The Danger of a Transactional Worldview

Image: The White House / Wiki Commons

On December 4, the Trump administration released its 2025 National Security Strategy, the document articulating America's approach to global security. That same day, at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace, the President hosted a ceremony celebrating a ‘historic’ peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Within hours, fighting resumed. The next day, a ceasefire in Cambodia and Thailand that he had brokered in July collapsed, triggering airstrikes and displacing nearly half a million people. These are not anomalies. They are the predictable consequences of a strategy that treats peace not as a sustained political process, but as a commodity to be flipped for profit.

The strategy reads less like statecraft and more like a developer's prospectus. It frames allies as subcontractors expected to bear the risk and characterises peace agreements as tools to "increase stability, strengthen America's global influence, realign countries and regions toward our interests, and open new markets." This is the language of commercial acquisition, not conflict resolution. The presidential letter boasts of having "leveraged his dealmaking ability to secure unprecedented peace in eight conflicts...over the course of just eight months." The focus is on volume and velocity. Durability is someone else's problem.

This approach treats peace negotiations like business transactions. But peace is not a deal to be closed. It requires addressing the root causes of conflict, building trust between parties, and creating institutions that can manage future disputes without violence. The difference matters because when deals collapse, people die. Anyone who has worked in fragile states knows that long-term peace emerges when political grievances are addressed, trust is rebuilt, and institutions can manage disputes without violence. The strategy ignores all of this. Consider the claim of settling the conflict between Israel and Iran. No peace treaty exists. What exists is a temporary de-escalation following military strikes. Without sustained attention to underlying drivers, these agreements are fragile, and the costs of their collapse will be borne not by the dealmaker who has moved on, but by the people living in those regions.

The strategy's approach to burden-shifting reveals the same logic. It argues that "the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over" and urges wealthy allies to assume greater responsibility. This is not strategic delegation; it is abdication. The 2011 Libya intervention proved this assumption dangerous when European partners ran out of munitions within weeks. The developer shifts risk to partners, but when the project collapses, the fallout inevitably returns to his doorstep.

The strategy's treatment of democracy reveals a troubling double standard. It pledges that the United States will "oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies." Yet it also promises to seek "good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change." In other words, democratic allies are held to account for governance failures, while authoritarian governments elsewhere receive assurances of partnership regardless of their practices. The strategy criticises European governments for restricting speech and assembly, yet simultaneously celebrates deepening partnerships with Gulf monarchies and other authoritarian states where such restrictions are far more severe and systemic. The message is clear: governance matters only among those already democratic, while strategic alignment trumps all other considerations.

Most dangerous is what is missing from this calculus. The strategy ignores the civic infrastructure that allows societies to manage conflict without violence: local governance, civil society, independent media, and impartial courts. These unglamorous but essential systems offer no quick political returns, so they are invisible. This omission reflects a conception of peace centred on geopolitical alignment, not societal resilience. The contrast with successful peace processes is stark. In Colombia, the 2016 peace agreement between the government and FARC rebels has held not because of a signing ceremony, but because of years of painstaking work to build local reconciliation mechanisms, transitional justice institutions, and rural development programmes that address the grievances that fuelled five decades of conflict. Extensive evidence from UN and World Bank studies shows that inclusive institutions and accountable governance are the strongest predictors of long-term stability. A strategy that ignores them is building on sand.

Business leaders learned in 2008 the dangers of prioritising transaction volume over underlying value. The 2025 National Security Strategy applies this same flawed model to global security. This strategy may produce headlines, but it will not produce stability. The apparent savings from burden-shifting will be dwarfed by the costs of managing the inevitable breakdowns. Today's deals become tomorrow's crises, consuming diplomatic resources, disrupting markets, generating refugee flows, and creating vacuums that adversaries exploit. A foreign policy that mistakes the signing ceremony for the hard work of peace is not only destined to fail; it is a reckless gamble with global security.

Other articles by this author: 

Digital Polarisation and the Future of Peace: Why Governance Must Catch Up With Power (3-minute read)

The Empire Has No Clothes: America's Democratic Sermons and the Authoritarian Boomerang (3-minute read)

A Vicious Spiral: Political Violence in Fragile Democracies (3-minute read)

US Bars Palestinian Delegation: A Dangerous Precedent for UN Universality (3-minute read)

Jordan Ryan is a member of the Toda International Research Advisory Council (TIRAC) at the Toda Peace Institute, a Senior Consultant at the Folke Bernadotte Academy and former UN Assistant Secretary-General with extensive experience in international peacebuilding, human rights, and development policy. His work focuses on strengthening democratic institutions and international cooperation for peace and security. Ryan has led numerous initiatives to support civil society organisations and promote sustainable development across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He regularly advises international organisations and governments on crisis prevention and democratic governance.