The's new National Security Strategy (NSS) released by the White House on December 4th is the real deal, a nightmarish document that should be read with caution and trepidation.
It can't be dismissed as anything like Donald Trump's late-night tweet, a press conference outburst, or some random appearance on Fox News. It has twenty-nine pages, NO CAPITAL LETTERS. It is the embodiment of the President of the United States' belief system about how America should behave in the world. In many respects it is strikingly different from the one he issued during his first term in 2017, not least in that it excludes any depiction of threats posed by autocrats and foreign aggressors, and any suggestion that the US should take a leading role in responding to such threats.
One of the most eloquent phrases is: “The days when the United States supported the entire world order, like Atlas, are over.” Instead of Atlas, we get a United States determined to maintain its primacy of power in the world while refocusing its efforts on protecting the American homeland and eschewing any values-based politics. This is a pure expression of the “America First” doctrine beloved of the MAGA movement. As Trump says in the introduction to the strategy: “In everything we do, we put America first.”
The bottom line is that Trump's NSC is trying to get a good deal for the United States. This means scrapping all the bad deals that the Trump regime believes have weakened America and brought the US to the “brink of disaster and catastrophe.”
The list of bad deals is long. At the top are support for democracy and resistance to authoritarian regimes, unfair trade practices (a big grievance for Trump) and collective security mechanisms in which the US has shouldered too much of the burden. In Trump's worldview, there are no permanent enemies and permanent friends, there are only trade relations that should be beneficial to the United States.
This turns the famous quote from the nineteenth century British Foreign Secretary into Lord Palmerston in a completely new and narrow direction. Palmerston's dictum was that “we have no eternal allies, and we have no eternal enemies. Our interests are eternal and eternal, and we are bound to follow those interests.”
Trump's expression of “interests” is a far cry from what Palmerston had in mind and will be of deep concern to many traditional allies. The NSC is value-free and denigrates any idea of a rules-based international order or the protection and expansion of democratic principles. It also targets allies and partners around the world directly, much more than authoritarian regimes that would bring the use of force and coercion to their doorstep.
Japan and South Korea are being praised for taking more responsibility for the security of the Indo-Pacific region, while the US hopes for a lucrative trade relationship with China. A war over Taiwan should be avoided to avoid disrupting the semiconductor trade. Latin American countries, especially those that the U.S. supports or supports, should negotiate good deals with the U.S., even to the point of accepting sole-source contracts from U.S. companies. Africa is a secondary concern, a region for selective engagement only, while the Middle East is where the US should refrain from embarrassment or “bullying” Gulf regimes.
Europe will experience the most intense heat in the most unusual part of the NSS. It seems straight out of US Vice President J.D. Vance's playbook of rhetoric, as shown in this passage: “The large European majority wants peace, but that desire is not translated into policy, in large part due to these governments' undermining of democratic processes.”
Europe, the core of the NATO alliance and home to many long-standing democracies and the European Union's multi-state economic partnership, has been criticized as a continent in decline, facing “civilizational erasure.” According to the White House, Europe is elite-driven, anti-democratic, too welcoming to migrants, suffocated by transnational rules and unfree. Europe harbors unrealistic ideas about confrontation with Russia. Europe must not only open up to the far right, but also abandon all ideas about any further expansion of NATO, which is clearly a reference to Vladimir Putin's demand.
There is not even a crumb of real support for Ukraine. Instead, the strategy aims to renew relations with Russia, what it euphemistically calls restoring “strategic stability” with Russia. Elsewhere in the document, we are reminded that great powers will always do what they have done: lead the weak. In the words of the Trump Doctrine, “the undue influence of larger, richer and more powerful countries is an eternal truth of international relations.” Okay then.
Europe is also being told in no uncertain terms to take primary responsibility for its own defence, further signaling a determination to end US support for NATO and withdraw some of its armed forces from the continent, as recently happened in Romania. This is called a matter of restoring “self-confidence.”
