Trump Has Long Disdained Europe's Elites. Now, It's Official. [View all]

Source: New YorkTimes

The Trump administration issued a national security strategy paper this week that called for European nations to take “primary responsibility” for their own defense, indicating that the United States should no longer guarantee Europe’s security. It accused the European Union of stifling “political liberty,” warned that some NATO members risked becoming “majority non-European,” and said the U.S. should align with “patriotic European parties” — code for Europe’s far-right movements.

The blunt, bracing and official nature of the document added injury to incessant insult, making clear to mainstream European leaders that they stand at a strategic crossroads. On a paper stamped with the president’s seal, the trans-Atlantic alliance was being openly denigrated by the superpower across the ocean that has ensured European security in the 80 years since World War II.

“It’s up there at whitehouse.gov staring the world in the face,” Charles A. Kupchan, who was senior director for European Affairs on the National Security Council in the Obama administration, said of the document. “And that makes it very hard to digest,” added Mr. Kupchan, now professor of international affairs at Georgetown University.

The now explicit prospect of the United States’ withdrawing its protection came days after Russia — whose talking points on European countries, some experts said, were echoed in the strategy document — warned that it was ready for war with Europe. It made more urgent a debate within the continent about whether its long-term interest lay in holding on to America regardless of the humiliations, or in facing a new reality, arming up and going it alone.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/06/world/europe/trump-europe-strategy-document.html