Donald Trump’s administration has outraged Europeans with a National Security Strategy that is openly hostile to the European Union and praises “patriotic” far-right parties. But other parts of the document may have bigger implications for Europe.
Atlas shrugs
At the centre of Donald Trump’s first national security strategy in 2017 was a great power rivalry with the United States and its allies on one side and Russia and China on the other.
“China and Russia want to shape a world antithetical to US values and interests. China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favour. Russia seeks to restore its great power status and establish spheres of influence near its borders,” it said.
Eight years later, Russia receives only a handful of mentions in the National Security Strategy published last Friday and Moscow is no longer identified as an adversary. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described the new White House strategy as “largely consistent with our vision”.
READ MORE
The strategy has more to say about China and it is explicit about Washington’s contest with Beijing, which it frames for the most part in economic terms. It reaffirms the importance of Taiwan not only on account of its semiconductor industry but strategically for the projection of US power in Asia.
The document prioritises the western hemisphere as a US sphere of influence which should be kept free of “hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets”, an apparent reference to China’s growing footprint in Latin America. But it identifies as an aim of Washington’s policy the achievement of a “genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing”.
China will be pleased by the document’s declaration that the US should avoid interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and its call to work with governments in Latin America regardless of their democratic credentials and to focus less on spreading liberal ideology in Africa. In the section on the Middle East, the document says that the US must drop its “misguided experiment with hectoring these nations ... into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government”.
The only region where the strategy demands the promotion of a specific political ideology is in the European Union, where it says the US should “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory” within nation states.
“The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence,” it says.
“American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”
It identifies as a core US interest an early end to the war in Ukraine and the re-establishment of strategic stability with Russia. European capitals will be relieved to read that Washington wants to see the survival of Ukraine as “a viable state”.
This strategy document spells the end of the American project of promoting liberal democracy throughout the world, one which was always partial and which has coexisted with support for dictators and with Washington’s own illegal wars and use of torture and extrajudicial killing. And it calls time on the western alliance in its current form, declaring that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over”.
These changes require fresh thinking in the European Union that goes beyond the current preoccupation with spending more on defence. And I hope to look more closely at these implications in tomorrow’s newsletter.
Please let me know what you think and send your comments, thoughts or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to denis.globalbriefing@irishtimes.com
