Trudy Rubin: New US National Security Strategy slams Europe as greater threat than Russia or China

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t recommend perusing the annual National Security Strategy of the United States of America. It generally summarizes the foreign policy direction in which the current administration is headed, and makes for lengthy, dry reading.

But the new 33-page document is so shocking — even given what we already know about this administration’s behavior — that Americans need to pay attention.

The NSS 2025 ignores the real security threats the U.S. faces in favor of praising white nationalist policies at home and demanding our democratic allies adopt the same. It promotes the myth that President Donald Trump can create a stable world by doing “deals” with authoritarian Moscow and Beijing.

As for Russia’s invasion and brutalization of Ukraine, no word, except for chastising Europe for obstructing Trump’s efforts to force a pro-Russian “peace” plan on Kyiv. No wonder Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov quickly announced that the report was “largely consistent with our vision.”

The document envisions a world in which Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping dominate the globe in concert, each controlling his own sphere of influence; it labels Trump’s intended control over the Western Hemisphere the “Monroe Doctrine Trump Corollary.”

In reality, if Trump pursues this megalomaniacal mirage, he will facilitate the efforts of China and Russia to undermine U.S. security, destroy U.S. alliances, and dominate the world.

What’s so revealing about the NSS is how much it has changed from the 2017 version released after Trump’s first year in office. Back then, the strategy referenced “the revisionist powers of China and Russia [who] want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests.” Russia, the document added, “aims to weaken U.S. influence in the world and divide us from our allies and partners.”

The security threat from both countries has only worsened since then. What has changed is the personnel around the president.

Gone are the professionals and knowledgeable advisers (except for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has largely been pushed to the sidelines). Present are the sycophants who flatter Trump’s brilliance and advance the white nationalist MAGA line.

It’s no wonder there’s no reference to rising Chinese military threats to Taiwan. Or to massive Chinese cyberattacks on our country. One, called Salt Typhoon by U.S. intelligence agencies, has compromised U.S. telecommunications networks; another has penetrated U.S. infrastructure, including water supply plants, electricity grids, and transportation.

Yet, in typical contradictory behavior, the Trump administration just halted plans to impose sanctions on China’s Ministry of State Security in response to Salt Typhoon.

The security plan devotes pages to Trump’s penchant for trade deals and tariffs with Beijing, which it claims will ensure U.S. superiority in advanced technology.

In another capitulation, however, Trump just agreed that Nvidia can sell advanced H200 chips to China, threatening that very U.S. superiority in advanced technology. Trump apparently wants to avoid displeasing Xi before traveling to Beijing for a summit in April. The president doesn’t want to interfere with his hopes of closing a brilliant trade deal.

In other words, national security can be ignored when it contradicts the prospect of illusory economic gains — whether it be deals with China or Russia. And the president counts on his brilliance to secure both with his pals Putin and Xi (although he has repeatedly been bested by each of them).

This fatal flaw is at the heart of NSS 2025.

But the uglier and more gut-wrenching flaw is the document’s attack on Europe, its democratic values, and its support for Ukraine.

The 2017 NSS read: “A strong and free Europe is of vital importance to the United States. We are bound together by our shared commitment to the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.”

The “Promoting European Greatness” section of the new NSS echoes Vice President JD Vance’s tirade against European democracies, which I heard firsthand at the Munich Security Conference in February. Rather than speaking about the Russian war on Ukraine that threatens all of Europe, Vance denounced Germany for not inviting the extreme right, neo fascist Alternative für Deutschland party into a governing coalition.

The 2025 NSS contends that Europe is on the verge of “civilizational erasure” because of immigration policies; instead, it promotes (white) nationalist, anti-immigration political parties. It slurs the European Union for its multilateralism (which the United States promoted after World War II, and which brought political and economic stability to the continent).

And instead of supporting NATO allies as Russia attacks them with drones, cuts their underwater cables, and conducts sabotage and assassinations on European soil, the White House blames the Europeans for “regarding Russia as an existential threat.”

“Our goal,” the document reads, “should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory.”

There is something truly sick here.

Trump thinks China and Russia are potential partners, while Europe is in the way — on Ukraine, on human rights, on warnings about Russia, on its own regulation of technology. Forget about common values or shared commitment to the principles of democracy and the rule of law.

Unabashed to intervene in domestic European politics, the document calls on Europeans to restore “strategic stability” with Russia, meaning pressure Kyiv into signing a deal that consigns Ukraine to permanent domination by Moscow.

And the U.S. wants Europe to take over most of NATO’s conventional defense capabilities, from intelligence to missiles by 2027, an impossible feat.

Moreover, the White House is actively promoting as part of its “security strategy” the success of radical white nationalist parties in Britain, France, Germany, and elsewhere that are pro-Moscow and eager to do any and all business with Beijing. In other words, a Europe led by parties that are hostile to American interests.

The NSS 2025 envisions an alliance of authoritarian governments and their imitators, including Russia, China, the United States - and far-right European parties that dislike NATO, want to end the European Union, and prefer deals with dictators to defending democracy.

This is what Trump advocates, although he doesn’t grasp that it would destroy him as well as his country.

Fortunately, Europe won’t capitulate, nor will our allies in Asia. Nor would most Americans, I believe, if they only knew what the Trump national security policy is all about.

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