U.S. national security strategy warns of ‘civilizational erasure’ in Europe

 

 U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has set forth a new national security strategy that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

 

The document released Friday by the White House is sure to roil long-standing U.S. allies in Europe for its scathing critiques of their migration and free speech policies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.

 

At the same time the administration is sharply critical of its democratic allies in Europe and carrying out a pressure campaign of boat strikes in South America, it chides past U.S. efforts to shape or criticize Middle Eastern nations and seeks to discourage attempts for changes in those countries’ governments and policies.

 

 

 

The strategy reinforces, in sometimes chilly and bellicose terms, Trump’s “America First” philosophy, which favors nonintervention overseas, questions decades of strategic relationships and prioritizes U.S. interests.

 

The U.S. strategy “is motivated above all by what works for America — or, in two words, ‘America First,'” the document said.

 

This is the first national security strategy, a document the administration is required by law to release, since the Republican president’s return to office in January. It is a stark break from the course set by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, which sought to reinvigorate alliances after many were rattled in Trump’s first term and to check a more assertive Russia.

 

 

 

Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, who sits on House committees overseeing intelligence and the armed forces, called the strategy “catastrophic to America’s standing in the world and a retreat from our alliances and partnerships.”

 

“The world will be a more dangerous place and Americans will be less safe if this plan moves forward,” Crow said.

 

Criticism of Europe

 

The United States is seeking to broker an end to Russia’s nearly 4-year-old war in Ukraine, a goal that the national security strategy says is in America’s vital interests. But the document makes clear that the U.S. wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war is a core U.S. interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”

 

The document also accuses America’s longstanding European allies, which have found themselves sometimes at odds with Trump’s shifting approaches to the Russia-Ukraine war, of facing not just domestic economic challenges but, according to the U.S., an existential crisis.

 

Economic stagnation in Europe “is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” the strategy document said.

 

The U.S. suggests that Europe is being enfeebled by its immigration policies, declining birthrates, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” and a “loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

 

 “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies,” the document said.

 

 

 

Read More Here:    Global News