The 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine that the Trump administration released last month drew heavily on an earlier Russian document. By contrast, the 29-page National Security Strategy released by the White House last week was entirely a made-in-America product. But the NSS will have the same effect: It will encourage Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and discourage America’s allies, particularly in Europe. There is nothing particularly surprising about this document in that it reflects the familiar MAGA worldview, but it is nevertheless deeply disheartening.
In many ways, the NSS is a masterpiece of doublespeak. The document hails Donald Trump as “The President of Peace” even as the military he commands is blowing up alleged drug boats — and slaughtering their occupants — with scant legal justification. The NSS says “we must continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with India” even while U.S.-India relations have been wrecked by Trump’s 50 percent tariffs. The NSS also vows “to maintain the United States’ unrivaled ‘soft power,’” even as the administration eviscerates actual instruments of soft power, such as Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The NSS calls for “re-instilling a culture of competence, rooting out so-called ‘DEI’ and other discriminatory and anti-competitive practices,” as if anyone could possibly imagine that Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard or other officials were appointed based on competence. And, even while lauding “competence and merit,” the strategy adds that “we cannot allow meritocracy to be used as a justification to open America’s labor market to the world in the name of finding ‘global talent’ that undercuts American workers.” So we definitely want the very best people — as long as they’re born here, which would rule out half of America’s 2025 Nobel Prize winners in science.
Not everything about the Trump NSS is a departure from previous administrations. The document claims, “President Trump single-handedly reversed more than three decades of mistaken American assumptions about China: namely, that by opening our markets to China … we would facilitate China’s entry into the so-called ‘rules-based international order.’” The Trumpistas may not have noticed, but Joe Biden’s administration jettisoned that assumption as part of its “foreign policy for the middle class.”
In other ways, however, the Trump strategy is a radical break with the past. The 2022 Biden NSS had more than a dozen references to human rights; the Trump NSS has none. The Biden strategy had more than a dozen references to climate change; the Trump strategy has none, as if global warming had ceased in the past three years.
Most dismaying of all, the Biden strategy had a heartfelt condemnation of “Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war on its neighbor Ukraine,” while the Trump strategy has no words of censure at all. None. The Trump NSS does endorse Ukraine’s “survival as a viable state,” but it says nothing about returning Ukraine to its international borders, maintaining its democracy or receiving security guarantees.
The NSS simply calls for “an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to … reestablish strategic stability with Russia,” whatever that might mean. Putin will surely love reading that ambiguous phrase, along with the NSS’s rejection of any further NATO expansion, thereby granting a key Kremlin demand. Indeed, Putin’s spokesman said the NSS is “largely consistent with our vision.”
While this strange document is entirely silent about Russian transgressions, it has plenty of nasty things to say about America’s European allies regarding the war: “The Trump Administration,” it says, “finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.”
This is so crazy it’s hard to know what it means. The White House seems to be blaming Europe for continuing the war that Russia started and then attributing Europe’s supposed intransigence on wicked elites who ignore the will of the people. In reality, recent polls show that the great majority of Europeans support Ukraine.
The NSS’s entire section on Europe reads as if it were written by far-right trolls. It claims that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure,” and warns, ominously, that “within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” by which it presumably means non-White. It attacks the European Union for undermining “political liberty,” censoring “free speech,” and even “cratering birthrates,” and says that “our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory.” America will do this, apparently, by supporting far-right populist parties, which the document refers to as “patriotic European parties,” echoing Vice President JD Vance’s words in February.
In its Middle East section, the NSS says, “We should encourage and applaud reform when and where it emerges organically, without trying to impose it from without.” In Europe, by contrast, the administration is all about imposing change from without — as long as it’s in an illiberal direction.
In a leaked transcript of a phone call involving European leaders, published by Der Spiegel last week, they discussed fears that the Americans are “playing games” and could “betray” Ukraine. The NSS will do nothing to allay such concerns. It makes clear that, for the first time since Dec. 7, 1941, America no longer sees itself as the leader of the free world.
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