There are two views of the new US National Security Strategy published last week by the White House. One is that it is a declaration of war on Europe. Another is that it is a declaration of war on Republican “China hawks” by a wing of the administration that just wants to murder drug smugglers in the Caribbean.
Either way, it marks a turning point in the history of the world. The first evidential moment of America’s voluntary retreat from global leadership, couched in a mixture of hubris, psychobabble and self-deception.
The form is as important as the content. All previous NSS publications have been professionally typeset documents, their arguments subjected to painstaking challenge within the national security community and, even in the case of Trump’s 2017 version, couched in diplomatic prose.
The 2025 version is basically a word document written by a politician with a grudge against Joe Biden, migrants, globalisation, the UN, the European Union and the intellectual traditions born during the Enlightenment. Though logic is often absent, God is not. But for all these failings, it contains a clear statement of intent.
It begins by taking a swipe at the past 70 years of US geostrategy:
“After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”
That last sentence signals the Trump administration’s determination to destroy America’s position as global leader. That first sentence could have been written by Vladimir Putin or Xi Jin Ping.
In fact the whole strategy is premised on the Putin-Xi vision of a “multipolar world”. From its premise – the US wrongly tried to order the world with rules and laws – flow the practical conclusions. There will be an enhanced Monroe doctrine in which the US will claim the right to order the Americas, Caribbean and the western Pacific.
The US will work to preserve freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific and secure US access to critical materials, while countering Chinese influence (the document makes no mention of UNCLOS, the international law of the sea, which the US has refused to sign).
It will try to prevent Iran dominating the Middle East, while opting out of any substantial intervention there. And it will strive to ensure that US technology and tech standards dominate the 21st century – especially in AI, biotech and quantum technologies.
Finally, in the paragraph that has rightly got European diplomats chewing their Montblancs with anxiety:
“We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
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Trump believes Europe is a declining continent, where the triumph of liberalism and mass migration have robbed it of so much confidence that it has picked a needless fight with Russia. In response America intends to depose the liberal governments of Europe, destabilise the UN, abandon Ukraine to its fate and make all future collective security arrangements under Nato transactional.
Furthermore it rewrites the history of the Ukraine conflict to make Europe, not Russia, the aggressor:
“The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. 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.”
That is basically an echo of what every Putinist mouthpiece on the European far right and the Stalinist left has been saying for the past four years. But leaves the ends and means of US grand strategy misaligned. Because destabilising European democracy is Putin’s precise aim.
Startlingly, Russia – the threat from which has framed every previous NSS document – is not characterised as a threat at all. Nor – contrary to the beliefs of Republican China hawks – is the PRC. Trump’s vision is for all rival oligarchies to exploit the world in harmony, sweeping the strongest democracies and the sovereignty of global south states out of the way.
Up to now, European governments have played a game of extend and pretend with Trump, lavishing his tawdry peace efforts with praise to mitigate their impact. But it is now clear that he is not only prepared to stab Ukraine in the back but ourselves.
This means the Starmer administration faces a choice: it is not about walking away from the US, or reacting frictionally to the NSS. It is about establishing leadership in Europe, for a coalition of willing democracies prepared to adapt themselves collectively to America’s isolationist turn. Which is what Starmer was trying to do in his emergency summit with Zelensky, Merz and Macron.
As Trump tries to divide, destabilise and diminish Europe, the UK must publicly commit to the opposite goals. It is surely time to begin emergency negotiations to re-enter the Customs Union, and to seek membership of a multilateral defence finance facility that can raise the hundreds of billions needed to replace the US “enablers” – satellites, missiles and intelligence – on which Nato relies.
Finally, Europe’s leaders must commit to a militant defence of democracy: cracking down on hate speech, disinformation, foreign funding, cryptocrime and the platforms that facilitate them. This runs directly counter to the wishes of the tech oligarchs backing Trump, and demands that Europe itself begin fostering tech giants in the precise spheres Trump has named: AI, biotech and quantum technology. Otherwise, like the NHS, it will be held to commercial ransom over intellectual property.
Strategically, whether Trump is a blip or not, America is in a process of decline. All the hubris of the NSS, about dominating Brazil, kicking the Chinese out of Peru’s mining sector, or plundering Congo for Rare Earths, is just that. American power – above all the soft power Trump still thinks he can wield – depended on the US shouldering its global economic and diplomatic responsibilities.
This manifesto for petulant isolationism signals its refusal to do so, and it requires European states to respond with their own strategy, weighing their own interests and finding the means to achieve their ends.
Britain’s own National Security Strategy, issued in July, promised to “Pursue both a deeper trade, technology and security deal with the United States and a closer economic and strategic partnership with the European Union.”
Unfortunately, one objective now precludes the other. For sure, British diplomats should go on trying to split the difference, using the full gamut of Magdalen-learned obsequiousness. But the realpolitik is clear: we must unite with Europe or succumb to vassal status for America’s imploding republic.
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