Trump Security Strategy Declares European ‘Civilizational Erasure”

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy declares Europe faces civ­i­liza­tion­al era­sure. On 12 Decem­ber 2025, The Tele­graph report­ed that a 33-page secu­ri­ty plan paint­ed an exco­ri­at­ing pic­ture of Europe in ter­mi­nal decline, ruled by weak, cor­rupt elites, warn­ing the con­ti­nent will be “unrec­og­niz­able in 20 years or less” if present trends con­tin­ue, while herald­ing patri­ot­ic par­ties like Ger­many’s AfD as an anti­dote. The arti­cle begins:

It was the rus­tle of paper­work heard around the world: a 33-page US secu­ri­ty plan that upend­ed vir­tu­al­ly every­thing Europe takes for grant­ed about its clos­est mil­i­tary ally. In a new nation­al secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy report (NSS), the Trump admin­is­tra­tion paint­ed an exco­ri­at­ing pic­ture of a Europe in ter­mi­nal decline and ruled by weak, cor­rupt elites. “Civil­i­sa­tion­al era­sure” loomed for the Con­ti­nent, the NSS claimed, blam­ing cen­trist gov­ern­ments for their fix­a­tion on open bor­ders, polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and cen­sor­ship. It went on to her­ald “patri­ot­ic” par­ties, such as Ger­many’s AfD (Alter­na­tive for Ger­many), as the anti­dote to a region where “with­in a few decades at the lat­est, cer­tain Nato mem­bers will become major­i­ty non-European”.

Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/12/12/week-trump-turned-his-back-europe/

Key Points

• NSS stat­ed Con­ti­nen­tal Europe los­ing share of glob­al GDP from 25 per­cent in 1990 to 14 per­cent today, while fac­ing “real and more stark prospect of civ­i­liza­tion­al era­sure,” blam­ing EU and transna­tion­al bod­ies for under­min­ing polit­i­cal lib­er­ty and sov­er­eign­ty, migra­tion poli­cies trans­form­ing the con­ti­nent, cen­sor­ship of free speech, cra­ter­ing birthrates, and loss of nation­al identities.
• Report point­ed­ly avoid­ed describ­ing Rus­sia as a threat and blamed Euro­pean lead­ers for the lack of a Ukraine peace deal, cit­ing their “sub­ver­sion of demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es,” with Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov prais­ing NS,S say­ing it “cor­re­sponds in many ways to our vision,” and for­eign min­istry spokesman Maria Zakharo­va hop­ing doc­u­ment would have sober­ing effect on Euro­pean “par­ties of war.”
• AfD lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton this week are meet­ing with Repub­li­can offi­cials as ties grow clos­er, with the par­ty’s for­eign pol­i­cy spokesman, Markus Frohn­maier, declar­ing “AfD is fight­ing along­side its inter­na­tion­al friends for a con­ser­v­a­tive renais­sance” while delight­ed by the NSS report sup­port­ing patri­ot­ic par­ties as an anti­dote to cen­trist governments.
• Nor­bert Röttgen, senior MP in Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz’s Chris­t­ian Democ­rats, stat­ed “after 80 years of close transat­lantic secu­ri­ty coop­er­a­tion, the US no longer stands with Europe’s democ­ra­cies on ques­tions of war and peace, but instead sides with a bel­liger­ent Rus­sia,” call­ing it “noth­ing less than a sec­ond Zeitenwende.”

Trump Administration Forges Alliance with European National Conservative Parties

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has forged unprece­dent­ed insti­tu­tion­al ties with Euro­pean nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive par­ties through pol­i­cy coor­di­na­tion, direct endorse­ments, and shared ide­o­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture. The Decem­ber 2025 Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy explic­it­ly endorsed “patri­ot­ic Euro­pean par­ties” and called for cul­ti­vat­ing resis­tance to Europe’s cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry with­in Euro­pean nations, warn­ing that the con­ti­nent faces “civ­i­liza­tion­al era­sure” with­in two decades. The Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion char­ac­ter­ized this approach as “con­sti­tu­tion­al regime change” aimed at dis­man­tling EU insti­tu­tions, while for­mer Swedish Prime Min­is­ter Carl Bildt observed the doc­u­ment places the U.S. “to the right of the extreme right in Europe.”

Vik­tor Orbán’s Hun­gary serves as the oper­a­tional cen­ter of the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance, unit­ing right-wing forces under shared prin­ci­ples of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and oppo­si­tion to supra­na­tion­al gov­er­nance. Orbán launched the Patri­ots for Europe par­lia­men­tary bloc in June 2024, assem­bling par­ties from 14 mem­ber states—including Marine Le Pen’s Nation­al Ral­ly, Mat­teo Salvini’s League, and Geert Wilders’ Par­ty for Free­dom. His polit­i­cal direc­tor, Balázs Orbán, declared the “lib­er­al era is over” and that Trump would lead “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” Euro­pean regime change. The Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions notes that this frame­work char­ac­ter­izes the EU in adver­sar­i­al terms while endors­ing far-right par­ties that chal­lenge EU foun­da­tions from within.

The Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence has emerged as the pri­ma­ry vehi­cle for transat­lantic coor­di­na­tion, with Hun­gar­i­an offi­cials pre­sent­ing their illib­er­al democ­ra­cy mod­el at CPAC 2025 along­side Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance, Nigel Farage, and Jor­dan Bardel­la. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s direct inter­ven­tion extend­ed to DHS Sec­re­tary Kristi Noem endors­ing Law and Jus­tice’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­date at CPAC Poland—the first time the con­fer­ence was held there. Beyond elec­toral pol­i­tics, the Patri­ots for Europe bloc gath­ered sig­na­tures to repli­cate Trump’s Antifa ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tion, demon­strat­ing coor­di­nat­ed pol­i­cy alignment.

Exter­nal References:

• Break­ing down Trump’s 2025 Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy — Brook­ings Institution
• Unpack­ing a Trump Twist of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy — Coun­cil on For­eign Relations
• The NSS That Could Destroy the NATO Alliance — Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Studies

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