The US National Security Strategy paper puts Europe on edge

The US National Security Strategy paper puts Europe on edge

by Mel Gurtov

510 words 

The Trump administration has issued a National Security Strategy (NSS) document that fundamentally transforms US relations with Europe. Traditional closeness is out; open hostility to liberal governments and alignment with far-right parties are in. Europe, says the document, is facing the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure” because of immigration and climate change policies. 

The document pledges US support for like-minded “patriotic” parties across the continent to prevent a future in which “certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”  

Without naming them directly, the document says the United States should be “cultivating resistance” across Europe by supporting political parties that fight against migration and promote nationalism. That describes several right-wing populist parties like Reform U.K. in Britain and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). 

“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the NSS says.

To judge from recent US statements, one would think the European Union is a terrorist organization or an aggressive power. The anti-European rhetoric is truly appalling. For instance, the US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said the “unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative” EU was undermining US security. And last week, Trump amplified his criticisms, saying Europe is “weak” and “decaying” and claiming it was “destroying itself” through immigration. Let’s be clear: Racism is now a staple of US foreign policy.

European reaction has been swift and angry. The president of the European Council of national leaders, António Costa, said the new US strategy went “beyond that … What we cannot accept is the threat to interfere in European politics. Allies do not threaten to interfere in the domestic political choices of their allies. The US cannot replace Europe in what its vision is of free expression … Europe must be sovereign.” 

Nicolai von Ondarza, the head of European research at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said the strategy “really represents a fundamental shift in transatlantic relations.” It means “open US backing for regime change” in Europe. Minna Ålander of the Center for European Policy Analysis said the NSS was “actually useful. It codifies in policy, in black and white, what has been evident all year long: Trump and his people are openly hostile to Europe.”

The incendiary language in the NSS continues a pattern we have seen before. Recall how Trump, at the UN in September, also claimed that Europe was in civilizational decline because it was regulating greenhouse gases. And there was Vice President Vance’s speech in Munich in February, when he took European leaders to task for suppressing the far right.

The rift with Europe is fodder for Moscow, whose war with Ukraine and hybrid warfare of sabotage in Europe now would seem to have the US firmly on its side. Trump is clearly doing Vladimir Putin’s work, dividing the US from Europe and promoting divisions among the Europeans. 

This latest example of Trumpian bullying may backfire, however, if it galvanizes the Europeans to deepen their commitment to Ukraine’s security and strengthens their collective resistance to US and Russian pressure.

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Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.