National secur it y

VI.  Conclusion

This National Security Strategy provides a vision for strengthening and sustaining American leadership 

in this still young century. It clarifies the purpose and promise of American power. It aims to advance our 

interests and values with initiative and from a position of strength. We will deter and defeat any adversary 

that threatens our national security and that of our allies. We confidently welcome the peaceful rise of 

other countries as partners to share the burdens for maintaining a more peaceful and prosperous world. 

We will continue to collaborate with established and emerging powers to promote our shared security 

and defend our common humanity, even as we compete with them in economic and other realms. We 

will uphold and refresh the international rules and norms that set the parameters for such collaboration 

and competition. We will do all of this and more with confidence that the international system whose 

creation we led in the aftermath of World War II will continue to serve America and the world well. This 

is an ambitious, but achievable agenda, especially if we continue to restore the bipartisan center that 

has been a pillar of strength for American foreign policy in decades past. America has greater capacity 

to adapt and recover from setbacks than any other country. A core element of our strength is our unity 

and our certainty that American leadership in this century, like the last, remains indispensable.