The MAGA National Security Strategy: Hector Europe while giving autocrats a free pass
This isn't realpolitik. It's foreign policy degeneracy.
The Trump administration appears to operate at two levels.
At the top level, there is Donald Trump, and no one but Donald Trump. He acts by impulse, instinct, egoism, and self-aggrandizement. His only core governing conviction seems to be a protectionist tariff. No one can truly speak for him or act on his behalf.
At the second level, there are the architects and activists of the populist nationalist movement. The Trump administration is staffed almost exclusively with true believers in the movement or those who pretend to be. However, they are willing to subordinate the advancement of what they perceive to be that cause to personal loyalty to Trump and whatever he decides moment to moment. That was the sine qua non for a job in the second Trump administration.
The recently promulgated National Security Strategy is clearly a product of the second level of the Trump administration. It’s not truly a guide to what Trump, at the first level, is doing or will do.
So, what to make of it? One analyst asked a pertinent question. How seriously should we take a document that Trump probably hasn’t read? And if he has read it, certainly doesn’t feel in any way bound by it?
In my view, the document still has value as a glimpse at what a post-Trump MAGA foreign policy would look like. Let’s focus on what the document says about Europe, where it is most revealing, and alarming.
Elsewhere, the document prides itself on abandoning any effort to advance American values, instead pursuing primarily economic interests without regard to the internal governance of other countries, irrespective of how repressive or authoritarian. However, a curious exception is made with respect to Europe, and only Europe.
For Europe, the document is scathing, and wildly inaccurate, regarding internal governance. Europe, according to the document, faces the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure”. The European Union undermines “political liberty and sovereignty”. European countries are engaging in “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition”.
Now, Europe at large has a sluggish economy. And there is greater censorship of hate speech in much of Europe than is permitted under our First Amendment. But all of these countries have vigorous opposition parties that can win elections and oust the incumbent parties. In all of them, fulsome criticism of the government abounds, in formal and social media. Obviously, these are not conditions that exist in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian regimes.
What kind of deracinated American foreign policy attempts to hold democratic allies to account, however misleading the measure, while giving autocrats a free pass? That’s not realpolitik. That’s foreign policy degeneracy.
I’ve long been an advocate of European democracies assuming more of the responsibility for their security. In fact, I’m an advocate of them assuming all of the responsibility. In that sense, I’m even more radical than the second level MAGAers.
However, assuming that responsibility requires collective action. Democratic Europe as a whole has the economic resources and population to fully exercise the security function on the continent. Individual countries do not, even the bigger ones such as Germany, France, and Britain. Democratic Europe has three times as many people as Russia and nine times as large of a GDP. Germany, the largest European democracy, alone has an economy roughly twice as large as Russia’s, but only about half its population.
Although collective action is necessary for the relatively small countries of democratic Europe to have heft in regional and global affairs, the National Security Strategy heaps scorn on the transnational organizations necessary to achieve it.
The European Union is singled out for criticism. In reality, it has been one of the most successful free-trade zones in history. The extent of its regulation can be reproved. But there is zero question that the benefits of eliminating cross-border transaction barriers and costs vastly exceed the downsides of excessive regulation. Britain hasn’t seen any economic boost from Brexit.
While the economy of Europe at large is sluggish, the continent still enjoys one of the highest standards of living in world history. The U.S. GDP per capita is a tad shy of $90,000. The European big three lag behind, with Germany at $73,000, France $66,000, and Britain $63,000. However, that’s still leagues ahead of Russia at $49,000 and China at $29,000.
In addition to criticizing the EU, the National Security Strategy applauds populist nationalist parties in Europe who share this hostility to transnational organizations. I don’t think the United States should be interfering in the domestic politics of fellow democracies. But, in terms of the MAGA position, what would the United States gain from a future Europe of small states without the means of collective action?
On security, the means of collective action has been NATO, which is U.S. led and dominated. There have been periodic calls in Europe for a continental military capability independent of NATO. Historically, the United States has opposed the idea.
A National Security Strategy serious about both the defense of democratic Europe and significantly shifting the burden would call either for an orderly transition in NATO to become European led and dominated, or the phased replacement of NATO with an independent European military force.
Instead, Trump is creating doubt about the U.S. willingness to fulfill its NATO mutual defense treaty obligations while the administration’s National Security Strategy inveighs against the kind of transnational organizations that could offer a substitute. Instead, the document says that European democracies should retreat to their individual geographical boundaries and count on a deal the U.S. strikes with Russia to bring continental stability.
The same challenge exists in the Indo-Pacific, with even less of a starting point. The major regional democracies – Japan, India, South Korea, and Australia – have the population and resources to contain and deter China largely independent of the United States. However, there is no mechanism for collective action, such as NATO, and at this point no particular will to create one.
It would be a much tougher slog, but a sensible National Security Strategy would aim to move collective action in the Indo-Pacific beyond the current talking groups that exist. This one makes token references to coordinated actions with allies, but again with reliance mostly on some kind of deal between the U.S. and China.
I believe that the default foreign policy of the United States should be as described by John Quincy Adams: “America is a friend of liberty everywhere, but a custodian only of our own”. World War II and the Cold War created conditions justifying assuming much greater responsibilities. It is past time to move more toward the Adams injunction.
That’s not what Trump is doing or what the National Security Strategy envisions. Instead, the combination is an attempt to revive the great power politics of the 19th Century, with the United States just one more grubby big state amorally seeking dominance and deals.
In a letter introducing the National Security Strategy, Trump, with characteristic modesty, claimed that in just nine months he had rescued the world from “catastrophe and disaster”, and made “America strong and respected again”.
In fact, it is just the opposite. The U.S. standing and position in the world that Trump inherited is what has enabled his bully-boy foreign policies – arbitrary tariffs, interventions in the domestic affairs of fellow democracies, raising doubt about U.S. treaty commitments – to be grudgingly endured by other countries.
Trump is rapidly squandering that inheritance. And the MAGA movement, as evidenced by the deracinated National Security Strategy, has no idea what created that bounty in the first place. It wasn’t dissing allies and making deals with autocrats.
Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.