The Trump National Security Strategy represents, certainly, a welcome shot-in-the-arm for Europeans concerned about the fundamental, civilisational decline in Europe. It brings out into the open a series of concerns–not just about free speech and election interference, but also about the demographic reality of a continent approaching the point where it becomes unrecognisable–that European elites have censored, buried or ignored. Whilst it provides a useful foil for EU elites, who can now adopt the role of protectors of European sovereignty against the big bad United States, in the longer term the new American policy of supporting pro-sovereignty forces clearly means that the authority of European elites is put into serious question.
But we should remember that it is not the United States who have forced these issues onto the table. In addition to MAGA’s intellectual debt to countries like Hungary, the NSS can only point to the huge discontent on the continent because European populists have been gaining ground and refusing to be silenced. The concerns outlined in the document–from attacks on free speech to democratic foul play, from economic stagnation to cultural erasure–are those concerns which have been animating the great populist awakening. European populists should not place their faith in the American electoral cycle. But there is for now a welcome opportunity to capitalise on the new U.S. attitude towards Europe to forge not just a new series of bonds across the Atlantic, but a new model for Europe.
