By Jeremy Kinsman

December 6, 2025

On December 4th, the Trump Administration released its U.S. National Security Strategy.

As with so many institutions, norms, and pillars of American democracy, the first NSS of the second Trump presidency represents a significant departure from all the presidential NSSes that have preceded it.

Its foreword by Donald Trump describes the document as a “road map to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history.”

The Trump-fatigued democracies of Europe are by now used to this sort of bombastic braggadocio from the unilateralist, nativist, and utterly mercantilist U.S. administration.

In his coverage, New York Times Global Affairs Correspondent Anton Troianovski wrote of the 33-page document, “The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its vast powers to make money,” further lamenting, “Gone is the long-familiar picture of the US as a global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing them as sources of cash.”

Allies are shocked by the document’s hostile and jarring description of Europe, described as facing “the stark prospect of civilizational erasure” because of the immigration of ethnic non-Europeans. Vice-President JD Vance has also derided Canada’s “immigration insanity”, which, he claims, has “led to a stagnating country.”

The U.S. aims to avert a future in which “certain NATO members will become majority non-European…Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory.”

Following as it does Trump’s blatantly racist boycott of the South Africa G20 and asylum policy for “oppressed” white Afrikaners, this latest “ideological” statement from the administration adds to a white supremacist theme not propagated in such brazen termssince Trump’s handling of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi march of 2017.

In this NSS, from its own nativist and nationalistic domestic platform, the Trump administration pledges support for like-minded “patriotic” parties in European liberal democracies who “fight against migration and promote nationalism.” Ex-Prime Minister of Sweden Carl Bildt considers the U.S. is positioning itself “to the right of the extreme right in Europe.”

The document also accuses the European Union “and other transnational bodies” of undermining “political liberty” and “sovereignty”, and censoring “free speech”, a repeat of Vance’s public harangue of European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in February, after which he ostentatiously met with the leader of the ultra-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), while scorning a meeting with outgoing German Chancellor Scholz.

At the time, European leaders shrugged in dismay and confusion, but continued to kowtow to Trump to try to allay his barrage of destructive unilateral tariffs. To preserve Euro-Atlantic security ties, NATO allies agreed to go along with a financially challenging increase of military expenditure of 5% of GDP, “to give Trump a ‘win'”.

Hoping to keep US military support for Ukraine and pressure on Russia, Europe and Canada faced up to America’s Ukraine-skeptical decision to end its financial support for Ukraine, agreeing to absorb financial backing for the beleaguered country. At its summit in Brussels on December 18-19, the EU must agree its plan to use the frozen Russian assetsfor Ukraine’s eventual reconstruction and recovery.

Yet, despite their role and vital geographic interest, the Europeans find themselves sidelined from US negotiations with Russia that maintain such a decidedly pro-Russian slant that Ukraine is also sidelined from them. Putin has dreamed for a decade or more of splitting the U.S. and its European allies in NATO. Under Trump, the U.S. is doing it for him.

The Trump administration is alarmingly hostile to the historic EU project itself, displaying no comprehension of postwar European determination to end catastrophic wars on the continent forever.

European leaders obviously see that stagnating economies, pushback over immigration, and anti-government antipathy over service delivery have depleted public confidence, as well as the EU’s reputation and influence. Polls show that the ultra-right wing nationalist (and anti-Brussels) parties that Trump supports are draining support from centrist governments in Germany, France, and the hobbled post-Brexit shambles that is the UK.

In Germany, the nativist, populist, anti-immigrant, libertarian AfD, which doubled its vote in February’s national election to become the second-biggest force in the Bundestag, now holds a slight polling lead over the Christian Democrats (CDU).

A “firewall” agreement among other parties that excludes cooperation with extremist parties, contested by the US, probably ensures that the governing coalition of the CDU with the Social Democrats (SPD – today polling at 14.3%), passively supported by the Green Party (11.6%), can survive until elections in 2029. But YouGov surveys show Chancellor Friedrich Merz with only 27% approval, largely because of the flat-lined economy.

In France, lame-duck President Emmanuel Macron personally fares even worse with 15% approval. For the first time, a November 25th poll by Odoxa showed the right-wing anti-EU National Rally candidate Jordan Bardella would win a presidential election if it were held today.

In the UK, the surging populist right-wing, anti-immigrant, and anti-Europe Reform party leads the Labour Government by 29.1% to 18.7% (the Conservative party is at 18%), suggesting Reform would win an election today. Knives are already out for super-cautious PM Keir Starmer, who has the lowest approval rating ever for a UK PM at 19%. Nonetheless, the whopping majority of seats that Labour won in June 2024 should keep his struggling government in office until possibly 2029.

The Trump administration is alarmingly hostile to the historic EU project itself, displaying no comprehension of postwar European determination to end catastrophic wars on the continent forever through the gradual pooling of national sovereignty that began cautiously with the Common Market in 1958 and progressively widened to a deepened and expanded European Union of 27 democracies, a super-powerful trading bloc anchoring the EU’s status as one of three economic poles in a multipolar post-national world.

But Trump’s assault on multilateral trade institutions drawing on coercive security leverage place the less agile, multinational EU trade strategy at a disadvantage.

Previous American administrations had long accused Europeans of getting a free ride from the US on security, enabling them to afford a generous liberal-progressive social model. But Trump’s latest harangue against immigration, his abhorrent racist language, and overt pledge to support ultra right-wing opponents of centrist European governments can’t be laughed off.

Meanwhile, ham-handed U.S. efforts continue to push a one-sided peace deal between Russia and Ukraine while European leaders remain committed to solidarity with Ukraine and the need to deter Russia. At this writing, three days of talks between Ukrainian and U.S. officials in Florida have ended without a breakthrough, and the path of this process seems doomed to replicate the failure of Trump’s equally cynical approach to Middle East peace.

In Europe, democratic leaders need to do more than seek to placate Trump’s gigantic ego with empty flattery so as to avoid his vindictive worst. Instead of taking a deep breath and carrying on as normally as possible after each of his disruptive impulses, Europeans need to confront him with their own red lines about behaviour, principles, and language.

Most of all, they need to reconsolidate in shared purpose, to regain the confidence of their own electorates, not just by opposing dissident populist right-wing challenges, but by re-mobilizing support behind a clear, positive vision for the future, and deliver better on concrete economic and other objectives.

Trump and his rogue agenda have minimal support among publics in Europe and Canada. Leaders should politely point out that his National Security Strategy is nothing more than a dystopian propaganda stunt and deplore the administration’s gall in attempting to interfere in the politics of democracies far healthier than America’s is today.

Policy Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman served as Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He also served as minister at the Canadian embassy in Washington. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.