Riccardo Perissich / Dec 2025
Image: Shutterstock
Nearly all governments regularly publish documents intended to explain to their own public opinion—as well as to the rest of the world—their view of international relations, the objectives they intend to pursue, and the means at their disposal to do so. Specialists in the field will recall certain American National Security Strategies (NSS) that profoundly shaped international relations; in particular NSS 68, published in 1950 by the Truman administration, which laid the conceptual and ideological foundations for the entire post-war internationalist policy, including support for NATO—an essentially bipartisan vision that reached its peak under two Republican presidents, Reagan and G. H. W. Bush. The 2025 NSS represents the explicit negation of its premises.
NSS 68 defined American interests, first and foremost, as defending Western values against the Soviet threat, and considered a robust system of alliances, multilateral organisations and the promotion of free trade as the tools needed to achieve that goal. Trump’s new NSS instead starts from the idea that the consensus which guided America after the war was ideologically mistaken, because that order in reality worked against the strategic and economic interests of the United States. The perception—hitherto dominant among both allies and adversaries—of an order built by America and in America’s interest is therefore turned completely on its head. This worldview is held responsible for the problems and tensions now running through American society. One could say that this kind of analysis is typical of nationalisms which often try to soothe internal tensions by shifting their responsibility onto a supposed hostility from the rest of the world.
The new NSS seeks above all to resolve the long-standing dilemma between, on the one hand, the realisation that the country’s international commitments may have become excessively wide-ranging, and, on the other, the emergence of new threats, for example China. But how can all this be reconciled with the perception of a ‘hostile world’? The answer lies in the deterrent deployment of the country’s immense military and economic power: “Peace through Strength.” Another characteristic of this document is the explicit abandonment of any reference to values as a motivation or objective of American policy. For example, resolving the problems in the Middle East—a region from which the United States will finally be able to disengage now that it has achieved energy independence—is entrusted entirely to expanding the Abraham Accords in their economic and commercial potential, while remaining silent on the identity-based and existential questions at the heart of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Similarly, support for Taiwan is reaffirmed, but justified by the island’s economic importance and the need to preserve freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, not by the wishes of its 26 million inhabitants. The same treatment is applied to the aspirations of 40 millions Ukrainians. As we shall see, the exception to this removal of the question of values concerns the fate reserved for Europe.
This also applies to relations with China, which is not truly a geopolitical adversary but a dangerous and predatory commercial competitor. American engagement and the call made to allies to reinforce their military presence in the region are also viewed through this lens. We are therefore witnessing a disregard for strictly geopolitical dangers, which could bring to mind John Stuart Mill and trade as an alternative to war—but in a Trumpian perspective: not free trade, but deals negotiated in America’s interest, or even in the interest of the President himself, his family and his friends. Those who were expecting a clear declaration that China is the overriding priority of American foreign policy will thus be disappointed. The declared priority of American policy is the Western Hemisphere. Above all, this means protecting America from mass immigration, but also from drug trafficking and from the prospect that these countries could themselves become channels for Chinese exports. It amounts to a restatement of the “Monroe Doctrine”, but with the addition of a “Trump codicil”.
This brings us to the question of Europe’s fate. Satisfaction at having obtained a European commitment to increase defence spending is accompanied by the wish that the bulk of NATO’s tasks should in due course be handled by Europeans—something some interpret as a European SACEUR (the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, traditionally a US military commander). This is not, however, merely a call for greater burden-sharing, but a paradigm shift. America’s role is no longer to protect Europe from the Russian threat, but to help create “strategic stability” between Europe and Russia. First, by creating the conditions required to bring the war in Ukraine swiftly to an end—responsibility for which is explicitly assigned to European institutions, which are said to need abolishing, and to the undemocratic behaviour of governments that enforce continuation of the war by silencing and oppressing political forces and movements that aspire to peace. The most striking part of the text explains this anti-democratic drift, and more broadly Europe’s decline, through a long list of criticisms of the “European model”, and through the abandonment of “Western values” understood as traditional and implicitly Christian values.
