America’s long-delayed National Security Strategy (NSS) arrived while Europeans were still reeling from President Donald Trump’s 28-point “peace plan” for Russia and Ukraine. The NSS—essentially a written reiteration of Vice-President JD Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech—insists that Europe is in civilisational decline. It is, apparently, economically weak, culturally decadent, flooded with migrants, strategically confused on Russia and dangerously dependent on China.

The publication provoked yet more outrage in Europe. European Council president Antonio Costa and Germany’s chancellor Friedrich Merz have both described parts of the document as “unacceptable”, with much criticism geared towards the blatant political interference the strategy suggests the US plans to conduct in Europe. The NSS has also delivered a harsh diagnosis about the continent’s economic decline—although these issues (for example, Europe’s lack of competitiveness, its declining share of global tech revenues and dependence on China for green-tech supply chains) are also being acknowledged and documented by Europeans.

America has presented self-serving solutions that end up favouring US interests and weakening Europe.

While the NSS’s diagnosis of Europe’s economic decline is correct, however, it offers no solution to re-empower Europe. Make no mistake: the Trump administration will not lead Europeans towards a transatlantic “era of prosperity” once the Ukraine war is over. America’s self-serving solutions instead favour US interests and will weaken Europe.

Europeans must therefore pay attention not only to the document’s contents, but to the policies which the Trump administration is actively pursuing. It is only when Europeans understand both the ideological drivers and business interests behind US decision-making that they can meaningfully focus on defending European interests.

Washington to the civilisational rescue

The NSS makes several misleading claims. The first, reiterated by the president himself, is that the US will help Europe overcome the prospect of “civilisational erasure” by endorsing far-right European political candidates—ideally those aligned with the US on immigration or who are against the “radical left”. The strategy blames Europe’s shrinking share of global GDP on “regulatory suffocation”, migration, weak demographics and loss of confidence. Worse, European leaders serve their populations poorly by “trampl[ing] basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition”.

But if immigration policy or free speech were genuine issues, Washington could easily engage with a growing number of governments across Europe—including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland and Italy—which are implementing substantially more restrictive immigration and asylum policies. Germany is pursuing new measures which tighten asylum and immigration policies; Denmark has one of the most restrictive immigration policies in Europe. Indeed, together with Britain, it is pushing to get other European countries on board with stricter asylum rules.

Instead of engaging with these governments, however, the Trump administration is signalling support for openly anti-EU parties. In doing so, Washington is attempting to undermine the European Commission’s power—and its ability and legitimacy—in presenting a unified position on trade, technology and regulation in future US–EU negotiations. America’s agenda in Europe is less about helping crack down on immigration and more about weakening Brussels as a geopolitical actor.

From one geoeconomic dependence to another

The NSS’s second misleading claim is that a hasty peace in Ukraine and a reset with Russia can be beneficial to Europe—summarised as “peace through Russia-US joint ventures”. The strategy, consistent with the long-held beliefs of the Republican “new right” and officials in Trump’s second cabinet, does not cite Russia as a main adversary. Instead, it scolds Europeans for viewing the country as an existential threat and asserts that Europe’s external dependencies have only increased due to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. It suggests making major concessions to end the war (for example, no NATO enlargement), while seemingly asking nothing in return from Russia.

In practice, Trump’s negotiating team is primarily focused on a commercial reset with Russia. The ceasefire in Ukraine, and America’s offer of support to Europe’s far-right, are means to this end. While Washington rebukes Europeans for its previous energy and industrial entanglements with Russia, the Trump negotiating circle appears to seek a commercial reset based on these same assets (Russian gas, Arctic resources, rare earths). According to the Wall Street Journal, negotiations between America and Russia in November 2025 were explicitly about bringing the latter’s $2tn economy “in from the cold”—and allowing US businesses to benefit from these deals.

Furthermore, American commercial involvement in Russia’s energy sector would only be logical if American companies could sell that energy to customers—namely Europeans. But it is difficult to envision most European governments (particularly Germany) or the European Commission lifting sanctions or granting the necessary licences for Europeans to purchase the oil. In this context, far-right parties can be useful allies for the Trump administrations. Many members of the Alternative for Germany, for example, call for a resumption of Russian oil imports to Germany.

Reopening resource flows between Russia and Europe would do very little to help Europe achieve greater resilience. Instead, it would revert Europe’s dependence back 15 years, while potentially facilitating the revival of Russian economic and military capacity at a time when Europe sees Russia as major security threat.

Less existential, more transactional

The third misleading claim concerns China. Previous strategies cast China as the principal existential competitor; Europe was expected to move in lockstep on derisking. The 2025 NSS is more transactional: it calls for a “genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing” and projects a future in which the US grows from a $30tn to a $40tn economy while still trading with China “on non-sensitive factors” such as consumer goods.

Trump’s recent deal with Xi Jinping showed that the president is willing to make concessions on sensitive technologies in exchange for Chinese suspension of export controls on rare earths, while European industries remain heavily exposed to Chinese export restrictions. Trump has even authorised Nvidia to sell advanced AI chips to China, leaving US allies stunned and unsure of how to proceed.

The “mutually advantageous economic relationship” that Washington seeks with Beijing is not being extended to Europeans. Instead, the NSS encourages Europe to fight against “mercantilist overcapacity, technological theft, cyber espionage, and other hostile economic practices”—in other words, to confront Beijing. If US security measures are bargained away in these bilateral deals, Europe’s leverage with China will weaken and Europeans will be left to fend for themselves.

What Europe should want

In practical terms, the NSS offers no clear guidance on Trump’s next foreign policy move. Indeed, the president—a man of intuition with an appetite for deal-making—is unlikely to be bound by written documents when deciding his next step. What it offers instead is an insight on the emerging consensus within the administration on how to approach Europe. The strategy is the product of internal bargaining among competing groups within the administration.

First, the faction aligned with JD Vance is advocating a pullback from Europe and a reset with Russia; second, the Marco Rubio camp seeks to preserve longstanding US global leadership; third, the Steve Witkoff-Jared Kushner camp is looking for profitable investment opportunities. Together they appear to have coalesced around a strategy that promotes America’s business interests at the expense of Europe’s economy, security and sovereignty.

Europeans are told that their deep economic relations with China and aggressive stance on Russia are evidence of strategic confusion and naivety. Meanwhile, America’s outreach to China and Russia is evidence of smart deal-making and an “America First” strategy. The challenge now is for Europeans to disregard America’s lecturing and determine their own course of action on Russia and China.

Even more existentially, however, Europeans needs to decide how they self-govern. Instead of treating the NSS as the final word on the Trump administration’s policies, Europeans should view it as an exercise in clarification and a starting point for negotiations. In a world where Washington is brandishing “flexible realism” to justify business deals with Russia and China, competition across the Atlantic is now in full swing.

The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. ECFR publications only represent the views of their individual authors.