Trump’s National Security Strategy Is a Blueprint for the Demise of the West – Foreign Policy

In a bygone era, prominent conservatives in the United States would cling to any number of well-worn complaints about the country’s allies in Western Europe.

According to these American theorists, during the Cold War, Europeans taxed too much and spent money on generous social security programs that were supposed to make them flexible while inhibiting innovation and growth. There were frequent warnings that Europe was abandoning the spirit of open markets and competitiveness that had made it a bastion of capitalism, and was heading steadily, if somewhat subtly, toward a socialist dead end.

In a bygone era, prominent conservatives in the United States would cling to any number of well-worn complaints about the country’s allies in Western Europe.

According to these American theorists, during the Cold War, Europeans taxed too much and spent money on generous social security programs that were supposed to make them flexible while inhibiting innovation and growth. There were frequent warnings that Europe was abandoning the spirit of open markets and competitiveness that had made it a bastion of capitalism, and was heading steadily, if somewhat subtly, toward a socialist dead end.

Another ritual complaint, dating back at least to the administration of President Richard Nixon, is that Europe was chronically spending on its own defense, free-riding generous US Department of Defense expenditures, which were designed primarily to protect Europe – and by extension the West itself – from its greatest existential threat, the Soviet Union.

Some of these old complaints about Europe, such as those about the continent’s paltry spending on defense, are still present in the new national security strategy released by US President Donald Trump’s administration last week. But as many commentators have noted, the document amounts to the most comprehensive overhaul of the Republican worldview in decades. And in terms of its key assumptions about Europe, almost everything has been mixed up to a degree that no major figure in the Republican Party in modern history—not Nixon, not President Ronald Reagan, and perhaps even the failed 1964 ultra-conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater—would acknowledge.

The assumption that Russia constitutes a major common security resource for the United States and Europe has almost completely disappeared. This comes mostly through omission and what can be read between the lines, but also from the numerous actions Trump has taken this year to redirect American foreign policy in ways more favorable to Moscow. The best measure of this comes from Russia itself, which may find it difficult to believe its good fortune amid the shift in Washington. Russian media quickly declared that Washington’s national security strategy was largely consistent with its own views of the world.

This would have been unlikely if the war in Ukraine had not been the result of the Russian invasion in 2022. But the lack of concern for Russian expansionism in the administration’s security circles indicates something truly radical that Trump and his advisers have not yet had the courage or the candor to articulate.

Make no mistake: The White House’s new strategy document is a blueprint for engineering the West’s demise – or at least, what the world has understood in that term since World War II, starting with a closely knit set of common interests between Europe and the United States.

Trump’s scenario for this includes dark fantasies about the creeping takeover of nominally white communities by peoples of color — the hordes of black, brown, and yellow people who haunted the kind of frenzied white panic graffiti of a bygone era. The best example of this is figures such as the famous 1920s author Lothrop Stoddard. In his influential book The rising tide of color against white global supremacyStoddard wrote that “colored immigration constitutes a universal danger threatening every part of the white world.” (A veiled reference to Stoddard has found its way into one of the most widely respected American novels of this century, F. Scott Fitzgerald.) The Great Gatsby.)

For its part, Trump’s National Security Strategy warned that Europe was at risk of not being European for much longer, due to immigration, which clearly meant defining it as white. One can imagine that the reason this was included in such a prominent document is that for Trump, the United States and Europe staying together is a prerequisite for remaining close allies at all. Another way to say it is that remaining committed to whiteness is a condition, in Trump’s eyes, for continuing to deserve that long, ubiquitous, and unquestioned title, “the West.”

Although the US government’s obsession with whiteness is troubling, it is a mistake to imagine that the Trump administration’s policy is even broadly coherent. Trump’s warning that Europe risks losing its identity, primarily due to the migration of non-white peoples, is so blatantly flawed that it suggests that what is at stake is not entirely about race, but, deep down, something else that is arguably more threatening.

This error becomes clear when we compare immigration rates to the United States with those in some of Europe’s largest and wealthiest countries. Doing so reveals that Europe does not stand out in this regard at all.

About 19% of Germany’s population are immigrants – a figure slightly higher than 15% in the United States – which arguably results from a sober assessment of its demographic decline during Angela Merkel’s presidency. During her term, Germany took in hundreds of thousands of people from a failed state in the Middle East, Syria. Integrating such large numbers of newcomers inevitably requires cultural adaptation that causes stress for both host and immigrant populations. But although many German voters have turned at least temporarily against large-scale immigration, history may judge Merkel’s policy generously if the influx of Syrians and others stems Germany’s real crisis of population decline, aging, and the associated problem of too few workers.

Two other major European powers, France and Britain, have foreign-born populations roughly similar to those of the United States — about 14% and 16% of the total population, respectively. The fact that none of the three examples cited is a statistical outlier completely refutes Trump’s notion that Europe is rushing to erase its own racism — and, to be clear, neither is the United States.

US complaints about European defense spending are also unfounded. As an editorial in The Washington Post As recently pointed out, the United States is expected to barely exceed the benchmark of allocating 3% of its GDP to military spending in fiscal year 2025, even as European countries demand 5% of their production be allocated to defense.

That Europe should somehow follow the US’s example is belied by the fact that European living standards are by some measures higher than in the US under Trump, and that many European countries are now widely viewed as more vibrant democracies than their new, long-standing ambivalent ally across the Atlantic.

To understand more fully what is going on, one must remember how Trump used xenophobia and racial and ethnic panic-mongering as key tactics in his initial rise to power in 2016. Angering large numbers of voters over issues of identity proved not only a reliable way to mobilize support, but also an effective distraction from elements of his agenda that were a radical departure from any modern precedent.

This points to what appears to be Trump’s real goal toward Europe: to support a larger, broader radical conservative agenda, of which race-based nationalism may be the tip of the spear but is also just one element.

In fact, Trump revealed this himself – perhaps clumsily – by allowing his national security statement to make clear Washington’s interest in strengthening far-right parties in Europe. Trump’s call for racist xenophobia sparked a mixture of bewilderment and sadness among European commentators, but it was not surprising. This is because these elements have long been key elements of his domestic policies.

Trump has flirted with interfering in Europe’s internal politics before, but never so brazenly, with a clear and formal statement of overt alignment with that continent’s far right, many of whose parties embody policies that engage in anti-Semitism and draw inspiration from fascism. Such a bold intervention sparked sharp protests from many quarters in Europe.

If Trump can enact an agenda based on such an extreme political reorientation – and, above all, if he is succeeded by someone like his running mate, J.D. Vance, who has loudly promoted very similarly extreme views – it is this development, more than just the focus on white people alone, that will officially lead to the death of the Old West.

During the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin appealed for the support of European powers such as France by saying: “We fight for their interests.” [Europeans’] Freedom to defend ourselves.”

There is no doubt that the West’s democratic record is full of flaws. But this idea of ​​a shared set of values ​​centered around freedom has always been at the core of what underpins the alliance between the United States and much of Europe. As Trump embraces authoritarianism more brazenly, it is the US disconnect from this value that may ultimately invalidate any sound logic of what the world calls the West.

If Franklin were around today, he would have reversed his formula to say that, by defending our freedom, Europeans hope to inspire Americans to defend their freedoms.