Michael Hindley analyses the US’s new National Security Strategy.

The most striking feature for European and British readers of the Trump regime’s “National Security Strategy” (NSS) is its hostility to Europe/ the European Union.

The much respected Washington liberal thinktank the Brookings Institute remarks on the “needlessly offensive tone towards Europe” and points to the clear break in US policy towards Europe/EU. The general view of commentators is that Trump is “transactional”, fixated with making “deals”, but in the case of the EU, I share Brookings’ view, that the determinant in his attitude to Europe/EU is “ideological, not transactional”.

First, let us concede a point to Trump. West Europe has taken NATO’s security shield for granted; and West Europe, then the EU, has founded its economic success on that security.

As a friend always said, West Europe’s postwar revival benefited as much from the Marshall Plan, which pumped dollars into Western Europe, as it did from the Schuman Plan, which established the embryonic EU. The Marshall Plan was conditional on pushing out the left, and US business was given access to investment in West Europe. One of the most active and influential lobbies in Brussels has always been the American Chamber of Commerce.

The USA welcomed the emergence of the Common Market as a counterweight to the Soviet Union; however, the collapse of Soviet Eastern Europe, caused a reassessment.

Putin came to power in 2000 and his ‘Russia First’ policy meant ‘Russian Oligarchs First’. Russia was not going to be sucked into globalisation and there was to be no western takeover and certainly no western-style ‘market economy’.

Putin has welcomed the NSS as part of his own strategy of dismantling the EU. Putin has long experience in undermining the EU, something I witnessed in this year’s Polish Presidential elections – see here.

So why does Trump, choosing my words carefully, hate and seek to dismantle the EU, and explicitly offer support to the extreme right nationalists to do the spadework, aided and abetted by his oligarch partners like Musk?

“Europe” gets 48 mentions in the NSS, all negative, whereas the NSS is relatively relaxed about Russia and China. This betrays a fear of a united Europe which owes much to Trump’s anti-democratic and racist ideology, which is displayed domestically with his attack on ‘illegal immigrants’ and the frightening activities of ICE. American Somali citizens are stigmatised and threatened, while white South Africans are welcome.

The NSS uses racist terminology when describing, almost gleefully, Europe’s alleged decline towards “civilizational erasure”. This chimes with the fascist ‘Decline of the West’  theory, the mainstay of the Nazis’ racism.  ‘Civilization’ is threatened by the non-white peoples, by miscegenation and by immigration.

Kipling, poet laureate of British Imperialism, called upon the USA to take up “the White Man’s Burden”, code words for colonial rule. Now Trump is reversing roles and demanding that ‘national’ Europeans share the ‘White Man’s Burden’ by cutting immigration, which is threatening “civilizational erasure”. These are not simply the ravings and ramblings of a deluded, debauched, megalomaniac would-be tyrant. Unless the men in the white coats get to Trump soon, this is a clear and present danger and can have serious long-term detrimental consequences.

 Trump is now following Putin’s support for forces countering “Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,”  in the words of the NSS. This means support for Le Pen and Orban.

I was in Poland for the second round of the Presidential elections. Trump had already given his blessing to the nationalist Euro-sceptic and eventual winner. The dangerous right wing CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) held a provocative meeting in Warsaw during the elections. Once a fringe lobby in the Republican Party, CPAC is spreading in Europe. You may be sure we will be hearing more of CPAC as an agent of Trump’s anti-EU campaign.

The plain truth is that Trump sees the EU as a threat, commercially in trading terms, but also because of the EU’s attempts to regulate the excesses of monopoly capitalism.

In September the EU Commission fined Google 2.95 billion euros for abuse of anti-trust regulations. This is a huge challenge to Trump, his backers, even his family.

This conflict poses a problem for Starmer. Still determined to pursue the delusion that he can triangulate ‘Washington, Brussels, Westminster’ – a task for which he has precious few skills, Starmer is stumbling on. In Pink Floyd’s words, “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way”. He dare not enter into serious economic relations with the EU, still our largest trading partner, because that will bring him into conflict with Trumponomics, where oligarchs are the new emperors of the world.

This week even the new head of MI6, Britain’s spy chief, warned that the tech giants are taking power from politicians.

The main aim of the putative UK-USA deal is to widen the door to investment from big tech oligarchs, precisely those oligarchs whose interests are threatened by the EU’s anti-trust regulations. Presumably, anti-trade union big tech will be operating in the burgeoning freeports in Britain, freeports, which, were Britain to rejoin the EU, would be subject to the EU’s stricter anti-competitive regulations. Trump is now expressing dissatisfaction that the US-UK trade deal isn’t generous enough to US tech giants.

It’s not simply fear of Farage which is keeping Starmer from more actively pursuing the EU option, but Farage is the agent of Trump, who is, of course, the agent of Putin.

Everywhere I go Starmer is seen as fumbling and stumbling and the domestic polls reflect this. “Therefore do not ask for whom the White House and Kremlin bells toll, they toll for thee, Sir Keir” (with apologies to John Donne).

Michael Hindley was a Labour Member of the European Parliament and is now a freelance writer and speaker on international politics, most recently at the Euroculture Culture Centre, Goettigen University, Germany. He also posts on @hindleylancs.bsky.social and https://mhindley.substack.com

Image: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2024/02/10/trump-vows-to-undo-bidens-gun-restrictions-if-re-elected/ Creator: Matt Rourke | Credit: AP Copyright: Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Licence: Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0