https://crsreports.congress.gov
March 29, 2021
The Interim National Security Strategic Guidance
On March 3, 2021, the White House released an Interim
National Security Strategic Guidance (INSSG). This is the
first time an administration has issued interim guidance;
previous administrations refrained from issuing formal
guidance that articulated strategic intent until producing the
congressionally mandated National Security Strategy (NSS)
(originating in the Goldwater-Nichols Department of
Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 P.L. 99-433, §603/50
U.S.C §3043). The full NSS is likely to be released later in
2021 or early 2022.
The INSSG states the Biden Administration’s conceptual
approach to national security matters as well as signaling its
key priorities, particularly as executive branch departments
and agencies prepare their Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 budget
submissions. With respect to the latter, FY22 will be the
first budget prepared after the expiration of the budget caps
required under the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011.
Details regarding how the Administration’s conceptual
approach will be implemented across different regions and
functional issues are likely to be expressed in the full NSS.
Conceptual Approach
In drafting national security strategies, every administration
faces central questions about how the U.S. government
should define and advance national security. The Biden
Administration argues that the COVID-19 pandemic and
other systemic issues, including (but not limited to) climate
change and the rise of anti-democratic authoritarian
populism, are forcing the United States to take an expansive
view of what constitutes matters of national security. In so
doing, the INSSG articulates some continuity with the
Trump Administration in identifying the challenge that
strategic competition with China poses to U.S. national
security.
By comparison, “traditional” security analyses contend that
security ought to be synonymous with the mitigation of
military risk and the effective deterrence—or prosecution—
of warfare between states. “Human security,” a concept of
security centered on the individual, rather than the state,
and concerned with the overall well-being of people within
society, became another way that scholars and practitioners
began evaluating security. Over time, issues including, but
not limited to access to health, transnational crime and
violence, migration and internally displaced persons,
poverty, infectious disease, impacts of climate change, and
food and energy security have all become associated with
the concept of human security. Terrorism and counter-
terrorism are also nontraditional security challenges that are
key areas of focus for scholars and practitioners.
A key question for policymakers over multiple
administrations has been how to manage the tension
between traditional and nontraditional security challenges,
and what the right emphasis - in terms of budgets, priorities,
and activities—ought to be between the different kinds of
security challenges. The 2017 Trump Administration NSS
framed the key U.S. national security challenge as one of
strategic competition with other great powers, notably
China and Russia. While there were economic dimensions
to this strategic competition, the 2017 NSS emphasized
American military power as a key part of its response to the
challenge.
By contrast, the Biden INSSG appears to invert traditional
national security strategy formulations, focusing on
perceived shortcomings in domestic social and economic
policy rather than external threats as its analytic starting
point. The Biden Administration contends that the lines
between foreign and domestic policy have been blurred to
the point of near nonexistence. Security, in this line of
thinking, ought to be measured by effects of strategic
choices on American’s lives and on the resiliency and
preparedness of U.S. society to meet challenges from
abroad, rather than relative to external threats or
departmental budget shares. Further, the INSSG argues that
national security strategy must be more fully integrated
with—if not driven by—domestic policy priorities. Central
to this vision of security are strengthening American
democracy, promoting racial equality, countering
authoritarian populism, and pursuing an economic agenda
that explicitly focuses on working class families. As this
logic goes, addressing key domestic challenges will allow
the U.S. to outwardly model aspirational goals and, in so
doing, demonstrate international leadership.
While noting the importance of preparing and maintaining a
military that is capable of contending with external threats,
the guidance emphasizes diplomacy as a “tool of first
resort” for contending with the complexity of the
international security environment and its increasing
intersections with American domestic policy. Ultimately,
the INSSG lays out a vision of American statecraft that
focuses on shoring up key areas of domestic social and
economic policy while simultaneously bolstering
international partnerships, alliances and institutions. The
INSSG can be viewed as a statement of what the United
States ought to achieve for its own purposes, even apart
from challenges from other states such as China or Russia.
With respect to China, the INSSG contends that
“revitalizing our core strengths is necessary but not
sufficient,” and that the United States must be prepared to
“answer Beijing’s challenge.” In the Biden
Administration’s view, achieving this vision will position
the United States to meet a variety of external strategic
challenges, including (but not limited to) China, Russia, the
COVID-19 pandemic, violent extremist terrorism, and
nuclear weapons proliferation.
