They saw the world in terms of abstract “values,” and insisted that those values—rather than concrete, tangible national interests—must direct American foreign policy. In other words, America was compelled to be everywhere, all at once, all the time. 

American realism requires tough choices and recognizes scarcity, meaning that we cannot, in fact, be everywhere, all at once, all the time. 

As President John Quincy Adams famously said, “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

The future of American foreign policy is realism. It isn’t a new concept, but has been practiced since the dawn of our very country. Washington and Hamilton backed John Jay’s treaty, which was unpopular at the time but kept the British at bay, affording the United States the ability to rebuild and rearm. The Monroe Doctrine, an oft-cited but non-central part of Monroe’s annual message to Congress in 1823, was cited by Adams and then later by JFK. Franklin D. Roosevelt was perhaps the most cited and notable practitioner of American realism. As the author and historian John Hulsman has explained, Roosevelt’s genius lay in understanding when fighting abroad was truly necessary to protect our own interests, especially when it came to America preserving and defending its freedom against the unchecked tyranny of Nazism.

American realism asks many important questions when considering intervention, investment, or increased interest, but centers on one core question: Are American core strategic interests at stake? It’s critical that we preserve American blood and money for interventions or efforts that either directly benefit American core interests or protect American core interests.

Fortunately, this White House understands that America’s resources are finite. The nature of the threats we face today and the revival of American realism demands a more resilient Europe that can defend its own sovereignty in a real, tangible way. 

Unfortunately, European countries are in the midst of disastrous deindustrialization at the behest of radical climate protesters, leaving it in a more precarious situation than it was 30 years ago. Energy Secretary Chris Wright put it best in a recent speech: 

We have outsourced far too much manufacturing, and our allies in Europe have gone much further in this destructive direction. I find it sad and a bit ironic that the once mighty steel and petrochemical industries of the United Kingdom have been displaced to Asia, where the same products will be produced with higher greenhouse gas emissions, then loaded on a diesel-powered ship back to the United Kingdom.

Secretary Wright is correct. Shifting priorities means Europe must do more to defend itself. For too long, America has carried an outsized share of the financial burden for Europe’s security, allowing generations of European leaders to take these defense investments for granted, opting to fill the coffers of pension programs and other social welfare boondoggles. Europeans can’t just up defense spending to meet an arbitrary percentage point; they need to actually spend that increased defense budget on lethal weapon systems and ammunition.

Urgency derives from a truth that many in Washington won’t say out loud: The United States’ defense industrial base is weaker and more strained than it has been in decades. We have nearly depleted our industrial capacity to actually produce the weapons and munitions we desperately need to confront the threats of our time.  

As it currently stands, some estimates suggest that the United States would “likely run out of some munitions—such as long-range, precision-guided munitions” in “less than one week” in the event of a major Taiwan Strait conflict with China. The hard truth is that replenishing these systems will take years, not weeks or months. Foreign policy realists like President Trump, Vice President Vance, myself and many others have sounded the alarm about these vulnerabilities for years. 

America cannot afford to ignore this reality, and neither should Europe when it comes to their own industrial base. We’ve tailored our defense industries to low-intensity conflicts and counterterrorism at the expense of our own ability to deter a devastating great-power war in the Indo-Pacific. Europe’s overreliance on American guarantees has only accelerated this decline.

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The threats we face demand far greater investment, and we can’t effectively shift our efforts to face this rising threat unless our NATO allies in Europe step up and contribute significantly more money to their own defense. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed this exact sentiment when speaking in Brussels in February: “The United States remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop. But the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.  Rather, our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security.” 

Our American realism revival puts core national interests first, and complacency is no longer an option. The best time to fix these issues was decades ago. The second-best time is now. The idea that we can be everyone, all at once, all the time is a fiction perpetuated by an outdated foreign policy blob that cares more about lining its members’ own pockets than about defending American interests. 

It is time we recognize that we must make hard choices while rebuilding our industrial base to face the challenges of the future. It is time for Europe to step up. We must prioritize the homeland and the Indo-Pacific, and, when it is time to go, we must fight with overwhelming force and give our men and women in uniform in combat the advantage in conflict. This is the way.