Trump administration says Europe risks ‘civilisational erasure’, drawing outcry

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By James Mackenzie, Andrew Gray and Lili Bayer

BERLIN, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Europe faces “civilisational erasure” and may one day lose its status as a reliable U.S. ally, the Trump administration said in a major strategy document, drawing an outcry from Europeans who compared it to the rhetoric of the Kremlin.

The new National Security Strategy, posted on the White House website overnight Thursday-to-Friday, denounced the European Union as anti-democratic, and said the goal of the U.S. should be “to help Europe correct its current trajectory”.

It accused European governments of “the subversion of democratic processes”, including to thwart what it said was a demand from the European public to end the war in Ukraine.

“Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” the document said.

“As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”

The EU declined to comment and there was mostly silence from serving European leaders who have taken care to avoid antagonising President Donald Trump.

But former European officials described the rhetoric as shocking, even by the Trump administration’s standards of increasingly open hostility to traditional allies.

‘SOME BIZARRE MINDS OF THE KREMLIN’

“It’s language that one otherwise only finds coming out of some bizarre minds of the Kremlin,” Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said on X, describing the document as “to the right of the extreme right in Europe”.

He called it “bizarre” that the only part of the world where the strategy saw a threat to democracy was Europe.

Former Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins told Reuters: “The happiest country reading this is Russia.”

“Moscow has been trying to break the transatlantic bond for years, and now it seems the greatest disruptor of this bond is the U.S. itself, which is unfortunate,” he said.

One European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “The tone on Europe is not promising. Even worse than Vance’s speech in Munich in February,” referring to a hostile speech by Vice President JD Vance at a conference in Munich that alarmed European capitals soon after Trump returned to office.

The document echoed some talking points of European far-right political parties, which have grown to become the main opposition to governments in Germany, France and other traditional U.S. allies. It appeared to praise them, saying “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” gives “cause for great optimism”.

Nathalie Tocci, director of Italian think tank Istituto Affari Internazionali, said it showed the Trump administration was “in the business of tearing Europe apart by supporting far right nationalists backed by Russia”.

The National Security Strategy is a document released periodically by the U.S. executive branch that outlines a president’s vision of foreign policy and guides government decisions.

In a foreword, Trump said the strategy document was “a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history”.

The new document accused the European Union of undermining political liberty and sovereignty, censoring free speech and suppressing political opposition.

European politicians and officials have bridled at the tone from Washington but as they hurry to rebuild their neglected militaries to meet a perceived threat from Russia, they still rely heavily on U.S. military support.

The document said it was in the United States’ strategic interest to negotiate a quick resolution in Ukraine and to re-establish “strategic stability” with Russia.

It was released amid a stalled U.S. peace initiative, in which Washington presented a peace plan that endorsed Russia’s main demands in the near four-year-old war.

“A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those (European) governments’ subversion of democratic processes,” it said.

(Editing by Peter Graff)