Last week’s release of the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) was not a routine recalibration of diplomatic lines – it was a rupture. It represented the most explicit declaration to date that the United States no longer regards Europe as a partner in a shared transatlantic project but as a challenge to be managed, a continent to be reshaped and a strategic liability to be mitigated.
The Trump administration has accused entire nations and supranational institutions of steering the continent towards what it calls “civilisational erasure”, thanks to declining birth rates, mass migration, what it terms “regulatory suffocation” and increasing government control over speech and political opposition. The NSS gloomily predicts that “the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less”.
The NSS explicitly calls for the US to cultivate “resistance” inside European states. It praises the rising influence of “patriotic European parties” – a clear reference to far-right and nationalist movements – and presents them as a source of “great optimism”.
Equally consequential is the NSS’ reimagining of Europe’s role. Gone is the vision of Europe as a theatre of common interests and a shared front against authoritarianism. Instead, Europe is cast as a burden – politically, morally, militarily. The US has signalled its willingness to re-engage with rivals and rogue states such as Russia while privileging hemispheric dominance and regional priorities over global democratic commitments. The era of liberal internationalism that was predicated on alliances, international institutions and collective security appears to be ending.
This shift did not emerge by accident. At the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, US Vice-President J.D. Vance laid out much of the same argument: Europe was betraying its own people, elites had suppressed free speech and national sovereignty and cultural identity were being erased by migration, regulation and fear-driven elites. At the time, the address seemed little more than a provocation, a troll in character for an administration often more Star Wars cantina than serious government.
However, the NSS confirms it was not a troll. It was the first shot across the transatlantic bow of a new foreign-policy approach, best described as “Atlantic Fracture Doctrine”.