REVISIONIST AMERICA? TRUMP TURNS AGAINST EUROPE
- Paul Hansbury
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
He's at it again. Somewhere after telling reporters that he was 'a little bit disappointed' with Volodomyr Zelenskyy for not reading a US peace proposal, and after the unravelling of 'his' ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia, President Trump published his administration's new National Security Strategy. To the shock of many Europeans it claims that Europe faces 'civilisational erasure' owing to mass migration and economic decline.
Mainstream media has already given its take on the document. The New York Times says that 'contempt' for Europe is now 'official White House Policy'. So as not to merely repeat those commentaries, I will try to give a little historical context on US National Security Strategies and make a couple of broad points about where the latest version positions the US in international affairs. People have got used to thinking of Russia and China as revisionist powers. Is the US itself now the main threat to the status quo, seeking to rewrite the rules of the established international order?
In Russia itself there has been welcome for the new US strategy, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commenting at the weekend that Russia sees 'adjustments... largely consistent with our vision.' Yesterday Peskov added that the US was 'in tune with our understanding' on Ukraine and NATO. Some European leaders understandably rushed to interpret the new National Security Strategy as codifying a deepening US-Russia alignment in international affairs. I'll address that below. The biggest problem for Europe is Trump's lack of interest in Europe's self-conception of its values and identity, and his suspicions of both NATO and the European Union (EU).
The National Security Strategies
I cannot remember European media being so interested in the publication of a US National Security Strategy. The swipes at Europeans contained in the document have clearly hit home. But senior US officials have been saying harsh things about Europe for a while; one might recall Vice-President J D Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February. He began with a reference to 'shared values' between the US and Europe, before going on to criticise censorship and 'the retreat of free speech' on the continent. He claimed that Europe was 'backsliding' on civil liberties.
The 2025 National Security Strategy is a continuation of the themes we have heard over and over from the Trump administration. The only surprising thing here should be that we Europeans are at all surprised. Trump is uninterested in the conviction that Russia represents a threat, or about the fate of Ukraine; he is instead concerned with the political landscape of the continent and unpicking its entrenched liberalism and 'wokism'.