The Roosevelt Rule: Why the 2025 National Security Strategy Puts America Last

Dear Fellow Citizen, 

CORRECTION, DECEMBER 23, 2025: This blog used to say that Franklin D. Roosevelt came up with the “Roosevelt Rule,” but that was wrong. This was a mistake. The rule and analysis presented here are firmly rooted in President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy ideology. TR himself said, “A nation’s first duty is to its own people and its own strength.” This change has been made to the text.

A country’s security strategy is more than just a piece of paper. It’s a promise that tells us who we are. It shows what we care about and what we will protect. This agreement has been broken by the way the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) was made. It was made in secret, without the people’s trust and without any connection to Americans’ lives. It is a strategy for managers, not for patriots. The slogan “America First” is on it, but its design makes America worse. I do not doubt that it goes against the “Roosevelt Rule.” This is a timeless idea that President Theodore Roosevelt said. True strength abroad can only be built on stability and unity at home. This plan doesn’t put America first; it puts America last.

The Deadly Disconnect: Four Strategic Betrayals

The NSS says it will protect American interests, but it does four things that separate strategy from statecraft:

1. It Leaves the Fortress at Home. Roosevelt’s “big stick” wasn’t just one weapon; it was made possible by a strong industrial base, a strong society, and a united people. The NSS, on the other hand, is obsessed with keeping old alliances that drain our treasury and strategic attention. They see our homeland as a logistical base rather than a sacred source of all power.

2. It is afraid of a world with many poles. TR led the US through a period of empires, ensuring that the US was the most powerful country in its own hemisphere. Today’s NSS shows a lack of courage as it clings to a fading hegemonic model. It wants to deal with the world’s complexity rather than take charge of our own future by becoming more active as a nation.

3. It accepts empty ideas. Its calls to “contain China” and bring back the Monroe Doctrine are just sound bites without any real strategic meaning. Roosevelt saw these as claims of sovereign will and the right to act alone. The NSS turns them into slogans and puts our actions into alliances run by committees that make sure we are late, lose, and don’t win.

4. It doesn’t care about the American Soul’s problems. This is where it fails the most. TR knew that a country that is divided in spirit can’t show strength. Today, our national identity is fractured by hyphenated loyalties, ideological wars, and a loss of civic faith. The NSS doesn’t say anything about this threat to life. A country that doesn’t know who it is can’t protect itself. If we ignore the war for America’s soul, we’ll lose our safety before a single shot is fired.

“America First” as a way to trick people

The “America First” banner on this document is a fake. National confidence is what makes security work—it’s the “strenuous life” of a people working toward the same goal and doing well. This NSS is an old globalist priesthood that forgot about the people it was supposed to help and only saw the world through spreadsheets. The transactional logic of only getting involved when there is a “direct threat” is more like that of a clerk than a strategist. It doesn’t understand that our biggest weakness isn’t outside of our country, but inside of it, where society is breaking down.

The Failure of Legitimacy

What gives this strategy the right to lead us? Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are all examples of strategic mistakes that have happened in the last few decades. Barbara Tuchman, a historian, called the way people think that leads to these kinds of errors “woodenheadedness,” meaning sticking to dogma rather than reality. This NSS is a perfect example. It wants to be in charge of a world that no longer gives us automatic legitimacy, and the agreement needed for such leadership has disappeared. Trust is based on shared identity and a common cause, which are both hard to come by. 

Giving Up Sovereignty

The NSS strengthens our ties to alliance structures at the cost of significant sovereignty. It wants allies to spend more and wants us to talk to them more. This is not sharing the burden; it is sharing the power. Roosevelt’s “big stick” was sovereign, meaning we alone could decide how to use it. Our ancestors knew that temporary coalitions help strategy, but permanent architectural entanglements become the strategy, and a bad one at that. As TR warned, we shouldn’t let outside powers “mortgage our independence.”

Giving money to the building while starving the foundation 

The plan calls for a defence budget of $842 billion, which is much more than what we spend on infrastructure, education, and healthcare, which are the real sources of national power. Worse, it doesn’t set aside any money to rebuild the cultural and civic institutions that hold a country together. TR said that if things go wrong inside, they will never be important outside. Giving billions of dollars to the military while our society falls apart is not good government; it is a slow-motion national suicide. We are not making a “big stick.” We are making decay look better.

The Way Forward: Taking Back the Roosevelt Rule

The 2025 NSS is not a plan for a new beginning; it is a farewell to a time. We need to take back “America First” from the bureaucrats and make it real. This necessitates a return to the Roosevelt Rule with unyielding clarity:

1. Rebuild the Homestead: Put national resources and will into bringing the economy, industry, and spirit back to life.

2. Reaffirm Sovereignty: Run foreign policy from a place of strength that isn’t dependent on others. Work with other countries in ways that show respect, not treaties that make you dependent.

3. Bring the country back together: Define, teach, and celebrate an American identity that is based on constitutional principles, a shared history, and faith in our future. “We” is the first step toward safety.

We have a clear choice: stay divided and follow a manager’s world order, or come together as a sovereign republic, sure of who we are and what we want. The vision of Theodore Roosevelt shows us the way—not to the past, but to a future that is worthy of the name “American.”

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Your voice is critical.

Does this idea of safety speak to you? Do you think that the way we are going now is what the American people want and agree on? What is the first thing we need to do to get our country’s strategy back in line with its soul?

Please tell us what you believe below. Then, talk about this with your community and your representatives.

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Tom Raquer is a retired officer in the United States Air Force who served a lot in Southeast Asia.

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