The publication of the United States National Security Strategy 2025 (NSS 2025) represents a turning point in the foreign projection of the United States. The document articulates a vision in which national security is conceived as an integrated space that combines economic sovereignty, territorial control, industrial resilience, and technological supremacy, in close connection with systemic competition against China and global instability.¹.

While the NSS maintains the centrality of alliances, its approach is selective and transactional: allies are understood as functional partners conditioned by their degree of material contribution. Within this framework, the EU ceases to be conceived strictly as a normative bloc and begins to be evaluated in terms of strategic capacity, defense spending, and geopolitical alignment.².

For Spain, the strategy presents opportunities—strengthening the Atlantic bond, technological cooperation, participation in missions—but also significant dilemmas: increased budgetary commitments in defense, redefinition of the NATO-EU relationship, and pressure to align with US economic and geopolitical priorities that do not always coincide with European ones.

This article analyzes the NSS 2025, assesses its impact on the EU and Spain, and proposes recommendations for preserving the transatlantic link without sacrificing the development of a responsible strategic autonomy that is consistent with Europe's medium and long-term interests.

The United States National Security Strategy 2025 (NSS 2025) consolidates an expansive concept of security in which the boundaries between the military, economic, and technological realms blur to the point of virtually disappearing. Security ceases to be exclusively identified with territorial defense and instead constitutes an integral ecosystem of state power, in which any area susceptible to generating external dependency—from semiconductors to logistics or energy—is reinterpreted as a potential vector of strategic vulnerability.³ .

From this perspective, the strategy deepens the trend of recent years towards the securitization of the economy and innovation, positioning reindustrialization, protection of supply chains, and control of critical infrastructure as pillars equivalent to military spending. International leadership ceases to be based primarily on the provision of global public goods and shifts to relying on national competitive advantage, understood as an essential condition for sustaining global power. This interpretation represents a turning point from the previous liberal-institutional logic, which associated the stability of the international system with economic interdependence and the strengthening of multilateralism.⁴.

The NSS 2025 reframes that interdependence as risk. Deep economic connections are no longer seen as mechanisms of stability but as potential instruments of strategic coercion in the hands of systemic competitors. The response consists of reinforcing the productive and technological autonomy of the United States, even at the cost of tensions with traditional allies. From a critical perspective, this shift introduces a structural tension: American power has historically been sustained by the ability to articulate broad alliances through shared normative frameworks; by replacing that logic with a more transactional relationship, the cohesion of the Western strategic community may be eroded.

The document also incorporates a narrative in which sovereignty, national identity, and economic resilience are closely linked. Policies such as border control, industrial reform, or the protection of strategic sectors cease to be domestic matters and are fully integrated into the national security architecture. This shifts the focus of foreign action towards an external projection of internal priorities, reinforcing the tendency to interpret international politics in terms of direct national competition.

Even so, the NSS 2025 does not formally break with the alliance system. What changes is the conditionality of the bond: cooperation is justified based on tangible returns for U.S. national interests. This transforms the notion of strategic community into a relationship based on the material convergence of benefits, closer to contractual logic than political logic. The risk lies not only in the burden sharing—which is legitimate in terms of responsibility—but also in the possibility that this sharing could lead to structural asymmetries that consolidate positions of strategic subordination among allies with less decision-making autonomy.

From this perspective, the NSS 2025 sets up a scenario where cooperation remains possible, and even necessary, but is intersected by latent competition over the definition of priorities, especially in technological, industrial, and commercial spheres. For European partners, the challenge lies in preventing the transition from cooperative security to conditioned strategic interest from translating into a loss of agency within the alliance itself.

In the European case, the NSS 2025 maintains the recognition of the EU and European states as fundamental strategic allies but redefines the practical meaning of that alliance. Transatlantic cooperation will no longer be primarily justified by a community of values; instead, it will be assessed based on effective contributions in defense, economic resilience, and technological security.⁵ .

This places increasing pressure on European partners to increase their military spending, accelerate modernization programs, and develop their own operational capabilities within the framework of NATO. From a functional point of view, this demand can be interpreted as an opportunity to strengthen European security; however, when this process is not accompanied by a common strategic vision within the EU, the increase in capabilities runs the risk of translating into increased operational dependence on the US ally, without advancing in genuine European decision-making autonomy.

