The new US National Security Strategy shows that the transatlantic alliance is not just superficially damaged, but deeply divided. What President Donald Trump has announced in individual tweets and Vice President JD Vance in a speech at the Munich Security Conference is now official US foreign policy.
The strategy document, which is usually revised once during each presidency, translates Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” into the language of foreign policy. Since President Woodrow Wilson published his “14 Points” at the end of World War I, the US had always veiled its quest for world domination with phrases about “freedom,” “democracy,” and “the rule of law.” This was still the case in Trump’s first National Security Strategy in 2017. That is no longer true today.
The new strategy openly states its predatory goals. “The purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests; that is the sole focus of this strategy,” the document states. The strategy aims to ensure “that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come.”
To this end, the US wants to “recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military,” build “the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent,” and have “the world’s strongest, most dynamic, most innovative, and most advanced economy.”
All relations with all other countries will be subordinated to these goals.
Latin America is to become the backyard of the US again through a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823:
After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.
The Indo-Pacific “is already and will continue to be among the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds.”
The most dramatic change in policy is toward Europe. The US intends to interfere in the internal affairs of its NATO partners, break up the European Union, strengthen fascist parties, and help enforce racist remigration policies. Otherwise, it is “more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” according to the bluntly racist language used.
Russia is no longer referred to as an adversary; instead, Europe is to be “helped” to achieve “strategic stability with Russia.” “The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war,” it continues.
Europe’s economic decline is surpassed “by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” the document states. It accuses the European Union of undermining political freedom and sovereignty. European migration policy is dividing the continent and causing discord, freedom of speech is being censored and political opposition suppressed, national identity and self-confidence are being lost. “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” it declares.
The strategy document promises to “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” and describes “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” as “cause for great optimism.” This refers to far-right and fascist parties such as Germany’s AfD, Spain’s Vox, and Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia.
It goes on to say that the aim is to enable Europe “to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations.” “Europe of Sovereign Nations” is the name of the far-right faction in the EU Parliament to which the AfD belongs. Furthermore, “the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges” are to be strengthened. This refers to countries such as Hungary with far-right governments.
The expansion of NATO should be halted, European markets opened up to US goods and services, and fair treatment of US workers and companies ensured, the document asserts.
The strategy document has caused a storm of indignation in the European press. The French newspaper Le Monde wrote:
The split is final, pending the division of assets. That is how the publication of the national security strategy by the White House on Friday, December 5, appears from a transatlantic perspective. ... [It] marks a historic rupture. Never before had an official document of this nature demonstrated such indifference toward America’s adversaries and such disregard toward its traditional allies, especially those in Europe.
The German weekly Die Zeit described the document as an “anti-Europe doctrine” and a “brutal wake-up call for all transatlanticists who wanted to hold on to the idea of a value-bound West,” while the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it a “paper in which the US settles scores with Europe.”
Representatives of European governments and the European Union reacted more cautiously because they do not want to further provoke Trump in view of the tense negotiations on Ukraine. They left the response to second-tier politicians who do not have direct government responsibility, such as Norbert Röttgen, deputy chairman of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) faction in the Bundestag (German parliament).
He described the US strategy document as a “second new epoch for Europe,” a reference to then Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s invocation of a “new epoch” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to justify German rearmament. It represents a fundamentally new geopolitical positioning of the United States in relation to Europe, China, and Russia, Röttgen added. He also criticised the targeted cooperation with far-right parties.
The CDU politician, who has justified every US war crime in the past and unconditionally supports the genocide in Gaza, accused Washington of seeking “comprehensive dominance in the Western Hemisphere.” He urged that frozen Russian state funds be used to support Ukraine in the war against Russia, even against the will of the US. “If this fails, the consequences will be devastating,” Röttgen said.
The European powers have no answer to the growing conflict with the US other than war and class war. The US enabled discredited Western European capitalism to survive after World War II, and the Cold War against the Soviet Union welded the imperialist powers together. This formed the basis for the economic upswing and social compromises of the postwar period.
But now, as we wrote in an earlier article, “The global crisis of capitalism and the accompanying bitter struggle for raw materials, markets, and profits are destroying the alliance between the two largest imperialist power blocs, which together account for 45 percent of global economic output.” Trump is not the cause, but merely the subjective expression of this development.
Germany and the other European powers have been striving for years to free themselves from US hegemony and once again play an independent role as a major power. Now they are accelerating these efforts, investing hundreds of billions in rearmament, continuing the war against Russia, and compensating for the enormous costs through social cuts and mass layoffs. Like Trump, they are building a police state and have long since adopted the brutal migration policies of the far right.
The working class must not support either side in the escalating transatlantic conflict. It must unite internationally and fight on both sides of the Atlantic for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist society.