In its new National Security Strategy (NSS), the second Donald Trump administration declared that Europe is facing a “civilizational extinction” crisis and made clear that it will support European far-right parties that foreground anti-immigration. By contrast, there was not a single critical reference to Russia.

The NSS stated that the greatest challenge Europe faces is not economic stagnation but “the plausible prospect of civilizational extinction.” Citing immigration policy, suppression of freedom of expression, plummeting birth rates, and the loss of national identity and pride as causes, it argued that “if the current trend continues, the European continent will look entirely different within 20 years.”

It criticizes that while immigrants have entered in large numbers, the birth rate of white Europeans has declined, eroding national identity. The NSS said, “We want Europe to remain European,” adding that “our objective is to help Europe correct its current trajectory.”

Such a scathing critique of Europe is a continuation of the speech by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February that shocked Europe. At the time, Vice President Vance lectured that “the threat Europe faces is neither Russia nor China but the retreat of the most important fundamental values of Europe,” and asserted that “the refusal of the mainstream parties in Germany to form a coalition with Alternative for Germany (AfD) runs counter to democracy,” jolting European officials.

The NSS effectively formalized Vice President Vance’s speech as national strategy. It stated that “the growing influence of patriotic European parties provides significant grounds for optimism,” and expressed an intent to “promote resistance within European countries to the current misguided currents.” The ‘patriotic European parties’ the NSS refers to appear to be far-right parties such as Reform UK and Alternative for Germany (AfD), which campaign on anti-immigration.

Despite unleashing such a barrage at Europe, the NSS did not include a single line of criticism of Russia. Rather, it argued that some European governments “are not reflecting the wishes of the majority of Europeans who want peace because of unrealistic expectations about the war in Ukraine,” and emphasized that “the core interest of the United States is to negotiate a prompt cessation of hostilities in the war in Ukraine and to reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”

Tom Wright, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked on the National Security Council (NSC) in the former Joe Biden administration, criticized that “the new NSS is a blueprint for an illiberal international order (that the Trump administration wants).” Tori Tausi, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, pointed out that “the NSS is like an own goal, failing to empower countries that seek to take on greater defense responsibility against the threat Russia poses to Atlantic security and instead moving to support populist far-right parties that are likely to cut defense budgets.”

European countries pushed back strongly. Brando Benifei, an Italian member of the European Parliament who chairs the Delegation for relations with the United States, lambasted the NSS as being filled with “extreme and shocking language,” saying that some of it looks like blatant election interference and calling it “a frontal challenge to the European Union.”