I think it's really that their greatest enemy is liberalism. The difference between Orban and Trump, it turns out, is that Trumpism (if not Trump personally) is in fact a revolutionary ideology and it has seized the state. It's a Bolshevism of the far-right, led by a vanguard. And they are right now having the same debate that the Bolsheviks had not long after seizing power, which is about how to consolidate the revolution throughout the Russian Empire and then subsequently about whether you could or should just have a "revolution in one country". And it's plain that there's a faction in Trumpism that doesn't feel their revolution will be safe if Western Europe still clings to liberal democracy.
Given how hapless the governing liberal-centrist parties in Europe have been in power in the last decade (Broder's piece in the NYT was on point about this), Trumpism is potentially doing them a favor by fomenting revolution from the right--it may not only make the existing governments more popular but it may give them the backbone to really strongly hit back at their ethnonationalist/fascist right, Schmitt notwithstanding.
Tim that is an excellent analogy post the October Revolution, one that I hadn't considered. Perhaps we will see an American equivalent of the Comintern?
Well, as an analogy it might also give the opponents of Trumpism some hope in that Bolshevik command over the Russian state was pretty tenuous for a long while, even leaving out the White counterrevolutionaries.
This document is an obvious attempt by the Vance wing of MAGA to foment right wing/fascist nationalist movements in Europe. Look what happened in Canadian politics to understand what effect this will have: with a few exceptions this will hurt the popularity of these movements for a simple reason: nationalist movements by there nature abhor overt interference from large foreign powers. I am more concerned about what US based oligarchs will do or foment to protect their access to European markets. That is where the real risk lies.
Henry as you know I was at the same Summit in the Alps and the main take away for me was the lack of vision, leadership and concrete plans by the European elites present - be it on defence, China eating our lunch, technology and sovereignty, you name it. Lots of diagnoses and waxing lyrical about “our superior European values” (a favourite lame high horse of the European political and intellectual elites). Witness the disbelief of the Eastern Europeans present saying we are at war, what is everyone waiting for.
Whatever the bandwidth to implement in the US etc. (your first point), the substance is totally not a surprise (similar documents emanated from the Administration even last summer) but above all the broad social media hyperbole that this is an “attack on Europe” seems wildly overstated. The document says a number of things that resonate with ordinary Europeans, and the fact that Europe is a mess and needs to put its own house in order is not in dispute. It shows how hilarious it is to talk of “soft power” when your “hard power” is in disarray. Now using this document as decoy for our anxieties (“America hates us!” which is totally NOT true even of this Administration), as another excuse for procrastinating the actual DO SOMETHING Mario Draghi has been begging for, is what we all specialise in over here. Let’s stop the overreaction and get on with it.
Am not sure how to engage when you are telling me am missing point after point and you put down my points. I don’t think I am missing anything, but as I say happy for you Godspeed!
So you double down with aggressive. No my comment is clear. You are aggressive and uncalled for. Goodbye and indeed over and out. Did not ask for your comment.
I disagree; his actions seem ever to be the those of a congenitally-rich kid, one of Fitzgerald's careless people. He is obviously using someone else's words, but I believe them to be words with specific intent that is all his.
The NSS is not merely incompetent ideological cosplay
It is a declaration that the U.S. is no longer a Western power and a turn inward: America vs. liberalism, and away from Atlanticism. This is not about Trump. This is a systemic mutation in American strategic culture.
The NSS’s attack on Europe is actually an attack on the American liberal state. The rhetoric about Europe’s “civilizational collapse” mirrors US domestic propaganda: multiracial democracy as a threat, American liberal institutions as illegitimate and transnational norms as existential enemy.
Thus Europe serves as a proxy enemy for internal U.S. culture war dynamics. Europe is not the target – American liberalism is the target. The NSS externalizes internal conflict.
But Farrell misses the structural realignment emerging in Europe!
The real division in Europe: Northern–Eastern coalition of competent and strategically alert nations, who face an existential Russian threat (Nordic, Baltic, Poland, Netherlands). Western Europe (France and Germany) on the other side have declining liberal centrists with an incoherent strategy. Then there is the Southern Europe - strategically irrelevant and mainly uninterested.
Trump’s NSS aims to weaponize Central & Eastern Europe against Western Europe.
The NSS writers believe:
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, parts of Italy, perhaps even the Netherlands and Austria are fertile ground for an American-backed illiberal axis. Farrell sees the attempt but underestimates the material basis for such an axis.
He underestimates the long-term damage, even if NSS fails tactically!
Even failure will produce a Strategic decoupling: Europe moves to autonomy.
This accelerates EU digital sovereignty, defense industrial independence, sanctions autonomy,
supply-chain de-Americanization.
