The transatlantic relationship isn’t at a crossroads, it’s past one. America’s new National Security Strategy confirms what Europeans have feared since Vice President JD Vance’s speech in Munich last February: Washington now sees a strong, unified European Union as a problem to be solved, not an ally to be supported.
The Trump administration’s NSS mentions Europe twice as often as China, America’s principal strategic competitor. Sit with that for a second: a president who campaigned on “peace through strength” has decided Brussels is a bigger problem than Beijing. Another measure of how problematic this document is: the Kremlin endorsed it. If you’re getting kudos from Dmitry Medvedev, you should probably ask yourself whether you’re the baddies.
NATO is the most successful military alliance in the history of the world. The US bases, supply chains, and forward deployments across Europe aren’t a favor to the Europeans, they’re how America projects power from the Middle East to the Arctic at a fraction of what it’d cost to do it from home. The transatlantic relationship has been central to both American strategy and the stability of the post-war order. And if you’ll remember, the only time NATO’s Article 5 has ever been invoked was by the United States, after September 11, 2001. Every European ally came to America’s defense despite different approaches to free speech, regulation, and countless other policy disagreements. They showed up, fought, and died alongside Americans in Afghanistan. Many joined Iraq, too.
