The Trump-Putin axis and the fate of Europe
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (November 2025) is a shocking and sobering document for many Europeans. We are now entering a new epoch. This is not Trump’s Presidential patter on Air Force One or his off-the-cuff, shock-jock social media posts late at night. It’s a broadly coherent and detailed account of a radical change in US foreign policy and its motivations.
For a European reader, the presentation of contemporary Europe, or rather the European Union and Putin’s war in Ukraine, stand out. “The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.”
The document has passages that indicate what psychologists have called “projection”: unconsciously attributing your own unacceptable feelings, thoughts, or traits to someone else, to avoid acknowledging them, and finding your hidden self in others. It is associated with borderline personality disorder and paranoid personalities. If the Trump administration looked in the mirror, they would see their own ”subversion of democracy”, their own “unstable government”, “suppression of opposition” and “unrealistic expectations for the war”.
Moreover, the accusations thrown at the European Union, and at anything larger than a nation-state, might best suit a description of enmity: “The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
Not unlike Putin’s aims, a US policy goal is now “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”. This is all supposedly in a good cause. A key refrain of the Vance-Trump duo, reflected in the document’s conclusion about Europe, is that we face the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure”.
The coarseness of parts of the text accompanying the shift is a feature of the attitude it represents. Certain words are telling. Searching for a word to describe the big picture in Europe, Trump has used “decaying”. The document speaks of “cratering” birthrates. And the “erasure” of European civilisation? Those compiling it had to find words for the White supremacist fear, the “Great Replacement” theory, in which black and brown immigrants, particularly Muslims, replace Whites.
Why did the administration choose the clunky “civilisational erasure”? Could it be an unconscious recall of Erasure, a synth-pop duo whose music, according to The Washington Post, “combines synth-pop, disco, cabaret, light opera, and a bit of English choirboy sound”? No, too much diversity. Though the titles of two Erasure hit singles from the late 1980s, Ship of Fools and A Little Respect, have an uncanny resonance.
The most important give-away occurs at the end of this apocalyptic forecasting. “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its own regulatory suffocation”. To that end, the document includes as policy: “Building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges”. According to a leaked, more detailed, internal version of the Strategy document — the authenticity of which has been denied by the White House— the aim is to attempt to subvert the EU and focus on Poland, Austria, Hungary and Italy “with the goal of pulling them away” from EU membership.
Every florid phrase tells a story. Europe’s “failed focus on regulatory suffocation” presumably refers to some of the — mostly normal — legislation of European social democracies applying EU regulations and directives: data protection, controlling AI, consumer rights and protection of customers, control of mobile roaming charges and environmental concerns, such as waste shipments and prevention of pollution.
So OK, you might say, but why shouldn’t Trump’s USA espouse one ideology and social democrats in Europe another? Well, because that little throw-away line concluding the litany of EU’s sins is not really about ideology. That is the packaging. It’s about money, how much money Trump, Vance, their appointees and the Silicon Valley barons allegedly can make in the EU, which has tried not to give them a completely free rein.
The overall impression from Trump’s attempts at brokering a ceasefire and possibly a peace agreement in Ukraine is that he is leaning towards becoming an ally of Putin. They seem to share an understanding of what is wrong with the EU. The question is whether this dramatic change is motivated by a grand geopolitical strategy to draw Russia away from what the US Government sees as its number one enemy, China. Or whether, as is alleged by some observers, it comes from the promise for Trump of lucrative deals in Russia from Putin’s FSB war chest. You pays your money — or your legal fees — and you takes your pick. But neither bodes well for peace and goodwill in Europe.
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