A declaration of political war

The Trump-Vance National Security Strategy is blatantly racist, declares an open intent of interfering in European politics, and is extraordinarily hostile to long-time allies

The Economist’s word of the year, published on December 5th, could not have been more apt for the document that emanated from the White House on that same day. It is “slop”, which is apparently an old term that has found a new use as a descriptor for drivel, fake or otherwise, churned out by AI. I would never have imagined that a document normally as portentous as a new US National Security Strategy (NSS) would be describable as “slop”. But in truth that is a kind word for a document equally deserving of another four-letter word beginning with S.

The document does read like slop, combining as it does brazen lies, absurd claims and frequent non-sequiturs. Was America and the world at the end of the Biden administration truly “on the brink of catastrophe”? Has there actually been a dramatic turnaround? Does an America that is imprisoning thousands without trial, that is seeking with official sanction to distort electoral districts for partisan advantage and whose President is using massive lawsuits to intimidate and muzzle independent media actually count as a bastion of “genuine democracy” and “free speech”?

The worst non-sequitur concerned Russia. The NSS stated that European NATO members have enough hard power to confront Russia and that Russia’s war in Ukraine has led “many Europeans to regard Russia as an existential threat”. But it does not follow from that that they should now bow down to America’s effort to “re establish conditions of strategic stability” through the pro-Russian peace plan Trump’s aides have been promoting? It is Russia that has destroyed strategic stability and Russia that needs to be countered if any such stability is to be restored.

In truth, however, the right response to this new National Security Strategy should not be merely to belittle it for its nonsense, nor even to describe it in scatological terms. For America’s long-term allies in Europe this document is worse than that. It needs to be taken seriously for what it is: a declaration of war against European democracy and the European way of life.

This is a US administration that tells Gulf Arab monarchies that it intends to desist from lectures about their political systems, and one that has shown that it cares not a jot about Russia’s war crimes, its dictatorship, its suppression of free speech. During last year’s electoral campaign Elbridge Colby, now Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and reported to be one of the principal authors of the NSS, was frequently seen on X lambasting Europeans for daring to express any views at all about American politics. Yet this NSS declares it a US priority to move Europe off its “current trajectory” and to support what it describes as “patriotic parties”, by which it means the traitorously pro-Russian far-right in France, Britain, Germany, Italy and elsewhere.

According to the NSS, Europe’s “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure”. Really? Most Europeans think the prospect of the erasure of American civilisation is much likelier, chiefly at the hands of Donald Trump himself so eager has he been in his so far ten months back in office to eliminate core elements of the US constitution, most notably the powers of the US Congress but also the requirement under the 22nd amendment that a president may serve only two terms. He has sought to take control of universities, to take charge of cultural institutions and to ignore all legal constraints on personal enrichment while in office.

Our European goal should, of course, be to help America “to correct its current trajectory”, just as the NSS claims it wants to do for us. But can anyone be expected to believe that Trump really does want to make Europe, on some definition, “great again”, when this year America has imposed 15% import tariffs on many European goods, demanded that European companies and governments divert billions into investments in the US rather than at home, and has made common cause with Russia, a country that has invaded its neighbour, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and commits acts of sabotage against European nation?

The lie to this declaration of war is given by one particular claim. The NSS reckons that “it is more than plausible that, within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European”. Where to start? First, it is up to Europeans to decide what is meant by “European”, just as Americans define what is meant by American. Second, Turkey is already “majority non-European” and proud of it. Thirdly, on most Europeans’ definition of non-European this will never be true, for no EU member state will ever have a majority of non-EU citizens and nor will the U.K. ever have a majority of non-U.K. citizens. What the NSS means is that these unnamed NATO states might eventually have a majority of non-white citizens. Jews will certainly note that some American followers of Trump would not even count them as “whites”.

This is blatant, overt racism. It is reminiscent of Nazism in the sense that it seeks to define identity in such a way as to exclude chosen groups perceived to be outsiders who are considered unreliable in terms of their true loyalties and affiliations. Coming from a nation of immigrants it is particularly shocking.

Europeans and their governments can ignore the NSS’s malignant analysis and supposed advice. But they must keep in mind the fact that this analysis and advice is not at all well-meant. It is hostile. It reveals a desire to manipulate European governments and to bend them to America’s will. And it comes alongside a clear desire to betray Ukraine’s and Europe’s genuine security interests by making a deal with Russia, a deal which under its known elements would enrich Americans, especially those in Trump’s own circle, destabilise Ukraine and put Europe in future danger.

The Economist’s encomium to its word of the year ends with what it nicely terms “sloptimism” about how slop may benefit truly trustworthy sources of information. The sloptimist version of that for Trump’s NSS is to hope that the very unreality of this supposed strategy, the fact that many members of his own Republican Party will find much of it anathema, the fact that his polling numbers are falling and that he and his Secretary of War are under fire from Republicans for their illegal killings in the Caribbean, are all indicators that this NSS will in fact be dead on arrival.

It would be good to hope for it, but not to count on it. Just as it would be good to hope that one of Trump’s favoured “patriotic parties”, Victor Orban’s Fidesz, will at last be turfed out of office in elections next April, if current polls are to be believed. Fingers crossed.