Trump's NSC suggests that the US will act in a way that will “help” Europe “resist” its “current trajectory.” European leaders and their people will now have to be on high alert for signs of US political (and more covert) interference in the behavior of their democracies.
Canadian readers, from the Prime Minister onwards, may be inclined to take comfort in the US NSC on the grounds that Canada is not really mentioned. Is silence golden? No talk of annexation, weak border security, trade relations, access to critical minerals, defense spending or the Arctic. But it would be a serious mistake to become complacent.
There are two reasons for this. First, Prime Minister Mark Carney described Canada is the most European of non-European countries, and he means it. This is illustrated by his continued support for Ukraine, his commitment to NATO, his emphasis on the Euro-Atlantic security area, his search for new defense development opportunities with Europe, and his desire to expand economic partnerships as part of a major commitment to diversify Canadian trade outside the United States. London and Paris were his first trips abroad after becoming prime minister. Meanwhile, Carney's push for what he once called a new comprehensive economic and security relationship with the United States is going nowhere.
Canada could easily become a European-style problem at the center of Trump's policies: elite-driven rather than populist, moderately centrist rather than far-right in political orientation. Canada may find itself in the same ballpark as European countries whose policies need a “course correction” with help from the United States. Think about how the liberal government treated the poor, well-meaning populists of the so-called Freedom Convoy protest, whose coffers were filled with US dollars, whose ideas were supported by American MAGA commentators, who were supported by Trump himself. A little jog down memory lane might be in order. That's what Trump said in support of the Freedom Convoy protest back in February 2022: “The Freedom Convoy is peacefully protesting the hardline policies of far left lunatic Justin Trudeau who has destroyed Canada with crazy COVID mandates.”
Trump was then out of office and plotting his comeback with Project 2025. Now he's back. If Europe should be concerned about US political interference, or worse, in its affairs, so should Canada. If you think this is bordering on paranoia, then read this passage from the Trump Doctrine:
“We will oppose the anti-democratic restrictions on fundamental freedoms in Europe initiated by the elite. [nearly us]Anglosphere [that’s us] and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies [that’s a bull’s eye]”
The second reason Trump's NSS should be of serious concern to Canada is its focus on US dominance in the “Western Hemisphere.” While much of the policy may be directed toward Central and Latin America, the Western Hemisphere is also our neighbor. US dominance is intended to bring economic benefits, deter foreign (read Chinese) economic penetration, strengthen US borders, stop migration, stop drug trafficking and transnational crime. We are now told to read this policy as the “Trump Corollary” of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. Although it appears to be an offshoot of the “America First” national security doctrine, it is deeply imperialist in nature, although MAGA supporters may not mind.
There are three components of the “Trump Corollary” that should seriously concern Canada: the assertion that we see threats to the Western Hemisphere through an American lens, the intolerance of dissent; that the US will work to secure critical supply chains in its own interests; and insistence on the U.S. right to access “strategically important locations.” This idea is accompanied by instructions to the US National Security Council:
immediately begin a proactive interagency process with target agencies, with the support of our intelligence community's analytical division, identify strategic points and resources in the Western Hemisphere for the purpose of their protection and joint development with regional partners.
It would be the worst form of naivety to consider this (in bold) as benevolent.
Simply put, Trump's NSC is a doctrine that threatens Canada, threatens Canadian interests, and is deeply at odds with Canada's approach to global security. This is not an ally doctrine, and any illusions that continue to be entertained about this in Ottawa should be buried (the European word would be “dropped”), along with the search for a comprehensive economic and security partnership with the US.
Allies share common interests and values and agree on threats. They respect sovereignty and political differences. They share intelligence for mutual benefit. None of this defines the Canada-US relationship under Trump, as the NSC makes so bluntly clear.
From “Atlas shrugs and gets down to business.» Wesley Wark (Substack). Reprinted with permission of the author.