Many of these themes have been in the air for a long time. Those who have spent time in conservative American think-tanks and political circles over the past twenty years will have detected a growing wave of hostility towards us. It began with the furious reaction to France and Germany’s refusal to support the second Gulf War (let us remember the “freedom fries”), then the reaction to Europeans’ passion for Obama, followed by the influence exerted in those same conservative American circles by pro-Brexit British representatives who portrayed Europe as a continent open to mass immigration; today, Orbán’s influence is evident. In this rising wave, one saw everything: Europeans as parasites of military protection, but also socialists, bureaucrats, lazy, open to wokeism—which they had supposedly invented with Michel Foucault—open to immigration, dechristianised and fundamentally immoral.
And finally Europeans as subservient to the Brussels institutions: undemocratic, elitist and globalist. It matters little that the proportion of immigrants in many European countries is lower than in the United States, and that wokeism—whoever invented it—is primarily an American phenomenon. In essence, these criticisms project onto Europe many of the fears American conservatives harbour about themselves. This analysis of the continent’s problems, which is in fact not very far from that pushed by Russian propaganda, is clearly the work of ideologues different from those who drafted the rest of the document, and follows directly from JD Vance’s speech in Munich this spring. Indeed, the text sometimes seems directly aimed at influencing German public opinion.
Many in Washington realise that all this runs counter to American interests. If the “bad” actors (liberals, conservatives and social democrats)—that is, the traditionally Atlanticist forces—prevail in Europe, we shall in any case be forced to pursue strategic autonomy. A process inevitable in itself, which from a different perspective could have led to a strengthening of transatlantic relations. But mutual trust—the essential cement of any alliance—is gravely lacking. Pursuing strategic autonomy under these conditions inevitably pushes Europeans much further than they would wish in loosening their dependence not only militarily, but also economically and industrially, on the United States. However, even if the “good” actors (such as Orbán or the AfD) were to prevail, Americans could still face unpleasant surprises. To begin with, the populist Eurosceptic parties favoured by the authors of the NSS may profess sympathy for Trump, but they are rarely aligned with the economic priorities of Trumpism. One would discover instead that their cultural orientation tends more naturally towards Putin, and that many will also be drawn to the prospect of doing business with China. The first consequence of a sweeping populist victory would be enthusiasm for the “strategic stability” newly found with Russia, together with renewed imports of russian gas and a sharp decline in support for increased military spending. In all these scenarios, America will in any case have lost Europe—or at least much of the influence it once had over Europe. This was well understood by America’s post-war leaders, when they decided to promote the Atlantic Alliance and European unity as mutually supporting processes.
Europeans are therefore confronted with a crucial question—not only how to respond, but also what needs to be done. It will be useful to follow the American debate, as well as the reaction of America’s allies in Asia, who also find themselves in a difficult situation, albeit a different one from our own. It will also be prudent to ask to what extent, in practice, Trump identifies with what is written in the NSS. But we cannot allow this to lead to paralysis. The measures Europe should take are well known: to translate into concrete achievements the recommendations in the Letta and Draghi reports; to establish medium-term programmes that give substance to strategic autonomy in the military field and to the construction of the “European pillar of NATO”.
It must be remembered, however, that the main obstacle is the scepticism of our public opinion. The public is, for the most part, pro-European and favourable to increased military effort, but its scepticism is fed by the perception that a proliferation of reports and “strategic compasses” is not followed by concrete, clearly visible measures. Finally, among all the urgencies, one takes precedence over the others: if we want to stand a chance of preventing a bad compromise on Ukraine and disproving Putin’s belief in our powerlessness, we must be able to demonstrate that we have both the will and the means to support its resistance now, and to provide the guarantees needed for the defence of its sovereignty in the framework of any future agreement. The available time is very short, and the alternative could be the dissolution of the Europe we have built.
Among his countless quotations, the great Samuel Johnson has one that suits our case: “The prospect of being hanged focuses one’s mind wonderfully.”
The French text of this article can be found on the Telos website