To this military dimension is added the geoeconomic and technological agenda. The US strategy emphasizes the need to protect supply chains, limit critical dependencies, and establish filters for investment and technological transfer. The EU shares some of these objectives, but also pursues a policy of diversifying partners and markets that preserves its diplomatic room for maneuver. Convergence is not always automatic: the relationship with China, trade policy, or digital regulation constitute areas of latent tension between both sides of the Atlantic.

The paradox is evident: the more Europe seeks to strengthen its strategic autonomy, the more the US expectation grows that this strengthening will translate into greater capacity to support Washington's global agenda. From a critical perspective, the issue is not the strengthening of capabilities—which is necessary and inevitable—but the political direction this effort takes. If European strategic autonomy is integrated solely as a functional extension of US strategy, the European project could be reduced to a secondary player within an external decision-making framework.

However, the NSS 2025 also opens avenues for substantive convergence: cyber defense, protection of energy infrastructure, maritime security, hybrid threats, or technological cooperation in critical areas. In these domains, the transatlantic relationship remains indispensable and beneficial for both parties. The challenge lies in articulating this cooperation from a balanced position, preventing transactional logic from displacing the notion of alliance as a political community. For the EU, the response involves consolidating shared decision-making mechanisms, reducing fragmentation among member states, and moving towards a more cohesive strategic voice. Only then will it be possible to transform the relationship with the United States into a framework for mature, bidirectional cooperation, rather than a succession of tactical alignments conditioned by external priorities.

In this scenario, Spain holds a unique position due to its dual Atlantic and Mediterranean anchoring, its membership in NATO, and its commitment to the development of European strategic autonomy. The NSS 2025 impacts three main vectors of Spanish foreign and security policy: defense, strategic economy, and regional projection.⁶ .

In the defense sector, the drive to increase spending and operational capabilities can contribute to the modernization of the Armed Forces, the strengthening of national industry, and integration into high-tech European programs. However, budgetary efforts must be linked to an industrial and technological return strategy, preventing increased investment from translating into growing dependence on external platforms. The opportunity lies in using the reinforcement of capabilities to boost the European defense industrial base and position Spain as a relevant player in strategic European consortia.

On the economic-technological level, the NSS 2025 projects an economic security policy that affects key sectors for Spain: critical infrastructure, energy, telecommunications, and foreign trade. Automatic alignment with the US agenda could limit Spain's—and Europe's—ability to maintain policies of strategic diversification and balanced economic relations with third parties. A cooperative but autonomous stance would allow Spain to negotiate from its own agency, especially within the European framework, and avoid passive insertion into dynamics of global geoeconomic rivalry.

The third dimension is regional projection. Spain possesses strategic assets in the Mediterranean, the Sahel, and Latin America, regions that do not always hold a priority position in the NSS 2025. This difference constitutes an opportunity for Spain to add value to the transatlantic alliance, contributing to the stability of areas that directly affect European security. At the same time, it reinforces the possibility for Spain to promote its own strategic agenda within the EU, aligned with its interests and complementary to–but not subordinate to–the U.S. agenda.

The main challenge for Spain is to avoid a reactive or subordinate position in the new strategic framework. Strengthening the transatlantic link must be combined with the development of national and European capabilities that consolidate a balanced alliance, based on the convergence of interests, reciprocity, and the preservation of its own decision-making margins. Only from this position will it be possible to turn cooperation with the United States into a tool for strategic reinforcement, and not a mechanism for structural dependence.

In light of the strategic changes introduced by the United States' 2025 National Security Strategy, the European Union and Spain must adopt a response that combines transatlantic cooperation, strategic autonomy, and independent agency. Firstly, it is essential to advance the development of European industrial, technological, and defense capabilities, not as an alternative to NATO, but as a complement that strengthens Europe's position within the alliance. This reinforcement must be linked to an industrial policy that generates internal economic and technological returns, avoiding dynamics of structural dependency.

Secondly, cooperation with the United States should focus on areas of genuine convergence—cybersecurity, protection of critical infrastructure, maritime security, dual innovation, and the fight against hybrid threats—prioritizing those areas where coordination enhances shared resilience. At the same time, the EU and Spain must preserve their own decision-making margins on geoeconomic and trade matters, especially regarding the diversification of partners and the design of economic security policies.

Third, Spain can play an articulating role within the EU, promoting a more cohesive European position and contributing its influence in the Mediterranean, the Sahel, and Latin America as added value within the transatlantic relationship. Finally, any increase in defense spending should be integrated into a strategy that combines social legitimacy, economic impact, and strategic coherence, so that the strengthening of capabilities responds both to the demands of the international environment and to long-term national and European interests.