The new official policy of the United States is apparently that France is too dark, Russia is just misunderstood, and the Western Hemisphere is a gated community that needs a higher fence.
There is a specific kind of document that usually emerges from the White House every few years called the National Security Strategy. Historically, it is a cure for insomnia. It is a dense, bureaucratic slab of text filled with phrases like “multilateral engagement” and “strategic ambiguity,” designed to reassure our allies that we are sane and to warn our enemies that we are paying attention. It is the sort of thing written by people with PhDs in International Relations who wear sensible shoes and worry about shipping lanes.
But this week, the Trump White House released a new National Security Strategy that breaks with that boring tradition. It does not read like a diplomatic blueprint. It reads like a manifesto written at 3 AM by someone who has fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole about the decline of Western Civilization. It is a document that explicitly warns of “civilizational erasure” in Europe. It claims that “within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”
Let that sink in. The official policy of the United States government is now Great Replacement Theory. We have moved from “peace through strength” to “panic through racism.”
The document argues that U.S. priorities should shift from propping up a liberal world order to reasserting a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. This involves refocusing military and diplomatic weight on the Western Hemisphere, controlling migration with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and treating the Middle East primarily as a “zone for investment.” It signals a willingness to accommodate Russian preferences on NATO expansion because, apparently, Vladimir Putin is just a guy protecting his neighborhood. It praises the rise of far-right European parties as a healthy immune response. And it urges a transactional approach to China and the Gulf that essentially puts a price tag on American values.
This is not statecraft. It is a 4chan post with a presidential seal.
The Panic Over “Baby Europe”
The centerpiece of this strategy is the fixation on “civilizational erasure.” It is a phrase that belongs in a white nationalist newsletter, not a government strategy paper. By warning that NATO allies are becoming “majority non-European,” the administration is doing two things simultaneously. First, it is insulting our closest allies by suggesting their citizens are not actually citizens if they don’t look a certain way. Second, it is admitting that the United States no longer views democracy as the defining characteristic of the West. It views whiteness as the defining characteristic.
The irony here is so thick you could cut it with a bayonet. The United States is a nation of immigrants. We are the melting pot. We are the country built on the idea that anyone from anywhere can become an American. And yet, we are now lecturing Europe on the dangers of diversity. We are looking at Paris and London and Berlin and saying, “You guys are letting in too many brown people, and it’s making us nervous.”
It is a projection of American domestic neuroses onto the geopolitical stage. The administration is terrified of its own demographic shadow, so it is hallucinating a “civilizational” crisis abroad. They look at a multicultural Europe and see a horror movie. They see “erasure” where a rational observer sees evolution. They are trying to freeze time in 1950, both at home and abroad, unaware that the clock has already moved forward and the batteries in their time machine are dead.
The Trump Corollary: Fortress America
The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is presented as a bold strategic shift, but let’s call it what it is. It is a retreat. It is the geopolitical equivalent of a turtle pulling its head into its shell, except the shell is made of tariffs and razor wire.
The Monroe Doctrine was about preventing European colonialism in the Americas. The Trump Corollary appears to be about preventing anything from entering the Americas at all. It envisions the Western Hemisphere not as a neighborhood of partners, but as a buffer zone. It is a fortress mentality. The goal is to lock the gates, police the perimeter, and ignore the rest of the world unless we can make a buck off it.
This isolationism is sold as “America First,” but it is actually “America Alone.” By withdrawing from the liberal world order, by signaling that we no longer care about the stability of Europe or the defense of democracy, we are creating a vacuum. And vacuums get filled. They get filled by China. They get filled by Russia. They get filled by chaos.
The administration argues that we need to focus on our own backyard. But in a globalized world, there is no backyard. The ocean is not a moat. A virus in Wuhan becomes a pandemic in New York. A war in Ukraine spikes gas prices in Ohio. The idea that we can simply wall ourselves off and prosper is a fantasy for people who don’t understand how supply chains or physics work.
The Middle East as a Strip Mall
The section on the Middle East is perhaps the most cynical. It reframes the entire region as a “zone for investment.” Forget human rights. Forget democracy. Forget the complex sectarian conflicts that have shaped the region for centuries. Just look at the real estate opportunities!
It reads like it was written by Jared Kushner on a napkin at a Riyadh steakhouse. It treats nations as distressed assets and diplomacy as a series of real estate closings. “We don’t care what you do to your journalists or your dissidents,” the strategy essentially says, “as long as the Sovereign Wealth Fund clears the check.”
This transactional approach is billed as “pragmatism,” but it is actually nihilism. It strips American foreign policy of any moral weight. We are no longer the “shining city on a hill.” We are just another vendor in the global bazaar, haggling over the price of oil and selling weapons to whoever has the cash.
It also fundamentally misunderstands the Middle East. You cannot buy stability. You cannot invest your way out of religious extremism or proxy wars. Treating the region like a business deal ignores the human and historical realities that drive conflict. It is a strategy destined to fail, but it will make a few people very rich in the meantime.
The Russian Accommodation
Then there is Russia. The document signals a willingness to “accommodate Russian preferences” on NATO expansion. In plain English, this means selling out Ukraine. It means telling Eastern Europe that they are on their own. It means accepting Putin’s premise that he has a right to a sphere of influence where sovereignty is optional.
This is a betrayal of seventy years of American foreign policy. It validates the invasion of a sovereign neighbor. It tells every dictator in the world that if they push hard enough, the United States will eventually fold because we are too tired or too cheap to stop them.
