The Trump administration has published its official National Security Strategy, and it has provoked understandably quite strong reactions around the world.
Perhaps the most controversial part of the document is its description of the direction of U.S. relations with its longtime allies in Europe. Specifically, the Trump administration has repeated its demand for European allies to pay their fair share for national defense. The administration document also offered the frank analysis that mass migration from non-Western societies is threatening the values, culture, and historical institutions of Western Europe, and that this shift has imperiled the future of U.S.-European cooperation.
The result has apparently been especially unsettling for the U.S. partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), especially its member nations of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
The European nations in NATO have long depended on the U.S. for their defense, beginning with the outset of the Cold War, circa 1947, to the present day. The onset of war in Ukraine, beginning with a Russian invasion in 2023, has suddenly made continental defense a clear and present issue, with NATO member nations in the Baltics, Scandinavia, Poland, and eastern Europe feeling the threat of aggression most keenly.
In his first term, President Trump served notice to the European members of NATO that it was time for each of them to increase their defense funding. Now, in his second term, he has said Europe must depend most on itself for its defense against Russia.
Mr. Trump has turned the U.S. defense priorities closer to home — to Central and South America, and to Mexico.
European nations had become accustomed to the U.S. being the backbone of their security for the past 70 years. Their reaction now has been critical of the U.S. and the Trump administration, as they scramble to institute military conscription and quickly increase their own defense expenditures.
Germany, like Japan, had become demilitarized following World War II, as both had been the defeated powers that had started the war. But not having to budget large sums for defense enabled them to re-industrialize and recover quickly. Now, each of them must recreate their military strength to meet the threats coming from Russia and China.
Unfortunately for Germany and its democratic neighbors, the threats are not just military. President Trump has warned them that unchecked immigration also threatens their domestic economic and cultural identities.
What began as postwar humanitarian programs for human rights and sanctuary from persecution became a flood of immigrants who are unwilling to adapt to and accept the unique cultures and frameworks of law long-established in the various nations of Europe. More and more immigrants to Europe are demanding to impose their own laws and cultures on everyone else rather than assimilating.
As immigration and immigrant birth rates soar while native birth rates rapidly decline, historic components of European law, language, and customs are being altered or abandoned.
Although there was recently a period of unchecked and undocumented U.S. immigration, Americans, unlike European nations, have absorbed wave after wave of immigration into their “melting pot” society. Large numbers of German, Italian, black, Hispanic, Scandinavian, Jewish, Russian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian immigrants have come to the U.S. over two centuries, and while many of them kept their religious, cultural, dietary, ethnic, and even language traditions, they did not attempt to impose them on everyone else.
That is the key difference between the American and European experience, and why, despite many other challenges facing the U.S., its culture is not being suddenly seriously threatened as is happening in Europe.
Of course, every nation, whether a melting pot or a single culture, evolves over time, and is influenced by any significant group of immigrants. But democratic nations of whatever government form become fragile and endangered when their legal, economic, and cultural traditions are suddenly threatened with abrupt nullification or change.
Current attempts to impose “woke” restrictions on discourse, curbs on free speech, or redistributionist, i.e., socialist and neo-Marxist, economic models in the U.S. are so far being rejected, even though they have arisen in some large cities where most voters are Democrats.
There is some indication of grassroots movements in Europe now rising to reclaim their heritages — heritages weakened and endangered by well-meaning liberal leaders and impulses which were unfortunately clueless about the lessons of history.
The question is, will these movements succeed in time to avoid Europe becoming “Euraqistan” or any other erasure of the once glorious and potential future gifts of the best of European civilization?
President Trump has identified the growing crisis in Europe. Now it is up to the Europeans to act.
Herald Boas is a contributor to AMAC Newsline.
