Liberal Europe has met the new American security strategy (National Security Strategy 2025, NSS) with shocked disbelief. The most troubling aspects from a moderate European point of view are: (1) that the NSS so clearly signals that the United States intends to interfere in European politics in favour of right‑wing populist (“patriotic”) parties, especially in the fight against the EU; and (2) that the NSS portrays the danger of Europe’s “civilizational erasure” due to immigration, bans on hate speech, and falling (white?) birth rates as a greater existential threat to Europe than Russia’s attempt to subjugate Ukraine. In fact, neither Russia nor China is described as a threat at all. Liberal Europe and the EU appear as the big bad wolf.

The document confirms that the Trump administration has not only abandoned but is declaring ideological war on liberal, value‑based internationalism, multilateral cooperation, free trade, and globalization. Instead, the NSS praises national sovereignty, self‑sufficiency and profit, military power, and that might is right. Opposition to the EU fits this worldview, but also the interests of American tech oligarchs, who see the European Commission as their greatest enemy and who prostrate themselves before President Trump.

The desire to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” and the broader realpolitik tone of the NSS will undoubtedly be taken in the Kremlin as support for Putin’s dream of a world divided into spheres of influence, with Russia as the dominant great power in Europe. Nothing is more dangerous for free European society.

At the same time, the NSS contains uncomfortable truths about the major challenges Europe faces. As the strategy points out, Europe’s share of global value creation has fallen sharply from 1990 to today. But so has the American share, though not as much. This is largely because the economies of other countries, especially China and India, have grown correspondingly more. That is a good thing, even if one may debate how it has happened in China. But Europe certainly needs a massive effort to achieve greater economic growth and dynamism. The only realistic way to do that is to invest in the EU and the single market.

Secondly, the strategy’s alarm about Europe being threatened with “civilizational erasure” and needing to regain its “civilizational self‑confidence” is not entirely baseless. This is why governments in Europe, not least in the Nordic countries, have recently launched a number of initiatives to strengthen awareness of their own culture and history.

Thus, when Ursula von der Leyen took over as President of the European Commission in 2019, she adopted “Promoting our European Way of Life” as a strategic priority. The Danish government wants to revive the classical ideal of Bildung and strengthen the humanities in schools. The Swedish government is working on a national cultural canon to highlight works that form part of Sweden’s cultural frame of reference, in order to strengthen national identity and shared values.

In Norway, Minister of Education Kari Nessa Nordtun stated in December 2024, according to NRK, that “the Norwegian curricula could have been in any other country. There is little there that shows we are a nation and a common people. And that is important for children to learn.” In autumn 2025, Nordtun tasked the Directorate for Education with preparing advisory content lists for culture and history in schools, with the aim of creating shared frames of reference and countering social exclusion.

This is excellent as long as we remember that our nations and free societies are unthinkable without their shared European background.

Thirdly, it is correct, as the NSS points out, that European allies have a clear conventional military advantage over Russia. A large part of the problem, as is well known, is that European defence is fragmented and dependent on American support and equipment. It needs time to grow and adapt to meet a more acute threat from Russia.

We should nevertheless also note that the NSS, despite its Eurosceptic main message, contains signals pointing in the opposite direction. Among other things, we can read that the United States “will support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe,” that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital” to the United States, that the U.S. wants to “enable [Ukraine’s] survival as a viable state,” supports “genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual [!] character and history,” and wants to enable Europe «to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power.”

In general, the NSS merely confirms what we already knew about the Trump administration’s worldview. It may actually be an advantage that the prevailing security‑policy thinking in Europe’s most important allied country is now presented in black and white in a short and blunt document. This may in itself strengthen European “self‑confidence,” so that the paradigm shift underway in Europe accelerates and European responses to both the United States and Russia become tougher.

That President Trump is deeply unpredictable and seems to have an unknown, personal agenda regarding Russia is in fact a greater problem for Europe than the NSS. There are indications that he has not even read the strategy. The NSS must be understood as merely a provisional, contradictory compromise between competing factions in his administration. Perhaps even as yet another Steve Bannon‑inspired attempt by Trump to “flood the zone with shit.”

No one knows, therefore, what will happen next. A new poll shows that most Americans support a more traditional American foreign policy, with large majorities for both NATO and military aid to Ukraine. In addition to the Democrats, many Republicans in Congress are sceptical of Trump’s egocentric ultranationalism. Aftenposten reported on 13 December that the House of Representatives has adopted a draft defence budget for 2026 that increases support for Europe and NATO. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is weakening. His approval ratings are at a low point, and the Democratic Party has momentum in the polls.

The conflict is therefore not between Europe and the United States. It is a struggle between moderates and illiberals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nevertheless, we must take the new strategy with the utmost seriousness. It constitutes a marching order to the entire powerful American foreign‑policy apparatus. The positive references to “patriotic” parties and the goal that the United States will cultivate «opposition to Europe’s current course within the European nations” could, for example, mean that the American embassy in Oslo will seek to influence Norwegian politics in favour of the Progress Party. And what about the Centre Party? It is also a “patriotic” anti‑EU party that praises the nation‑state, self‑rule, and self‑sufficiency. Both parties may have to choose between an illiberal United States and a liberal Europe.

In any case, the most important task for liberal Europe now, with or without the United States, is to ensure that Russia loses the war against Ukraine. In the longer term, the goal must not be to weaken the EU, but rather to strengthen it, with Norway and the United Kingdom as close partners. Only by standing even closer together can Europe become the strong, independent, and reliable partner the United States wants – and needs in its competition with China.

But this requires Europe to gain greater awareness of, and willingness and ability to defend, its identity, values, and interests, precisely as the NSS urges. In particular, the EU’s decision‑making capacity must be strengthened. What is really needed now is a radical new initiative toward a United States of Europe, preferably launched by an inner EU core. “America First” must be met with “EU First.” Otherwise, not only European civilization but free society in general is in real danger.