Trump national security strategy issues warning on European allies

US President Donald Trump’s administration has set forth a new national security strategy that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the western hemisphere.

The document released on Friday by the White House is sure to roil long-standing US allies in Europe for its scathing critiques of their migration and free speech policies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilisational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.

It reinforces Mr Trump’s “America First” philosophy, which favours non-intervention overseas, questions decades of strategic relationships and prioritises US interests above all.

The US strategy “is motivated above all by what works for America — or, in two words, ‘America First’,” the document said.

It is the first national security strategy, a document the administration is required by law to release, since the Republican president’s return to office in January.

It is a stark break from the course set by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, which sought to reinvigorate alliances after many were rattled in Trump’s first term and to check a more assertive Russia.

The United States is seeking to broker an end Russia’s nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine, a goal that the national security strategy says is in America’s vital interests.

But the document makes clear that the US wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war is a core US interest to “re-establish strategic stability with Russia”.

The document also is critical of America’s European allies. They have found themselves sometimes at odds this year with Mr Trump’s shifting approaches to the Russia-Ukraine war and are facing domestic economic challenges as well an existential crisis, according to the US.

Economic stagnation in Europe “is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure”, the strategy document said.

The US suggests Europe is being enfeebled by its immigration policies, declining birth rates, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition”, and a “loss of national identities and self-confidence”.

“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies,” the document said.

“Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilisational self-confidence.”

Despite Trump’s “America First” maxim, his administration has carried out a series of military strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean while weighing possible military action in Venezuela to pressure President Nicolas Maduro.

The moves are part of what the national security strategy lays out as “a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine”.

The 1823 Monroe Doctrine, formulated by President James Monroe, was originally aimed at opposing any European meddling in the western hemisphere and was used to justify US military interventions in Latin America.

Mr Trump’s strategy document says the US is reimagining its military footprint in the region even after building up the largest military presence there in generations.

That means, for instance, “targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades”, it says.