China benefits enormously if Europe and the U.S. fight, sanctions regimes fracture, tech spheres decouple. Opportunities for Russia as Trump administration focused on Europe as an “enemy” reduces support to Ukraine, sanctions maintenance, NATO cohesion, deterrence credibility and Russia gains time.
Farrell is Strongest in identifying the NSS as a Bolshevik-style revolutionary document
This is a brilliant observation:
Trumpism is a revolutionary ideology, and the NSS reflects its belief that liberalism must be destroyed abroad to be secure at home. This is the “revolution in one country” vs. “exporting the revolution” dilemma of Bolshevism. Trumpism wants the latter.
Farrel recognizes that declaring allies as enemies accelerates European resistance.
The NSS will unify Europe more than fracture it, strengthen centrist governments and delegitimize pro-U.S. far-right parties as American puppets. This is the paradox.
The Strategic Implication from all this:
The U.S. Has Abandoned the West
This is the point Farrell avoids but is explicit anyway.
The United States is no longer the anchor of the Western system.
It has declared war on the Western system.
This means:
1. Europe must build strategic sovereignty
Not as an EU dream: Forget EU!
"The Northern–Eastern coalition" becomes Europe’s security engine.
2. Europe must prepare for Russian collapse
Because U.S. strategy no longer centers on containing Russia.
3. Europe must prepare for U.S. hostility
At least intermittently, as long as Trumpism (not Trump) remains a structural force.
4. U.S. credibility takes generational damage
No European leader can again trust U.S. commitments.
Not even post-Trump. This is irreversible.
Concluding remark:
Farrell shows the NSS is incompetent and extremist, but the real danger is that it marks America’s strategic exit from the West—and forces Europe to develop a sovereign security architecture centred on the northern/eastern capable states.
Unfortunately, we should expect the follow-on National Defense Strategy (NDS) to echo this NSS. (Although the rumors are that there has been quite a bit of pushback from the professional military on early NDS drafts.)
And with $900B of table stakes to play with, it could end up being far more damaging than the largely toothless NSS.
Not just Europe. The debate over planes is taking place in Canada as well. The military professionals want the F-35, but there's pushback about costs, reliability and concerns over being tethered to a regime that is clearly not our ally anymore.
Yes, there is a big debate going on about the Saab jet, about how it minimizes reliance on a now-unreliable US. Illustrates how smaller countries can achieve more self reliance, or even create an alternative defense network, not under Uncle's thumb. Saab hasn't become a Boeing yet, not by a long shot, it can't afford to, and Sweden is not the US. This is another example of the US shooting itself in the foot by its attitudes. Be a bad neighbor, get fewer friends. How it works...
As always, thank you for the insight and the relevant analysis. Writing from Spain, I can attest that the far-right, which has pledged loyalty to Trump, is eating the traditional right party bit by bit, and is very close to power, bolstered by the religious and oligarchy forces behind the current US Administration.
What's so weird here is the idea that liberal Europe is the main enemy, and online safety the crucial battleground. These people spend far too much time on the internet.
As an Irish person living in the Americas looking back on a Europe that has become irrelevant to the World I'm somewhat ambivalent but mainly annoyed. Europe is a mess but an irrelevant mess and now it is spending money it literally does not have on a war it can never even start less alone win. Europe's irrelevance is maybe a good thing for the rest of the world, but it is not for Europe. Europe needs to get out from under the US petticoat before this dying mess that is the USA collapses on them. Quite NATO now and declare peace and stay neutral between the large bellicose powers. Declare it now and Europe can survive but follow Israel and the US down the toilet and, well, it will not be pleasant.
Come on. As if Biden administration treated EU differently. The only difference is that Trump is blunt about it. Obama (and Biden) was the champion of expelling illegal immigrants. Yet, u were quiet then. Where are the principles here? The only difference is the person who is doing it and the manner (open vs hidden).
The massive difference is that those administrations didn't transform ICE into an American gestopo, operating outside the law and any semblance of due process.
The time for a "civilized response" to these fascist fuckwits is long past. MAGA is the enemy and must be destroyed. This time, they don't get to take their horses home for the spring planting.
A successful Western Europe as social-democratic as at least the post-War conservative parties there have wanted _is_, in fact, a threat to the world in which Trump would want to live. The lower the level of quotidian fear of illness and general want, the less the very wealthy can do to more of us, and the more reasonable the voting public will get—not altogether so, but maybe enough to keep those who live by our fear out of power.
I think it's really that their greatest enemy is liberalism. The difference between Orban and Trump, it turns out, is that Trumpism (if not Trump personally) is in fact a revolutionary ideology and it has seized the state. It's a Bolshevism of the far-right, led by a vanguard. And they are right now having the same debate that the Bolsheviks had not long after seizing power, which is about how to consolidate the revolution throughout the Russian Empire and then subsequently about whether you could or should just have a "revolution in one country". And it's plain that there's a faction in Trumpism that doesn't feel their revolution will be safe if Western Europe still clings to liberal democracy.
