A new US national security strategy represents one of the most profound crises for the Atlantic alliance since 1945
A new US national security strategy represents one of the most profound crises for the Atlantic alliance since 1945
During Donald Trump’s first administration, commentators sagely advised that his words, were to be “taken seriously, not literally”. Experience suggests that formula puts the cart before the horse.
A new US National Security Strategy and a series of comments from US officials, presidential proxies and Trump himself, have culminated in what could be one of the most profound crises for Atlanticism, the security doctrine that has sustained peace and democracy in Europe since the end of the second world war.
Where Trump’s point of departure was once the failure of Europe to contribute sufficiently to its own security, he has now embraced a more alarming vision.
Coloured both by racism and a staggering contempt for Europe’s political institutions and leaders, he has warned of the risk of civilisational collapse on a continent he barely knows, and that he has viewed more often from the window of an armoured sedan.
His interview with Politico, lacking in any clear ideological coherence, is replete with something else: the confused fear of an ageing white man confronted with a changing world.
A paranoid Maga worldview is behind the horrors of America’s own immigration, policing and other policies under Trump – and has driven an effort to erase Black experience and representation.
