WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration has developed a new national security strategy that portrays European allies as weak and aims to restore American dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
The document, released Friday by the White House, is sure to roil longtime US allies in Europe with sharp criticism of its policies on migration and free speech, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.
It reinforces, sometimes in cold and belligerent terms, Trump's “America First” philosophy, which advocates non-intervention abroad, questions decades of strategic relationships and puts U.S. interests above all else.
The US strategy is “motivated first and foremost by what works for America—or, in two words, 'America First,'” the document says.
It is the first national security strategy, a document the administration is required by law to release when the Republican president returns to power in January. It is a sharp departure from the course set by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration, which has sought to revive alliances after many were rattled during Trump's first term and contain a more assertive Russia.
The United States is seeking to end Russia's nearly four-year war in Ukraine, a goal the National Security Strategy states is in America's vital interests. But the document makes clear that the US wants to improve its relations with Russia after years of treating Moscow as a global pariah, and that ending this war is a key US interest to “restore strategic stability with Russia.”
The document also criticizes America's European allies. The US says it has found itself at times at odds this year with Trump's changing approaches to the Russia-Ukraine war and facing domestic economic challenges as well as an existential crisis.
Economic stagnation in Europe is “overshadowed by the real and harsher prospect of civilizational erasure,” the strategy document says. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/monroe-doctrine
The US suggests that Europe is being weakened by its immigration policies, declining birth rates, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” and “loss of national identity and self-confidence.”
“If current trends continue, in 20 years or less the continent will be unrecognizable. Thus, it is far from clear that some European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies,” the document says. “Many of these countries are now on their current path. We want Europe to remain European, to restore its civilizational self-confidence.”
Despite Trump's “America First” slogan, his administration has carried out a series of military strikes against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific while weighing possible military action in Venezuela to put pressure on President Nicolas Maduro.
The moves are part of what the national security strategy calls the “Trump Corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823, formulated by President James Monroe, was originally intended to oppose any European intervention in the Western Hemisphere and was used to justify US military intervention in Latin America.
Trump's strategy document says the US is rethinking its military presence in the region even after establishing its largest military presence there in generations.
That means, for example, “a targeted deployment of forces to secure borders and defeat cartels, including the use of lethal force where necessary, to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the past several decades,” the report says.
