The Trump administration unveiled a new National Security Strategy late Thursday that took sharp aim at traditional U.S. allies in Europe, declaring that their governments were ignoring the will of their people in their support for Ukraine’s attempts to repel Russian invasion, as it vowed to reorient Washington’s attention to the Western Hemisphere.
The plan amounted to a distillation of nearly a year of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy efforts as he has taken an approach to world affairs that prioritizes business deals and narrowly defined U.S. interests over shared values. And it focused on what it said was a threat to the ethnic composition of European nations, saying that because of migration, it was likely that “within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European” and that Europe faced “civilizational erasure.”
The strategy provoked sharp frustration from Europe’s centrist leaders, many of whom read it as a U.S. plan to embrace their challengers and break up the institutions such as the European Union that the United States once promoted to prevent generations of conflict on European soil.
Instead, the plans turn Washington away from the global superpower role it has held since World War II, embracing an older form of might in which the militarily strongest nations carve up the world into spheres of influence defined mostly by their ability to control their neighbors.
The flagship initiative was what is described as the “‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” — a reference to the 19th-century policy position expressed by President James Monroe, which declared the Western Hemisphere the backyard of the United States, where it should be the preeminent power. The White House called for the reorientation of the United States’ global military presence to the Western Hemisphere as a means of boosting security and combating drug trafficking.
“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” the strategy says, adding that the administration will prioritize restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” to “protect our homeland,” working with partners to “control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea.”
The document — a congressionally mandated mission statement that sets out an administration’s overarching priorities for global engagement, economic bargaining and military might — was posted on the White House website late Thursday.
Although such strategic documents don’t bind administrations to any course of action, they serve as guideposts and priorities for the sprawling American national security apparatus and mark how presidents view the world. The Biden administration declared that the United States was dedicated to “constraining” Russia, and the first Trump administration, which was stocked with Republican foreign policy hawks, also hewed closer to a traditional line.
That is no longer the case, as the strategy said the administration wanted to achieve “strategic stability” in Europe while having little other to say specifically about Russia. It did embrace Russia’s long-standing desire to restrict further expansion of the NATO defense alliance, a break from previous Republican administrations.
Ukraine has pressed for NATO membership, believing that being part of the military alliance would protect it against attacks by Russia. The Biden administration held the door open to eventual NATO membership for Kyiv, although in practice, many of its senior officials were skeptical about including Ukraine anytime soon.
The strategy was likely to unsettle European leaders who were already struggling to find a way to match Trump administration priorities with their own. Now the White House is officially embracing the far-right nationalist parties that have vowed to take down centrist leaders, often alongside plans to embrace a more pro-Russian line.
“The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations” for the war in Ukraine, the document says, describing them as belonging to “unstable minority governments.” The U.S. sees it as a “core interest” to “negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine” and “establish strategic stability with Russia,” the document adds.
In a claim likely to provoke frustration in Europe, the strategy says European governments are promoting continued conflict with Russia and claims they do so without the support of their populations. Russian rhetoric in recent months has continually sought to place the blame for its ongoing war against Ukraine on the European nations, calling them warmongers. “A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes,” it states.
Russia sparked the largest war in Europe since World War II when it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, seeking to take over the entire country and extinguish its independent identity.
The strategy says that Europe risks “civilizational erasure” and that certain NATO countries will become “majority non-European” soon, while accusing the European Union and other bodies of “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition.”
“The growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism,” it says, referring to Europe’s right-wing populist parties that have surged in support in recent years, and echoing Vice President JD Vance’s statements to European leaders in February. Then, he pressed Europe’s centrist leaders to accommodate anti-migration, nationalist voices they have at times sought to block from power and became the most senior U.S. official to meet with the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party.
Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States, responded in a social media post that “the stunning section on Europe reads like a far-right pamphlet.”
“The only part of the world where the new [U.S.] security strategy sees any threat to democracy seems to be Europe,” former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt wrote on X. “Bizarre.”
The last National Security Strategy, released under President Joe Biden in 2022, was dedicated largely to the United States’ posture toward Russia and China. It condemned “Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war” on Ukraine and described “constraining Russia” as a priority.
The latest strategy, however, gives few specifics about Russia other than noting that “many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat” and asserting that the U.S. should prioritize “managing European relations with Russia … to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.”
Former senior Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, who resigned over the war in Ukraine, said that the strategy lacked a serious analysis of global dynamics and failed to recognize Russia as a revisionist power undermining European security, instead seeing it as a state to make deals with.
“In effect, the United States abandons its previous position and accepts a core element of Russia’s strategic worldview,” he wrote on Substack.
In an emailed statement Friday, NATO did not comment on Trump’s comments on ending NATO expansion, but reiterated that alliance members recognized the need to invest more in defense spending — something the Trump administration has pushed hard on.
Paula Pinho, spokeswoman for the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, told reporters Friday that the body had not yet had the time to assess the newly released strategy but would look into the document “with interest,” adding that U.S. and European security are “very much linked.”
Pinho added that she would rather “refrain” from commenting on individual excerpts from the strategy — but, when directly asked, said she “absolutely” did not agree with excerpts suggesting that the E.U. undermined liberty and hindered free speech.
The strategy also states that the U.S. no longer needs to prioritize the Middle East in its foreign policy, describing the area’s energy reserves as the “historic reason” for America’s focus there. “Energy supplies have diversified greatly, with the United States once again a net energy exporter,” it says.
It adds that the U.S. must stop “hectoring” its partners in the region, specifically referencing the “Gulf monarchies” such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that have been criticized by past U.S. administrations over human rights concerns. Instead, the strategy emphasizes the region is becoming “a place of partnership, friendship, and investment.”
Trump’s strategy advocates curbing Chinese power around the world and maintaining the status quo on Taiwan, but also calls for “maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship” with Beijing as part of U.S. growth.
China wants to see Taiwan — a self-governing, democratic island — under its full control, raising fears of a potential future invasion. Under Trump administration, the U.S. maintains “our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” the document says.
Vinall reported from Seoul, and Bisset reported from London. Robyn Dixon in Riga, Latvia, and Beatriz Ríos and Ellen Francis in Brussels contributed to this report.
The post Trump warns of European ‘civilizational erasure’ in realigned national security strategy appeared first on Washington Post.