The administration praises the rise of far-right European parties, viewing them as ideological soulmates. They look at Viktor Orbán in Hungary or the AfD in Germany and see allies against “wokeism.” They are actively cheering for the disintegration of the European Union and the weakening of NATO, because they view international institutions as constraints on their own power.
It is the United States acting as the campaign manager for European fascism. We are exporting our own polarization, validating the worst instincts of the European electorate, and undermining the very alliances that have kept the peace since World War II.
The Diplomatic Facepalm
The reaction from European leaders has been a mixture of horror and secondhand embarrassment. Former French ambassador Gérard Araud branded the passage a “far-right pamphlet.” Former Swedish PM Carl Bildt called it “bizarre.” The European Commission said it “absolutely” disagreed with the claims.
These are not the reactions of partners who are engaged in a strategic dialogue. These are the reactions of people who have just watched their crazy uncle stand up at a wedding and start screaming about conspiracy theories. They aren’t mad; they are humiliated for us.
They are realizing that the United States is no longer a serious country. We are a superpower undergoing a nervous breakdown. We are a nuclear-armed nation that gets its worldview from memes.
This unsettling of allied diplomacy has concrete consequences. Why would a European leader trust us with intelligence? Why would they sign a trade deal? Why would they rely on our security guarantees? They read this document and see a partner that is volatile, unreliable, and frankly, a little unhinged.
It complicates U.S. support for Ukraine to the point of impossibility. How can we lead a coalition to defend democracy when our own official strategy questions the value of diverse democracies? How can we rally NATO when we are openly flirting with the enemy?
The Strategic Consequences of Insanity
The fallout from this document will be measured in years, not news cycles. It empowers nationalist parties in Europe, giving them the imprimatur of the United States President. It tells voters in France and Germany that their racism is not just acceptable, but strategic.
It invites congressional and public scrutiny over long-term force posture. If we are retreating to the Western Hemisphere, do we need bases in Germany? Do we need a fleet in the Mediterranean? The isolationist logic eventually leads to a dismantling of the global security architecture that protects American interests.
It sets up immediate diplomatic friction. Every meeting between a U.S. diplomat and a European counterpart will now begin with an awkward silence. “So,” the European will say, “about that part where you said our civilization is being erased…”
The EU and NATO institutions now have to decide whether to treat this paper as a signpost of where America is going or as a temporary glitch in the matrix. They are hoping it is the latter, but they are preparing for the former. They are talking about “strategic autonomy,” which is code for “learning how to live without America.”
The End of the American Century
We are watching the end of the American Century, not because we were defeated by a rival, but because we got bored and scared. We decided that leading the world was too hard. We decided that the complexity of a diverse, interconnected planet was too threatening. So we wrote a document that says, “Go away. We are closed.”
This National Security Strategy is a surrender. It surrender our values. It surrenders our leadership. It surrenders our future. It attempts to trade the hard work of democracy for the cheap high of ethnonationalism.
It assumes that the United States can thrive as a hermit kingdom, sitting on a pile of guns and money, yelling at the neighbors to stay off our lawn. But the world doesn’t work that way. The problems of the world will come to us, whether we invite them or not. And when they arrive, we will find that we have alienated the very friends we need to help us solve them.
We have traded a seat at the head of the table for a bunker in the basement.
The “Vibes” Foreign Policy
Ultimately, this document proves that the Trump administration does not have a foreign policy. It has a vibe. It has an aesthetic. The aesthetic is “tough guy.” The vibe is “resentment.”
They like Russia because Putin looks tough. They like the Gulf monarchies because they are rich and don’t ask questions. They hate Europe because Europe is complicated and bureaucratic and occasionally lectures them about human rights.
This isn’t strategy. It is psychology. It is the psychology of a bully who is secretly afraid he is losing his grip.
The fixation on “civilizational erasure” is the tell. It reveals that they know they are losing the culture war. They know that the world is becoming more diverse, more open, more interconnected. And they can’t stop it. So they write a document forbidding the tide from coming in.
Conclusion: The Pamphlet of Decline
History will look back on this National Security Strategy as a curiosity. It will be studied as an example of what happens when a great power loses its mind. It will be filed alongside the edicts of mad kings and the manifestos of failed revolutions.
But for us, living through it, it is a tragedy. It is the moment the United States officially gave up on the idea that we are a nation of ideas and accepted the small, petty, fearful logic of blood and soil.
We used to write documents that inspired the world. We wrote the Marshall Plan. We wrote the Atlantic Charter. We wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Now we write pamphlets about how scary it is that people speak Spanish.
The “Trump Corollary” is not a new doctrine. It is the old isolationism, dusted off and given a spray tan. It is a promise that America will be small, mean, and alone.
And the worst part is, the rest of the world is reading it and nodding. They are taking us at our word. They are starting to build a world without us. And when we finally wake up from this fever dream, we will find that the locks we put on the gates work both ways. We didn’t just lock them out. We locked ourselves in.
Receipt Time
The invoice for this strategic malpractice is going to be astronomical. It will be paid in the loss of American influence. It will be paid in the instability of Europe. It will be paid in the rise of authoritarianism. We are trading the liberal world order for a “zone of investment,” but we forgot that markets require stability, and stability requires leadership. The receipt shows a surcharge for “Civilizational Panic” and a massive deduction for “Credibility.” The total is a world that is more dangerous, less free, and much, much lonelier. And the fine print at the bottom says: No returns on broken alliances.