Brussels – The shocking speech about the EU pronounced by JD Vance in Munich this spring, the more or less direct interference of Elon Musk in election processes in the Member States: not isolated remarks, but part of a real national security strategy. If there were any doubt, this is confirmed by the policy document, signed by Donald Trump, which claims that the United States must “cultivate resistance” within Europe, whose “current trajectory” points straight to the “disappearance of civilisation.”
A slap in the face to the long-standing ally who—for now—remains bewildered and speechless. “We have not yet had time to evaluate the document. We are therefore not in a position to comment on it,” said the European Commission’s chief spokeswoman, Paula Pinho, regarding the strategy circulated by the US National Security Council. “In the past decades,” she added, US national security has been linked to European national security, so we will certainly analyse the document, given its importance.
Presented as a “roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in the history of mankind and the home of liberty on earth,” the National Security Strategy reorders US priorities: no more policing the world, but a focus on the “backyard” and on fighting migration. The US no longer intends to “waste blood and money to limit the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers,” reads the document, which emphasises the need for “restoring American supremacy” in Latin America “to respond to urgent threats on our continent,” and for “a shift away from theatres whose relative importance to US national security has diminished in recent years or decades.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump in Scotland [Turnberry, 27 July 2025. Photo: European Commission]
The strategy, spanning 33 pages, is divided into geographical areas. The US diagnosis of the old continent is dramatic. The proposed cure, alarming. Not that the European Union and its member states have been strangers to the stars and stripes soft power since the days of the division of the world into two spheres of influence, but now Washington makes explicit its support for European far-right parties to straighten out “the current trajectory of Europe” and counter immigration and the EU integration process.
The economic decline of continental Europe—which “has lost shares of global GDP from 25 per cent in 1990 to 14 per cent today”—is “eclipsed by the real and more serious prospect of the disappearance of civilisation.” Seen from the other side of the Atlantic, its “real problems” are in fact “the activities of the EU that undermine political freedom and sovereignty, the migration policies that are transforming the continent, the censorship of free speech and the repression of political opposition, the collapse of birth rates and the loss of national identities.”
In line with the conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement”, the Trump administration document argues that several countries risk becoming “a non-European majority” and that, at this rate, “the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less.” And therefore, it is Washington’s fear, “it is by no means a foregone conclusion that some European countries will have economies and armed forces strong enough to remain reliable allies.”
US President Donald Trump (photo via Imagoeconomica)
That is why US policies must include “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within the European nations.” From this perspective, “the growing influence of European patriotic parties is cause for great optimism,” the strategy states. To its “political allies”, Washington calls for “promoting this renaissance of the spirit,” consisting of “genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebration of the individual character and history of the European nations.”
On the need to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine, there is room for a frontal attack on certain leaders: the document does not name names, but emphasises that the White House “is at odds with European officials who harbour unrealistic expectations of the war, supported by unstable minority governments, many of whom trample on the basic principles of democracy to repress opposition.”
One might hope that the United States, given the dramatic situation in Europe, would refrain from interfering. But no, because the old continent “remains strategically and culturally vital,” and transatlantic trade “remains one of the pillars of the global economy and American prosperity.” Ignoring Europe “would be counterproductive to the goals that this strategy aims to achieve,” the US document concludes.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
