The December 5, 2025 release of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy marks an unprecedented moment in transatlantic relations: the formal articulation of American antagonism toward its oldest democratic allies. This document transcends typical policy disagreements between partners, instead revealing systematic hostility toward European sovereignty, democratic governance, and territorial integrity.
When Strategy Becomes Propaganda
National Security Strategy documents traditionally serve as comprehensive frameworks outlining American foreign policy priorities, threat assessments, and strategic objectives. Previous iterations, regardless of partisan authorship, maintained certain baseline commitments to alliance structures, democratic values, and rules-based international order.
The 2025 NSS breaks decisively from this tradition. The document reads less as strategic analysis than ideological manifesto, combining factual distortions with inflammatory rhetoric. Its opening premise—that America and the world stood “on the brink of catastrophe” at the Biden administration’s conclusion—lacks supporting evidence while contradicting objective assessments of global security conditions.
More troubling than rhetorical excess is the document’s fundamental incoherence. It simultaneously celebrates American democratic superiority while the administration implementing it detains thousands without trial, pursues partisan gerrymandering with official endorsement, and deploys massive lawsuits to silence independent media.
The Strategy’s treatment of Russia exemplifies its logical failures. After correctly noting that European NATO members possess sufficient military capacity to counter Russian aggression and that many Europeans view Russia as existential threat, the document inexplicably concludes this justifies American-led “strategic stability” through accommodation of Russian territorial gains.
Strategic stability was destroyed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Restoring it requires countering Russian aggression, not rewarding it through forced territorial concessions that violate fundamental principles of international law.
Declaration of Political Warfare Against European Democracy
Beyond logical inconsistencies lies something more alarming: explicit American intention to manipulate European domestic politics in favor of pro-Russian far-right movements. The Strategy declares American priority to move Europe off its “current trajectory” by supporting what it terms “patriotic parties”—transparent reference to far-right nationalist movements in France, Germany, Italy, Britain, and elsewhere that consistently advocate accommodation of Russian interests.
Elbridge Colby, now Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and reportedly principal NSS author, spent the 2024 campaign period publicly castigating Europeans for commenting on American politics. Yet this same administration now claims authority to determine which European political movements deserve American support and which governments require replacement.
The Strategy warns that Europe’s “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” This apocalyptic language serves not as analysis but justification for American intervention in European affairs. Most Europeans reasonably assess that American constitutional democracy faces greater civilizational threat from Trump’s systematic attacks on congressional authority, judicial independence, and constitutional term limits established by the 22nd Amendment.
Trump’s efforts to control universities, cultural institutions, and media while enriching himself through office represent precisely the authoritarian drift the NSS falsely attributes to Europe.
Economic Coercion Accompanies Political Hostility
The Strategy’s claim to desire European renewal contradicts concurrent American economic warfare against European interests. The administration has imposed 15% tariffs on numerous European goods, disrupting transatlantic commerce that forms backbone of Western economic integration.
Beyond tariffs, American pressure campaigns demand European companies and governments redirect billions in investments from domestic priorities to American projects. These demands, combined with common cause with Russia—a nation that has invaded neighbors, killed hundreds of thousands, and conducted sabotage operations against European infrastructure—render hollow any claims of benign intent toward European prosperity.
The Strategy’s economic nationalism directly undermines NATO collective defense. When the United States treats allies as economic competitors to be disadvantaged rather than partners with shared interests, alliance cohesion necessarily deteriorates. This serves Russian strategic objectives more effectively than any Kremlin propaganda campaign.
Racial Ideology Embedded in Strategic Doctrine
The most disturbing element of the 2025 NSS involves its deployment of racialized demographic anxiety as strategic justification. The document claims “it is more than plausible that, within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”
This assertion operates on multiple levels of falsity. First, Europeans themselves determine what constitutes European identity, just as Americans define American identity. Turkey, already a NATO member, embraces its non-European civilizational heritage without diminishing alliance commitment.
Second, no EU member state will plausibly develop majority non-EU citizenship, nor will the United Kingdom develop majority non-UK citizenship under any realistic demographic projections. European immigration patterns do not support such scenarios.
The Strategy’s actual meaning becomes clear through what it deliberately obscures: it predicts certain NATO states might eventually have majority non-white populations. This represents explicit racial categorization as strategic analysis—reminiscent of ideologies that define identity to exclude chosen groups as unreliable regarding “true loyalties and affiliations.”
