The Washington foreign policy establishment is in predictable panic mode. America’s allies are hedging their bets, diversifying their partnerships, and preparing for what strategists delicately call “US unpredictability.”
The December 2025 National Security Strategy—with its scathing attacks on European “civilizational erasure” and its Monroe Doctrine revivalism—has only accelerated this trend. From Brussels to Tokyo, capitals are quietly developing what one Australian analyst aptly termed “US-plus-one” strategies, mirroring the “China-plus-one” approach businesses adopted to hedge against Beijing.
The conventional response from the Beltway crowd? Hand-wringing about declining American credibility, damaged alliances, and emboldened adversaries. But this narrative misses the fundamental point: allied hedging isn’t a bug in the system—it’s a feature of a multipolar world that has been emerging for decades, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.
The illusion of reliability
Let’s dispense with the mythology. The notion that America’s allies enjoyed decades of steadfast, predictable American leadership is largely retrospective fiction.
Washington has routinely pursued its interests at allies’ expense—from Nixon’s opening to China without consulting Tokyo, to the 2003 Iraq invasion over German and French objections, to Obama’s “pivot to Asia” that never quite pivoted, to Biden’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal. The Trump administration’s transactional approach and unpredictability are different in degree, not kind.
What Trump has done—and this is worth acknowledging even for those who find his style abrasive—is to strip away the pretense. His National Security Strategy, for all its contradictions and bombast, at least openly admits what has been obvious for years: America will ruthlessly prioritize its own interests and expects allies to shoulder more of their own defense burdens.
The document’s frank admission that the United States will no longer be “Atlas, propping up the world” is simply stating what has been de facto policy since at least the 2008 financial crisis accelerated American retrenchment.
The rational response
So how are allies responding? With entirely rational hedging strategies that any competent strategist would recommend:
Europe is finally—finally!—taking its own defense seriously. The €150 billion (US$175.7 billion) loan for missile defense, cyber capabilities and drones approved after Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech represents more progress on European strategic autonomy than decades of polite diplomatic prodding achieved.
The irony that Trump’s hectoring has accomplished what generations of American officials claiming to support European self-reliance could not is apparently lost on the very people now lamenting European “drift.”
Southeast Asia is deepening what scholars call the four elements of hedging: blunting (military modernization), broadening (diversifying partnerships), boosting (amplifying concerns in multilateral forums) and binding (engaging both China and the US).
Vietnam’s simultaneous purchase of F-16s from Washington while upgrading partnerships with Indonesia, Singapore and, yes, China, exemplifies sophisticated strategic flexibility, not fence-sitting.
East Asia’s traditional US allies—Japan and South Korea—are exploring closer trilateral cooperation with China on economic matters while maintaining security ties with Washington. This isn’t betrayal; it’s acknowledging the reality that China is their largest trading partner and will remain so regardless of American preferences.
The Gulf states have been hedging since Trump’s first term, when it became clear that Washington’s commitment to the region was declining. Their diversified partnerships with China, Russia, and regional powers reflect adaptation to American ambivalence about Middle East entanglements—an ambivalence, it should be noted, that Biden’s team largely shared.
Realist case for restraint
Here’s what the foreign policy establishment refuses to acknowledge: allied hedging actually serves American interests in a world where Washington can no longer afford—economically, politically, or strategically—to be the global security provider.
The Cold War alliance system was designed for a bipolar world with an existential ideological and military threat. That world ended in 1991. What followed was not, despite triumphalist rhetoric, a unipolar moment that would last indefinitely, but rather a brief period of American primacy during which rational strategic planning should have occurred to manage the inevitable transition to multipolarity.
Instead, Washington chose expansion—of NATO, of commitments, of ambitions—without commensurate increases in resources or domestic political support. The result is strategic overextension that has left the US simultaneously committed to defending the Baltic states, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, and increasingly, the Western Hemisphere, while its infrastructure crumbles and its political system fragments.
Allied burden-sharing and hedging strategies allow Washington to right-size its commitments to match its actual capabilities and interests. If Germany develops its own robust defense capabilities and maintains pragmatic relations with both Washington and Beijing, that’s not a failure of American leadership—it’s Germany acting like a normal great power, which is precisely what a sustainable international order requires.
The hypocrisy problem
The Trump NSS’s emphasis on asserting dominance in the Western Hemisphere while criticizing other powers’ regional ambitions highlights an obvious contradiction. Washington insists on hegemony in its neighborhood while demanding that allies choose sides in confrontations with China and Russia in theirs. This double standard is not lost on allied capitals.
Moreover, the document’s ideological critiques of European immigration policies and alleged “civilizational erasure” while simultaneously advocating for “authoritarian accommodation” with Gulf monarchies and courting improved relations with Russia expose the bankruptcy of values-based alliance rhetoric.
Allies are being asked to align with an America that defines partnerships primarily through commercial deals and burden-sharing metrics while lecturing them about their domestic politics. Is it any wonder they’re hedging?
The path forward
The question isn’t whether allied hedging will continue—it will. The question is whether Washington will adapt its strategy to this reality or persist in the delusion that allies can be browbeaten into exclusive alignment.
A rational American strategy would acknowledge several uncomfortable truths:
Multipolarity is here. China, the EU, India and other centers of power will increasingly act independently based on their own interests.
Alliance flexibility is strength, not weakness. Allies who can manage relationships with multiple powers are more stable and require less American intervention to rescue them from their own miscalculations.
Selective engagement serves American interests. Not every regional dispute requires American involvement. Not every ally faces threats that warrant automatic American military commitment.
Economic interdependence is reality. Tariff threats and trade wars won’t fundamentally alter the fact that global supply chains and markets are integrated. Attempting to force allies to decouple completely from China or other rivals is both unrealistic and counterproductive.
The Biden administration’s attempt to restore the pre-Trump status quo was always doomed because that status quo was unsustainable. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s chaotic approach to alliance management is counterproductive, but its instinct that fundamental changes are necessary isn’t wrong.
Embracing restraint
What allies are doing through hedging is essentially what the US should be doing: diversifying commitments, maintaining flexibility, and avoiding the trap of exclusive alignments that constrain strategic options.
The irony is that American realists and restraint advocates have been arguing for precisely this kind of approach for decades—offshore balancing, strategic flexibility and burden-sharing—only to see it condemned when allies adopt it.
The foreign policy establishment’s horror at allied hedging reveals its continued attachment to an outdated model of American primacy that neither serves US interests nor commands domestic political support.
A more realistic American grand strategy would embrace allied hedging as part of a broader shift toward a multipolar system where Washington remains a crucial player but not the indispensable hegemon.
The 2025 National Security Strategy, for all its flaws, at least gestures toward this reality. Whether the Trump administration can translate that recognition into coherent policy remains doubtful. But the alternative — pretending that the world of 1995 or even 2015 can be restored through stern rhetoric and alliance management by tantrum — is even less credible.
American allies are hedging because they’re rational actors in an uncertain world. Washington should take notes rather than taking offense.
This article was originally published on Leon Hadar’s Global Zeitgeist and is republished with kind permission. Become a subscriber here.
