Norms Impact
Trump’s quietly released national security strategy is illuminating
A US national security strategy now openly contemplates cultivating political resistance inside allied democracies, collapsing the long-standing norm that alliances are not instruments for domestic interference.
Dec 12, 2025
Sources
Summary
The White House quietly released a national security strategy that portrays Europe as facing “civilisational erasure” from migration and calls for the United States to “cultivate resistance” inside the European Union. It formalizes a shift away from “common values” as the stated basis for US alliances toward a doctrine centered on American primacy, hemispheric pre-eminence, and selective disengagement. The practical consequence is a US policy framework that openly contemplates influencing allied domestic politics while redefining security commitments through transactional, geography-and-supply-chain interests.
Reality Check
This conduct normalizes a US government blueprint for influencing allied domestic politics, a precedent that corrodes democratic self-determination abroad and, ultimately, the legitimacy constraints that protect our own rights at home. The text’s call to “cultivate resistance” inside the EU signals a willingness to weaponize American state power against foreign political systems traditionally treated as partners, not targets.
On this record alone, it is unlikely to be criminal under US law, because the document describes foreign-policy objectives rather than a specific, executed covert action; absent concrete acts, statutes like 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy) or FARA-related provisions do not clearly attach. The deeper breach is institutional: it recasts alliance management from mutual security commitments into ideological and demographic combat, inviting retaliation, escalating distrust, and weakening the norms that have anchored American leadership and democratic stability.
Detail
<p>The White House released a national security strategy late at night, drawing heightened attention in Europe after it asserted that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” because of migration and that the European Union was “undermining political liberty and sovereignty.” The document states it is in the United States’ interest to “cultivate resistance” in the bloc to “correct its current trajectory.” European Council President António Costa responded that Europe could not accept “the threat to interfere in European politics.”</p><p>President Donald Trump later reinforced the posture in an interview with Politico Europe, calling European leaders “weak” and describing a “decaying” group of nations. The strategy rejects “common values” as the driver of alliances, downplays prior emphases on Russia and China, and centers US “pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere” to secure access to key locations and supply chains. It frames Taiwan’s importance around semiconductors and strategic geography and describes Europe-Russia dynamics in terms of US efforts to mitigate conflict risk rather than shared strategic alignment.</p>