Trump Derangement Syndrome afflicted Europeans leaders and mainstream media have panicked after the publication, on the White House homepage, of the National Security Strategy 2025. What scares the Europeans is the announced decision of the US government of “Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” as such a trajectory is described in brutal but truthful terms. The paper is especially critical towards the EU Russia policy.
The NNS warns that Europe is threatened with the “erasure of civilization” if the current policy, enforced by the European Union and other transnational institutions, is not stopped. Europe’s “lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.
“It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state. The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe’s, especially Germany’s, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world’s largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration 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.”
If continental Europeans are shocked, the British elite is the more so. Ruth Deyermond, professor at the Institute for War Studies at King’s College London and expert on US-Russian relations, noticed on X that The document reveals “a huge change in US policy toward Russia—the biggest change since the collapse of the USSR.”