Given how hapless the governing liberal-centrist parties in Europe have been in power in the last decade (Broder's piece in the NYT was on point about this), Trumpism is potentially doing them a favor by fomenting revolution from the right--it may not only make the existing governments more popular but it may give them the backbone to really strongly hit back at their ethnonationalist/fascist right, Schmitt notwithstanding.
Tim that is an excellent analogy post the October Revolution, one that I hadn't considered. Perhaps we will see an American equivalent of the Comintern?
Well, as an analogy it might also give the opponents of Trumpism some hope in that Bolshevik command over the Russian state was pretty tenuous for a long while, even leaving out the White counterrevolutionaries.
This document is an obvious attempt by the Vance wing of MAGA to foment right wing/fascist nationalist movements in Europe. Look what happened in Canadian politics to understand what effect this will have: with a few exceptions this will hurt the popularity of these movements for a simple reason: nationalist movements by there nature abhor overt interference from large foreign powers. I am more concerned about what US based oligarchs will do or foment to protect their access to European markets. That is where the real risk lies.
This NSS probably sounded better in the original Russian.
Quite :)
And TBH the drafters in the Kremlin did a better job of the language than the early hours Truth Social policy tweets of Trump. And it's not All-Caps.
It sounds like the Trump administration is calling for the Orbanisation of the whole of Europe.
More likely the Putinization
Henry as you know I was at the same Summit in the Alps and the main take away for me was the lack of vision, leadership and concrete plans by the European elites present - be it on defence, China eating our lunch, technology and sovereignty, you name it. Lots of diagnoses and waxing lyrical about “our superior European values” (a favourite lame high horse of the European political and intellectual elites). Witness the disbelief of the Eastern Europeans present saying we are at war, what is everyone waiting for.
Whatever the bandwidth to implement in the US etc. (your first point), the substance is totally not a surprise (similar documents emanated from the Administration even last summer) but above all the broad social media hyperbole that this is an “attack on Europe” seems wildly overstated. The document says a number of things that resonate with ordinary Europeans, and the fact that Europe is a mess and needs to put its own house in order is not in dispute. It shows how hilarious it is to talk of “soft power” when your “hard power” is in disarray. Now using this document as decoy for our anxieties (“America hates us!” which is totally NOT true even of this Administration), as another excuse for procrastinating the actual DO SOMETHING Mario Draghi has been begging for, is what we all specialise in over here. Let’s stop the overreaction and get on with it.
Happy for you!
Am not sure how to engage when you are telling me am missing point after point and you put down my points. I don’t think I am missing anything, but as I say happy for you Godspeed!
So you double down with aggressive. No my comment is clear. You are aggressive and uncalled for. Goodbye and indeed over and out. Did not ask for your comment.
“…the president, who most likely hasn’t read the document….”
It’s 33 pages long. No chance he’s read it.
He is president in name only. He does what he is told.
I disagree; his actions seem ever to be the those of a congenitally-rich kid, one of Fitzgerald's careless people. He is obviously using someone else's words, but I believe them to be words with specific intent that is all his.
The NSS is not merely incompetent ideological cosplay
It is a declaration that the U.S. is no longer a Western power and a turn inward: America vs. liberalism, and away from Atlanticism. This is not about Trump. This is a systemic mutation in American strategic culture.
The NSS’s attack on Europe is actually an attack on the American liberal state. The rhetoric about Europe’s “civilizational collapse” mirrors US domestic propaganda: multiracial democracy as a threat, American liberal institutions as illegitimate and transnational norms as existential enemy.
Thus Europe serves as a proxy enemy for internal U.S. culture war dynamics. Europe is not the target – American liberalism is the target. The NSS externalizes internal conflict.
But Farrell misses the structural realignment emerging in Europe!
The real division in Europe: Northern–Eastern coalition of competent and strategically alert nations, who face an existential Russian threat (Nordic, Baltic, Poland, Netherlands). Western Europe (France and Germany) on the other side have declining liberal centrists with an incoherent strategy. Then there is the Southern Europe - strategically irrelevant and mainly uninterested.
Trump’s NSS aims to weaponize Central & Eastern Europe against Western Europe.
The NSS writers believe:
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, parts of Italy, perhaps even the Netherlands and Austria are fertile ground for an American-backed illiberal axis. Farrell sees the attempt but underestimates the material basis for such an axis.
He underestimates the long-term damage, even if NSS fails tactically!
Even failure will produce a Strategic decoupling: Europe moves to autonomy.
This accelerates EU digital sovereignty, defense industrial independence, sanctions autonomy,
supply-chain de-Americanization.
