The Trump Administration is Obsessed With Europe

Under Trump, traditional U.S. adversaries are treated like allies and vice versa.

The Trump Administration’s recently released National Security Strategy.

In casual English, “obsessed” means to like something very much, but in its original meaning, it means an unhealthy preoccupation. The annual update to the National Security Strategy published on December 5 by the Trump Administration displays an obsession -- in the original sense of the word -- with Europe.

The 33-page document mentions Europe 48 times, more than traditional U.S. adversaries China and Russia, which only have 19 and 10 mentions, respectively. According to the document, Europe faces “civilizational erasure” because of mass migration, cratering birthrates, and overregulation by the EU. The first two causes echo the ethnonationalist Great Replacement theory, which predicts that whites will be “replaced” by the rising immigration and higher birthrates of ethnic minorities. Far-right parties in Europe deploy this rhetoric, and the document compares these “patriotic European parties” favorably to the governing centrist coalitions in power in many European countries. The Trump Administration is furious at the EU over its €120m regulatory fine of Elon Musk’s social media platform X: Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it not “just an attack on X” but “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.”

While the document reserves its harshest words for Europe, Russia isn’t even mentioned as a U.S. adversary. Most of Russia’s 10 mentions come in a paragraph on European relations with Russia, charging that since “many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat” then the U.S. will have to “manage” relations with Russia to “reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass.” It’s one of many non sequiturs in the document: in reality, European nations have pushed back against Trump Administration efforts to end the Ukraine war on Russia’s terms.

Treading traditional U.S. allies like adversaries and U.S. adversaries like allies isn’t a new posture coming from the Trump Administration. The Trump Administration has imposed tariffs against Canada, Mexico, the U.K. and EU; it has threatened to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. The portrayal of Europe as facing “civilizational erasure” isn’t new, either: at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vice President JD Vance gave a very similar broadside against Europe. Last month, Trump Administration officials presented Ukraine with a 28-point deal to end Russia’s aggressive invasion that was largely on Moscow’s terms. Trump has consistently touted his personal relationships with Russian and Chinese leaders; at a rally in July 2024, Trump said that China, Russia and North Korea wouldn’t “really [be] enemies” if he became president. (In the document, China isn’t portrayed as a military threat to the U.S. and North Korea isn’t even mentioned.)

While the content isn’t new, it is still striking to see it enshrined in writing as official U.S. policy: it marks the mask slipping by the Trump Administration.