Don’t say you weren’t warned: Trump’s new national security strategy seeks to destroy liberal democracy as we know it
O
n the same day that Donald Trump received his made-to-order “peace prize” from his newest pal, Fifa president “Johnny” Infantino, his administration published an equally gaudy national security strategy. The relatively short document oozes Trump and Trumpism. It starts out with the typically modest claim that the president has brought “our nation – and the world – back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster”.
Even if the strategy mostly formalises the ongoing actions and statements of Trump and his administration, it should be heeded as a warning for the world, and Europe in particular.
The document espouses an aggressive form of foreign-policy interference in which the US explicitly sets itself the goal of “promoting European greatness”. Its language could have been directly lifted from Viktor Orbán’s speeches during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015-16: “We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilisational self-confidence.” Even more ominously, the document claims that Europe’s “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure”.
