The explicit purpose of the comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan is  to ward off terrorist threats from the region.  "For the American people," President Obama declared, "the border region [between Afghanistan and Pakistan] is the most dangerous place in the world."  Obama believes that al Qaeda is plotting another international attack from the border region.  In order to prevent the threat from materializing, U.S. policy must focus on securing and stabilizing Afghanistan.  National security interests provide the rational foundation for President Obama's decision to invest further military and diplomatic resources in the Afghan operation.

The Smart Power strategy continues to list American security as its chief objective.  The plan also focuses on undergoing a cost-benefit analysis before any serious foreign policy projects begin.

Nuclear terrorism is considered one of the gravest threats to American national security.  The primary goal is to ensure that non-state radical cannot obtain a nuclear weapon.  Since open access to nuclear weapons technology has the potential to threaten all states, there is certainly shared national security interest in revising the international NPT, improving nuclear storage and preventing unstable regimes and non-state actors from obtaining such capacity.

The proposal sees global development and national security as linked.  As vulnerable, poor regions of the world become more developed, they are more likely to be stable and less likely to threaten US national security interests.  Instability is concomitantly opposed to US economic interests.

Strategic planning is primarily concerned with orienting U.S. foreign policy so that it protects the United States's long-term interests including -- primarily -- national security.

The proposal stresses the national security import of a strong development policy.  The argument is that a world with less economic hardship will be more stable and less likely to generate transnational threats.