China benefits enormously if Europe and the U.S. fight, sanctions regimes fracture, tech spheres decouple. Opportunities for Russia as Trump administration focused on Europe as an “enemy” reduces support to Ukraine, sanctions maintenance, NATO cohesion, deterrence credibility and Russia gains time.
Farrell is Strongest in identifying the NSS as a Bolshevik-style revolutionary document
This is a brilliant observation:
Trumpism is a revolutionary ideology, and the NSS reflects its belief that liberalism must be destroyed abroad to be secure at home. This is the “revolution in one country” vs. “exporting the revolution” dilemma of Bolshevism. Trumpism wants the latter.
Farrel recognizes that declaring allies as enemies accelerates European resistance.
The NSS will unify Europe more than fracture it, strengthen centrist governments and delegitimize pro-U.S. far-right parties as American puppets. This is the paradox.
The Strategic Implication from all this:
The U.S. Has Abandoned the West
This is the point Farrell avoids but is explicit anyway.
The United States is no longer the anchor of the Western system.
It has declared war on the Western system.
This means:
1. Europe must build strategic sovereignty
Not as an EU dream: Forget EU!
"The Northern–Eastern coalition" becomes Europe’s security engine.
2. Europe must prepare for Russian collapse
Because U.S. strategy no longer centers on containing Russia.
3. Europe must prepare for U.S. hostility
At least intermittently, as long as Trumpism (not Trump) remains a structural force.
4. U.S. credibility takes generational damage
No European leader can again trust U.S. commitments.
Not even post-Trump. This is irreversible.
Concluding remark:
Farrell shows the NSS is incompetent and extremist, but the real danger is that it marks America’s strategic exit from the West—and forces Europe to develop a sovereign security architecture centred on the northern/eastern capable states.
Unfortunately, we should expect the follow-on National Defense Strategy (NDS) to echo this NSS. (Although the rumors are that there has been quite a bit of pushback from the professional military on early NDS drafts.)
And with $900B of table stakes to play with, it could end up being far more damaging than the largely toothless NSS.
https://defensemirror.com/news/39129
The Saab factory is going to be very busy making jets to defend Europe. With friends like us, who needs enemies?
Are we having a "LIndbergh" moment?
Not just Europe. The debate over planes is taking place in Canada as well. The military professionals want the F-35, but there's pushback about costs, reliability and concerns over being tethered to a regime that is clearly not our ally anymore.
Yes, there is a big debate going on about the Saab jet, about how it minimizes reliance on a now-unreliable US. Illustrates how smaller countries can achieve more self reliance, or even create an alternative defense network, not under Uncle's thumb. Saab hasn't become a Boeing yet, not by a long shot, it can't afford to, and Sweden is not the US. This is another example of the US shooting itself in the foot by its attitudes. Be a bad neighbor, get fewer friends. How it works...
As always, thank you for the insight and the relevant analysis. Writing from Spain, I can attest that the far-right, which has pledged loyalty to Trump, is eating the traditional right party bit by bit, and is very close to power, bolstered by the religious and oligarchy forces behind the current US Administration.
What's so weird here is the idea that liberal Europe is the main enemy, and online safety the crucial battleground. These people spend far too much time on the internet.
Just doing to Western Europe what they did to Christianity.
As a native-born American living in Western Europe the past 7+ years, I take this targeting as a compliment.
As an Irish person living in the Americas looking back on a Europe that has become irrelevant to the World I'm somewhat ambivalent but mainly annoyed. Europe is a mess but an irrelevant mess and now it is spending money it literally does not have on a war it can never even start less alone win. Europe's irrelevance is maybe a good thing for the rest of the world, but it is not for Europe. Europe needs to get out from under the US petticoat before this dying mess that is the USA collapses on them. Quite NATO now and declare peace and stay neutral between the large bellicose powers. Declare it now and Europe can survive but follow Israel and the US down the toilet and, well, it will not be pleasant.
Come on. As if Biden administration treated EU differently. The only difference is that Trump is blunt about it. Obama (and Biden) was the champion of expelling illegal immigrants. Yet, u were quiet then. Where are the principles here? The only difference is the person who is doing it and the manner (open vs hidden).
The massive difference is that those administrations didn't transform ICE into an American gestopo, operating outside the law and any semblance of due process.
The time for a "civilized response" to these fascist fuckwits is long past. MAGA is the enemy and must be destroyed. This time, they don't get to take their horses home for the spring planting.
It may be inadvertent on his part, but Trump is laying the groundwork for the final world war.
A successful Western Europe as social-democratic as at least the post-War conservative parties there have wanted _is_, in fact, a threat to the world in which Trump would want to live. The lower the level of quotidian fear of illness and general want, the less the very wealthy can do to more of us, and the more reasonable the voting public will get—not altogether so, but maybe enough to keep those who live by our fear out of power.