President Donald Trump’s controversial new U.S. National Security Strategy should be read as a political statement, not as a strategic blueprint.
The document devotes most of its attention to Europe. Instead of the usual restrained, bureaucratic language, it presents a stark picture of Europe as a continent struggling with migration, freedoms, and demographic pressure. It states an intention to “cultivate resistance” inside European states. This is not standard language for addressing allies, and the provocation feels intentional. The document is plainly designed to annoy and alarm European governments.
European officials have reacted in kind, with alarm and outrage. They should take a breath. Washington has long argued that Europe invests too little in defense, relies excessively on U.S. military power, and is overregulated. Past administrations simply chose far more diplomatic language. The current one threw a brick into a glass door. Much of the strategy echoes the cultural message delivered to Europeans in Munich in February by Vice President JD Vance, framing Europe as a civilization in ideological decay.
However outraged Europeans may be, the truth is that many of these frustrations predate the current administration. The shift began under President Barack Obama, who signaled a strategic rebalancing with the “pivot to Asia” and made clear that Europe was no longer the center of U.S. foreign policy. It was during his tenure that Poland learned its promised missile-defense system would not be delivered — announced, with striking insensitivity, on the anniversary of its liberation from the Soviet Union.
What has changed is the strategic environment. Europe now faces an obvious Russian threat, which is why these messages land with far more alarm. The choice ahead is the following: Europe can remain outraged and wait for Washington’s politics to shift, or it can accept that U.S. guarantees are no longer automatic and begin building the capabilities needed to carry more of its own defense.
To be sure, there are parts of the document that are worrisome. The document says that further NATO expansion is no longer a U.S. priority. In practice, that was the case. But having that as a policy statement means leaving more strategic space for Russia, even though the same document insists Washington will not allow the “emergence of dominant adversaries.” If the United States downplays NATO’s possible growth at the same time Moscow continues to pressure its neighbors, Russia will inevitably fill the vacuum. And for a world already dealing with an active European war, it is unwise to weaken the very tool that limits Moscow’s aggressive reach.
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As an extension, it is concerning that the document leaves out Russia. Earlier strategies treated Moscow as a central problem. This one offers just a broad reference. If Washington reduces its engagement in Russia’s neighborhood, it risks enabling the “dominant adversary” the strategy says must not emerge. Whatever hopes exist in Washington regarding a potential change of hearts in the Kremlin, Moscow continuously challenges the U.S. in ways this document neither prepares for nor is willing to imagine.
In the end, however, Europe should remain calm. Europeans must bolster their defenses with urgency. But documented strategies and Trump do not easily coalesce.