A new national security strategy released by the White House calls for asserting U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere and “cultivating resistance” within Europe, while reestablishing “strategic stability” with Russia and accepting the Middle East and its leaders “as they are.”
The strategy released late Thursday, which builds on President Donald Trump’s “America First” maxim, marks a sharp escalation of his Administration’s criticism of the country’s European allies and a broader realignment of U.S. foreign policy.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“This document is a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history,” Trump wrote in the foreword. “In the years ahead, we will continue to develop every dimension of our national strength—and we will make America safer, richer, freer, greater, and more powerful than ever before.”
Read more: What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Alliances
Several current and former European officials have pushed back on the strategy, which asserts that Europe is facing the “prospect of civilizational erasure,” alleging that “it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European”; and calls for the U.S. to take steps to help the continent “correct its current trajectory.”
“It’s language that one otherwise only finds coming out of some bizarre minds of the Kremlin,” former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt posted on X, saying the document places the U.S. “to the right of the extreme right in Europe.”
“The stunning section devoted to Europe reads like a far-right pamphlet,” Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States, similarly observed in an X post, noting that the document “largely confirms” perceptions that Trump is an “enemy of Europe.”
Read more: History Shows How Dangerous ‘America First’ Really Is
Speaking in Berlin on Friday, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul noted that the U.S. was and would remain “our most important ally” in the NATO alliance, but said his country did not need “outside advice.”
In the U.S., Democratic lawmakers also raised alarm about the strategy, with Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut writing on X that it “foreshadows setbacks—forsaking allies, throwing Ukraine under the bus, & abandoning key strategic goals & basic values.”
Daniel Fried, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously served as the National Security Council’s senior director for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, ambassador to Poland, and assistant secretary of state for Europe, said the strategy had an “internal incoherence.”
“The strategy’s ideological hostility toward Europe combines with its implied bitterness over perceived US overextension and general disdain for ‘values’ to drive US withdrawal from leadership of the free world—and even the concept of the free world itself,” Fried said in a statement on Friday. “At the same time, the NSS elsewhere recognizes that the United States will need its friends, Europe included, to contend with its adversaries, especially China.”
He added, however, that “to a policy practitioner, the incoherence could provide an opportunity to build on the NSS’s better elements.”
Here’s what to know about the 33-page strategy document and the vision it lays out for the U.S.’s approach to the world.
A ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine
The strategy calls for the revival of the Monroe Doctrine, which was first laid out in 1823 by then-President James Monroe to oppose European interference in affairs in the Western Hemisphere, in order ”to restore American preeminence” in the hemisphere and “protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”
The document adds, in line with Monroe’s original aims when formulating the doctrine, that the U.S. will “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
The Administration described this piece of its security strategy as a “’Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.”
To carry it out, the document lays out plans to enlist partners in the region—including both countries aligned with U.S. “principles and strategy” and those with different outlooks but shared interests—to help “control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea.” It also calls for the U.S. to shift its global military presence away from other regions whose relative significance to its national security has declined and toward the Western Hemisphere “to address urgent threats.”
The U.S. has already amassed its largest military deployment in the Americas in decades as it wages what Trump has described as an “armed conflict” against cartels. Since early September, U.S. forces have carried out more than 20 lethal strikes on alleged drug boats, killing more than 87 people. At the same time, the Administration has intensified pressure on Venezuela—whose president, Nicolás Maduro, faces U.S. drug-trafficking charges—warning that land strikes on the country could come “very soon.”
Beyond the military, the strategy also emphasizes tariffs and “reciprocal trade agreements” as tools that will be used “to strengthen our own economy and industries” in the hemisphere.
‘Cultivating resistance’ in Europe
A section of the plan, called “Promoting European Greatness,” asserts that Europe faces the “prospect of civilizational erasure,” citing what it identifies as key issues on the continent without naming specific leaders or nations.
Among the purported issues it claims Europe is facing are migration policies, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition,” falling birthrates, and “loss of national identities and self-confidence,” which it argues are weakening the continent and putting it on a path to becoming “unrecognizable” in 20 years or less.
The document calls for the U.S. to take a more active role in the continent’s political affairs, including by “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” It also notes, positively, “the growing influence of patriotic European parties”—likely a reference to far-right, anti-immigration parties that have earned the public backing of the Administration.
The paper adopts the racist conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement Theory,” arguing that many NATO countries will soon be “non-European” due to mass immigration. As the theory has left the confines of internet forums and white nationalist sites and into the mainstream of prime-time cable news and political speeches, it has fueled racially based violence across the globe.
Beyond this, the document breaks from European officials in their reluctance to name Russia as a threat. It says Europe has a “significant hard power advantage” but “regard[s] Russia as an existential threat.”
The document builds on an already adversarial relationship between the Trump Administration and Europe.
Some of the document echoes Vice President J.D. Vance’s antagonistic speech at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, in which Vance criticized European nations for their policies on free speech and argued that the continent’s gravest danger was not Russia nor China, but their own governments.
The Administration calls the negotiated end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “core interest” for Europe, but criticizes nations that “hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of
democracy to suppress opposition.”
It claims that “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.”
The policy also states that its policy for Europe should focus on “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”
Deterring conflict in Taiwan
The strategy document calls deterring a conflict over Taiwan a “priority,” and says the ideal way to achieve that is by “preserving military overmatch.”
It says a war between Taiwan and China would have “major implications for the U.S. economy.”
Taiwan’s foreign ministry welcomed the U.S. position in a social media post on Friday morning: “The US National Security Strategy affirms that deterring conflict over Taiwan is essential to the region & the world,” it wrote on X.
The document emphasizes that the U.S. should aim to maintain dominance in the Western Hemisphere, an obvious nod to China’s growing relationship with Latin American and Caribbean nations, through expanding trade routes and political alliances.
Taking Middle Eastern nations ‘as they are’
The document lambasts European leaders while simultaneously promising to stop “hectoring” Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) into “abandoning their traditions.” As the document claims to view these nations as “a source and destination of international investment”—and as Trump seemingly prioritizes the broader U.S.-Saudi relationship—the language shows a clear difference in how the Trump Administration views these leaders compared with Europeans.
Trump has amassed significant personal investments in the region and, earlier this year, visited many states in the Middle East. He went on to host Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in his first visit to the White House since he was blamed for the killing of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which sparked international outcry.
The strategy document includes less detailed but equally dominant goals for its presence in the Middle East, designed to “prevent an adversarial power from dominating” the region, specifically in the oil and gas industries and preventing “forever wars.”
The plan touts Trump’s ability to retain good standing in the region, “reinforced by President Trump’s successful revitalization of our alliances in the Gulf, with other Arab partners, and with Israel.”
Plans for further investment in the region were at the core of the document’s approach to the Middle East, which it says will “increasingly become a source and destination of international investment, and in industries well beyond oil and gas— including nuclear energy, AI, and defense technologies.”
The plan echoed similar goals for regions in Africa, where “harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential” stands at the core of the agenda.
The Administration wants to “transition from a foreign aid paradigm to an investment and growth paradigm” on the continent.
Earlier this year, Trump shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, halting the flow of aid into multiple African countries, which experts have said will lead to thousands of deaths.
The document clearly shows a deprioritization of resources devoted to Middle Eastern and African stability, focusing clearly on a shifted focus towards the Western Hemisphere, which mirrors the Trump Administration’s military priorities and focus on Venezuela in the first year in office.
