The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy dropped last week, and if you are in Brussels or Berlin, you might want to pour yourself a stiff drink before reading it. This is not the usual diplomatic pablum about “shared values” and “transatlantic partnership.” This is an ultimatum dressed up as strategy, but will Europe listen?
The diagnosis is brutal but accurate: Continental Europe’s share of global GDP has collapsed from 25 per cent in 1990 to 14 per cent today. Cratering birthrates, migration-driven social fragmentation, and what the document calls “the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure” threaten to make the continent “unrecognisable in 20 years or less.” Washington’s message is simple: America will help defend a Europe that believes in itself, but not a civilisational hospice.
Let’s start with the aspect European elites most want to avoid: The cultural crisis. The strategy doesn’t mince words about “migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife” or the “loss of national identities and self-confidence.” This language (which is unprecedented in an American security document) will trigger howls of protest from Brussels. But as I’ve written before, we’ve reached the point where Taylor Swift concerts and Christmas markets require counterterrorism operations. The multicultural fantasy has collapsed into a tribal reality where an overbearing state manages conflicts between incompatible communities.
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