Coming from a nation built by immigration, this racial essentialism proves particularly grotesque. It echoes historical nativist movements that previously excluded Irish, Italians, Jews, and others from acceptable “American” identity before ultimately incorporating these groups into expanded definitions of whiteness.
Jewish communities will note with alarm that some Trump supporters already exclude Jews from their racial categorizations, echoing anti-Semitic theories about demographic replacement and civilizational betrayal.
Strategic Implications for European Autonomy
European governments face a fundamental choice regarding this National Security Strategy. They can dismiss it as incoherent ranting unworthy of response, or they can recognize it as formal declaration that the United States under current leadership views European democracy and sovereignty as obstacles to American interests.
The correct response involves both elements. The Strategy’s analytical framework deserves intellectual dismissal—its premises are false, its logic is flawed, and its conclusions contradict observable reality. However, the hostile intent behind the document demands serious strategic response.
European security architecture has relied since 1945 on American commitment to collective defense through NATO Article 5 and broader alliance framework. When the United States explicitly seeks to manipulate European domestic politics toward pro-Russian outcomes while simultaneously pursuing accommodation of Russian territorial aggression, these foundational security guarantees become unreliable.
The Strategy reveals American desire to betray Ukrainian and European security interests through deals with Russia that would enrich Trump’s circle, destabilize Ukraine, and create future European vulnerability to Russian coercion. Under known elements of proposed arrangements, Ukraine would surrender territory, accept neutrality constraints on sovereignty, and provide Russia economic benefits—all while European security would deteriorate.
Republican Opposition and Political Sustainability
Some optimism derives from recognition that this Strategy represents extreme faction within American conservatism rather than unified Republican position. Significant portions of the Republican Party, particularly those maintaining traditional conservative internationalism, find the document’s premises and conclusions anathema.
Trump’s polling numbers have declined significantly since his return to office, reflecting public disapproval of various policy initiatives. The Defense Secretary faces Republican criticism for illegal military operations in the Caribbean conducted without congressional authorization, indicating limits to executive authority even within current political environment.
These factors suggest the Strategy may prove operationally irrelevant—dead on arrival, as Washington parlance terms such failures. However, European security cannot be wagered on American domestic political dynamics over which Europeans exercise no control.
European Strategic Response
The appropriate European response involves neither panic nor passivity. Europe must accelerate existing initiatives toward strategic autonomy while maintaining alliance structures that remain valuable despite current American unreliability.
European defense investment has increased substantially since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This trajectory must accelerate, ensuring European capacity for territorial defense independent of American participation. Increased defense spending serves multiple purposes: deterring Russian aggression, demonstrating seriousness about security responsibilities, and reducing vulnerability to American abandonment.
Enhanced European military integration through Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and similar frameworks should proceed urgently. European NATO members collectively possess economic resources and technological capabilities exceeding Russia’s substantially. What has been lacking is political will and institutional coordination to translate these advantages into effective deterrence.
Beyond military measures, Europe must fortify democratic resilience against foreign manipulation. The NSS explicitly declares American intention to support far-right movements that receive financing and political support from Russia. Countering this requires enhanced transparency regarding foreign political financing, strengthened civil society institutions, and media literacy initiatives to counter disinformation.
Salvaging Transatlantic Relationship
Despite current tensions, permanent breach between Europe and America serves neither side’s long-term interests. The current American administration will eventually end, whether through electoral defeat or constitutional term limits. Future American leaders may return to traditional transatlantic partnership principles.
Europe should therefore maintain diplomatic channels with American institutions beyond executive branch—particularly Congress, state governments, and civil society organizations—that retain commitment to democratic values and alliance integrity. This sustained engagement keeps foundations intact for eventual relationship reconstruction.
However, this diplomatic maintenance cannot substitute for hard-power development. European security cannot depend on American political cycles or hope for better future administrations. Strategic autonomy means capacity to defend European interests with or without American partnership.
The 2025 National Security Strategy, in its hostility and incoherence, paradoxically serves European interests by eliminating comfortable illusions about perpetual American reliability. It forces recognition that Europe must take responsibility for its own security, democratic governance, and civilizational future.
This recognition, properly acted upon, may ultimately strengthen both European cohesion and transatlantic partnership by creating more balanced, sustainable foundation for Western cooperation—one not dependent on European subordination to American dictates but based on genuine partnership between equals with shared interests and values.
Original analysis inspired by Bill Emmott from Asia Times. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
