Key Highlights
- Ready or not, Europe is on its ownGeorg Riekeles and Varg FolkmanWe can move from defensive crouch to position of strength but only if we use the economic cards we have against US coercionEurope is on a trajectory towards nothing less than “civilisational erasure”, the Trump administration claims in its extraordinary new National Security Strategy, a document that blames European integration and “activities of the European Union that undermine political liberty and sovereignty” for some of the continent’s deepest problems. Everybody should have seen it coming after Washington’s humiliating 28-point plan for Ukraine.
- JD Vance’s shocking Munich speech in February, in which he suggested that Europe’s democracies were not worth defending was an early red flag.
- But the new words still land as a shock.
- The security document is the clearest signal yet of how brutally and transactionally Washington wants to engage with the continent.
- It marks another phase in Trump’s attempt to reshape Europe in his ideological image while at the same time abandoning it militarily.
