‘Pulling them away’: Trump administration’s plan to break up EU revealed
The Trump administration floated a plan to “Make Europe Great Again” by “pulling” four nations into greater alignment with the US.
Donald Trump could “Make Europe Great Again” by “pulling” four nations into greater alignment with the US, a new report has revealed, as his rift with the continent continues to deepen.
The 29-page US National Security Strategy (NSS) was released by the White House last Friday. The document heavily criticised the EU, declaring its “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure”. America’s intent was to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” by endorsing “unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history”.
Overnight, a fuller, unpublished version of the document was published by US-based news channel Defense One, suggesting the Trump administration’s plans go far beyond the cultivation of “resistance” in the EU against liberal migration policies.
“Working from the premise that Europe is facing ‘civilisational erasure’ because of its immigration policies and ‘censorship of free speech’, the NSS proposes to focus US relationships with European countries on a few nations with like-minded – right-wing, presumably – current administrations and movements,” the Defense One report read.
As such, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland were listed by the NSS as countries America should “work more with”, with an ultimate goal of “pulling them away from” the EU.
“And we should support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life … while remaining pro-American,” the document reads.
The White House vehemently denied the existence of an unabridged NSS; Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told Defense One in a statement that “no alternative, private, or classified version exists”.
“President Trump is transparent and put his signature on one NSS that clearly instructs the US government to execute on his defined principles and priorities,” Ms Kelly said.
A poll of nine countries, conducted by French debate platform Le Grand Continent last week, that almost half of all citizens regard the US President as an “enemy” of Europe, and consider Trumpism to be “a hostile force”.
The view was most prevalent in Belgium (62 per cent), followed by France (57 per cent), Spain (53 per cent), Italy (50 per cent), the Netherlands (49 per cent), Germany (46 per cent), Portugal (45 per cent), Croatia (37 per cent) and Poland (19 per cent).
President slams ‘weak’, ‘decaying’ Europe
In an interview with Politico earlier this week, Mr Trump doubled down on his extraordinary recent criticisms of the EU – a region that Washington has longed county as a key ally – accusing it of being “weak” and “decaying” over immigration and the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“Most European nations, they’re, they’re decaying. They’re decaying,” Mr Trump said, before launching into inflammatory talking tropes about the “disaster” caused by EU migration policies.
“They’re coming in from all parts of the world. But they want to be politically correct, and they don’t want to send them back to where they came from.”
Asked if European countries would not remain US allies if they failed to embrace his administration’s hard line policies on the issue, the President replied that “it depends”.
“I think they’re weak, but they also want to be so politically correct,” he said.
Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Sweden were being “destroyed” by migration, he said.
Mr Trump also brushed off the fact that the Kremlin had hailed the new NSS as being in line with its own views.
“I think he would like to see a weak Europe, and to be honest with you, he’s getting that,” Mr Trump said of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
“That has nothing to do with me.”
The President also criticised the EU’s role in resolving the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying, “They talk but they don’t produce. And the war just keeps going on and on.”
European leaders have pushed back against Mr Trump’s remarks and the NSS.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the strategy, and its emphasis on supporting the region’s far-right parties, was “unacceptable to us from a European perspective”.
The plan “confirms my assessment that we in Europe, and thus also in Germany, must become much more independent from the US in terms of security policy”, Mr Merz said.
France’s Junior Defence Minister Alice Rufo said the NSS was “an extremely brutal clarification of the ideological stance of the United States”.
“This is where we are and it’s going to continue,” Ms Rufo said.
“We live in a world of carnivores. Europe is not an island, and it will earn respect if it learns how to command respect.”
– with AFP
Originally published as ‘Pulling them away’: Trump administration’s plan to break up EU revealed
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