With its calls for “strong, traditional families” and the “reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health,” the latest National Security Strategy is a major departure not only from its immediate predecessor, but even the first Trump administration’s.
A longer version of the NSS that circulated before the White House published the unclassified version late Thursday night shares the main points: competition with China, withdrawal from Europe’s defense, a new focus on the Western Hemisphere. But the unpublished version also proposes new vehicles for leadership on the world stage and a different way to put its thumb on the scales of Europe’s future—through its cultural values.
Here are some takeaways from the unpublished version, which was reviewed by Defense One.
“Make Europe Great Again”
While the publicly released NSS calls for the end of a “perpetually expanding NATO,” the full version goes more into the details of how the Trump administration would like to—quote—“Make Europe Great Again,” even as it calls on European NATO members to wean themselves from American military support.
Working from the premise that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure” because of its immigration policies and “censorship of free speech,” the NSS proposes to focus U.S. relationships with European countries on a few nations with like-minded—right-wing, presumably—current administrations and movements.
Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland are listed as countries the U.S. should “work more with…with the goal of pulling them away from the [European Union].”
“And we should support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life…while remaining pro-American,” the document says.
The C5
Over the summer, President Trump made headlines when he lamented the expulsion of Russia from the Group of Eight—now the Group of Seven—as a “very big mistake.” He even suggested that he’d like to see China added to form a “G9.”
His national security strategy proposes taking this a step further, creating a new body of major powers, one that isn’t hemmed in by the G7’s requirements that the countries be both wealthy and democratically governed.
The strategy proposes a “Core 5,” or C5, made up of the U.S., China, Russia, India and Japan—which are several of the countries with more than 100 million people. It would meet regularly, as the G7 does, for summits with specific themes.
First on the C5’s proposed agenda: Middle East security—specifically, normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“Hegemony wasn’t achievable”
The full NSS also spends some time discussing the “failure” of American hegemony, a term that isn’t mentioned in the publicly released version.
“Hegemony is the wrong thing to want and it wasn’t achievable,” according to the document.
In this context, hegemony refers to the leadership by one country of the world, using soft power to encourage other countries to consent to being led.
“After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country,” the NSS states. “Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”
The administration appears to be using this reasoning to bow out of the U.S.’s role in defending Europe, while turning its attention to Venezuela-based drug cartels.
“The Trump administration inherited a world in which the guns of war have shattered the peace and stability of many countries on many continents,” the NSS reads. “We have a natural interest in ameliorating this crisis.”
The document says it shouldn’t be up to the United States to do it all alone—but also, China and Russia should not be allowed to replace U.S. leadership. The strategy suggests partnering with “regional champions” to help maintain stability.
“We will reward and encourage the region’s governments, political parties, and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy,” according to the document. “But we must not overlook governments with different outlooks with whom we nonetheless share interests and who want to work with us.”
After this story was published, the White House denied the existence of any version of the National Security Strategy other than the one published online.
“No alternative, private, or classified version exists,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Defense One. “President Trump is transparent and put his signature on one NSS that clearly instructs the U.S. government to execute on his defined principles and priorities.”
Kelly then added that “any other so-called ‘versions’ are leaked by people distant from the President who, like this ‘reporter,’ have no idea what they are talking about.’ ”
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