New US national security strategy codifies a seismic shift in transatlantic relations under Donald Trump, say experts
New US national security strategy codifies a seismic shift in transatlantic relations under Donald Trump, say experts
The president of the European Council of national leaders, António Costa, has warned Donald Trump’s administration against interfering in Europe’s affairs, as analysts said the US national security strategy represented a seismic shift in transatlantic relations.
Released on Friday, the policy paper claims Europe faces “civilisational erasure” because of migration and a censorious EU “undermining political liberty and sovereignty”. Confirming not just the Trump administration’s hostility to Europe but its ambition to weaken the bloc, it says the US will “cultivate resistance” in the bloc to “correct its current trajectory”.
Costa said the signal that Washington would back Europe’s nationalist parties was unacceptable. Speaking on Monday, he said there were longstanding differences with Trump on issues such as the climate crisis, but that the new strategy went “beyond that … What we cannot accept is the threat to interfere in European politics,” he said.
“Allies do not threaten to interfere in the domestic political choices of their allies,” the former Portuguese prime minister said. “The US cannot replace Europe in what its vision is of free expression … Europe must be sovereign.”
The strategy document was welcomed at the weekend by the Kremlin, which said it “corresponds in many ways to our vision”, while EU-US relations were strained further by a $120m (£90m) fine imposed by the EU on Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
Musk said on Sunday the bloc should be “abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries”. The US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said the “unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative” EU was undermining US security.
Analysts said the document codified a US strategy first outlined by JD Vance at this year’s Munich Security Conference in a speech that accused EU leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running from voters’ true beliefs.
