New US security strategy lays bare regime change plans for Europe

While the Trump administration claims they no longer want the US to "prop up the entire world order like Atlas", in the same document they dictate to Europe what it can and can't do.

European capitals are reeling today after the overnight publication of a new US National Security Strategy which devotes most of its focus to attacking Europe while calling for reengagement and “stability” with Russia. It is a broadside not only against the European Union but against every sitting centrist government on this continent. And if past is prologue, our leaders will continue to look the other way while the regime which dominates this continent plans for their ouster.

“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” the 33-page document claims. “We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense.” But then, in the same document, they devote paragraph upon paragraph to outlining how Europe must drastically change its governance in order to be in line with MAGA principles.

“Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” the document states in language reminiscent of how the Soviet Union used to talk about Warsaw Pact countries. This should be done by “cultivating resistance to current trajectory within European nations” it states. “The growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”

“US diplomats are being asked to assist fascists in Europe as part of national security,” responded David Henig, UK Director for the European Centre for International Political Economy think tank, this morning. “This is some seriously insane stuff.”

“The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence,” the US government states. “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less…We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”

The document also spells out clearly that the US expectation is that Russia will win the war in Ukraine and Europeans need to accept that:

“The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis. Yet Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States. Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity. European sectors from manufacturing to technology to energy remain among the world’s most robust. Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.”

So much for Trump’s supposed isolationism. The document spells it out clearly: the threat to Europe isn’t that Trump is going to ignore them – they should be so lucky. The Trump regime knows that it “cannot afford to write Europe off” because American ownership of Europe is essential to project US power globally. So they are engaged in a concerted effort to change regimes in Europe to put MAGA-friendly far-right puppet governments in power. Though one wonders what’s the point when the sitting centrist governments have already been bending over backwards over the past year to give in to Trump’s demands. What’s wrong with the vassal governments we have? The answer is that they aren’t 100% doing Trump’s bidding. Witness the €120 million fine slapped on X today even after the US Vice President yesterday warned the Commission not to do it.

The hypocrisy is so obvious it barely merits a mention. This is a regime that ignited a trade war with Canada because a Canadian province ran ads in the US criticising Trump. Meanwhile the US government is actively campaigning for far-right opposition figures in Europe to take power, releasing near-weekly diatribes criticising the EU and centrist national governments, and having the US vice president fly to Munich and Paris to publicly berate European leaders.

“Imagine if any European government had written, in an official strategy document: ‘the growing influence of moderate & pro-democracy forces in America in recent state elections gives great cause for optimism’,” observed The Economist’s defence editor Shashank Joshi this morning.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the document is that it shows how particularly focused (one might even say obsessed) the Trump regime is on Europe as an ideological enemy. China is mentioned 23 times. Europe is mentioned more than twice as much – 48 times. “The only part of the world where the new US security strategy sees any threat to democracy seems to be Europe,” noted former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt today.

The strategy is “new evidence that the Trump Administration is intent on destroying the European project and cultivating like-minded authoritarian populists,” said Robert Horvath from La Trobe University today. “Europeans have pointlessly reassured themselves with Trump’s supposed unpredictability,” observed Nathalie Tocci from Italy’s Institute for International Affairs. “When it comes to Europe, this administration is consistent and predictable. As the NSS clarifies, it’s in the business of tearing Europe apart by supporting far right nationalists backed by Russia too.”

And that’s really the point. For our naive Atlanticist leaders here in Europe, the worst case scenario that they could bring themselves to talk about since 2016 was a US disengagement with Europe. They couldn’t even imagine a scenario even worse than that: US aggression toward Europe. Our leaders misread Trump as an isolationist. Over the past year, it has become clear that he is actually an imperialist. That has huge implications not only for America’s own hemisphere but also in Europe, Canada and Japan where the US has been militarily, economically and culturally dominant for 80 years. The Trump regime has big plans for the American empire, and they are just getting started.

“We want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” the US National Security Strategy states, “and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.”

Europeans should be under no illusion here: that ‘Trump Corollary’ also applies to Europe. We are back to a Cold War mentality, and Trump views Europe as being divided into two zones that are rightfully in American and Russian spheres of influence. If Europe does’t wanted top be divided into vassal states again, they need to wake up fast. Anyone saying they’re surprised by this NSS simply hasn’t been paying attention. What the NSS says about Europe was already publicly posted by the US State Department in a post back in May. But our leaders did not want to acknowledge the threats made in that document. Will they acknowledge the threats now that they are in an official US National Security Strategy?