New Trump doctrine identifies ‘weak’ Europe’s problem: not enough racism

During Donald Trump’s first administration, commentators sagely advised that his words, were to be “taken seriously, not literally”. Experience suggests that formula puts the cart before the horse.

A new US National Security Strategy and a series of comments from US officials, presidential proxies and Trump himself, have culminated in what could be one of the most profound crises for Atlanticism, the security doctrine that has sustained peace and democracy in Europe since the end of the second world war.

Where Trump’s point of departure was once the failure of Europe to contribute sufficiently to its own security, he has now embraced a more alarming vision.

Coloured both by racism and a staggering contempt for Europe’s political institutions and leaders, he has warned of the risk of civilisational collapse on a continent he barely knows, and that he has viewed more often from the window of an armoured sedan.

His interview with Politico, lacking in any clear ideological coherence, is replete with something else: the confused fear of an ageing white man confronted with a changing world.

A paranoid Maga worldview is behind the horrors of America’s own immigration, policing and other policies under Trump – and has driven an effort to erase Black experience and representation.

Now – it is clear – those fears are Washington’s prism for understanding Europe.

From this perspective, immigration from the developing world causes a dilution of European countries, making them “weak” under “stupid” leaders and setting the circumstances for their own demise. It is an unabashedly racist theory, with Trump and his circle making clear their prescription is that far-right European parties are to be supported.

While the broad sweep of Trump’s race baiting in general is not a revelation, it is important to understand its meaning in the wider context of European security.

For Trump and his Maga acolytes, including Elon Musk – who has called in recent days for the European Union to be broken up – all politics and diplomacy are essentially transactional. But where once Trump argued that Europe wasn’t paying its fair share, his point is now that a decadent Europe is fundamentally undeserving because of its multiculturalism.

In his interview with Politico, Trump joins up these dots himself in a kind of exercise in wish fulfilment. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, he concedes, wants Europe to be weak. Trump calls it weak, and in exposing the fissures between Washington and Europe prompted by his remarks, he aids Putin by actively weakening Europe – while denying it is his “fault”.

All of which is playing out at the most consequential moment for Europe since the second world war, with a devastating conflict in Ukraine and amid escalating Russian provocations elsewhere on the continent.

As Europe cleaves ever tighter to Ukraine amid continuing threats of US abandonment, the danger is that Trump has rationalised a narrative for not listening to Europe.

All of which demands a robust response from European leaders. While some, most recently the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Tuesday, have been forceful in their response, others – including Keir Starmer’s office – have continued with a policy of trying to appease White House.

On Tuesday, Downing Street refused to push back on either Trump’s comment on Europe or his latest attack on London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, whom the US president once again attacked.

“The Prime Minister,” said a spokesperson, “has a strong relationship with the US president and a strong relationship with the Mayor of London, and on both is committed to working together in order to deliver stronger outcomes for the British people right across the country.”

The reality is that Trump means what he says, and says what he means repeatedly. It is past time to pretend that things are otherwise.