In recent days, certain passages of the American strategy document have caused more discussion in Europe than in the United States. The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy – a draft, to be sure, but already a political manifesto – contains very harsh judgments on the Old Continent: economic decline, cultural crisis, political instability, migration out of control. Harsh, even brutal tones in certain passages. But it would be a mistake to dismiss them merely as yet another Trumpian provocation.

Not because everything Trump says is gospel (on the contrary), but because the US has led the free world for eighty years, and when your main ally looks at Europe and sees structural frailties, perhaps it is worth listening. Not out of submission, but out of lucidity.

AEurope that is not seen as theWestsees it

The striking thing about the document is that it is not an attack on Russia, but a criticism of Europe. Not because they really believe that Europe is lost in Washington, but because they perceive it that way. And the perception of those who lead the West carries a lot of weight.

The strongest phrase – ‘the real and stark prospect of the erasure of European civilisation ‘ – sounds like a slogan. It probably is. But it stems from problems we know very well:

• weak economic growth,
• insufficient military expenditure,
• dramatic demographic crisis,
• inability to manage epochal migratory phenomena,
• a Union more concerned with regulating internal debate than defending the European space.

One does not need to be a Trumpian to recognise that part of the diagnosis, however harsh, is real.

Two wars on our borders in less than twentyyears

We have become too quickly accustomed to the idea that Europe is a peaceful continent by definition. Instead, in less than twenty years, we have seen two devastating crises:

• 2014: annexation of Crimea, war in the Donbass.
• 2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine, the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945.

Eight years between. A blink of an eye in history. And above all, a dramatic signal: the West can no longer take its security for granted.

The identity question: a European, not a Western taboo

One of the most sensitive passages in the American document concerns the risk of a cultural shift that could weaken European identity and, consequently, that of the free world as a whole. In Europe, talking about identity is almost improper. In the United States, on the other hand, the defence of Western civilisation is considered a strategic issue.

It is not a matter of locking oneself in the past or slipping into reactionarism, but of remembering that the West is a moral construction based on:

• individual freedom,
• personal responsibility,
• pluralism,
• rule of law,
• liberal democracy.

Values that do not live ‘alone’: they must be defended, cultivated, reaffirmed. It is curious – and sad – that it should be the Americans who remind us of this.

NATO: without Europe, thealliance of the free world does not hold

One of the most serious passages is the one that calls for Europe to take control of most of the Alliance’s conventional capabilities by 2027. This is not an abandonment, nor is it blackmail: it is a reality.

The US will remain the shield of the West, but Europe must stop being its weak point.

It is a bipartisan message in the US: Obama suggested it, Biden states it diplomatically, Trump shouts it. But the substance does not change: the Union must become the continental pillar of NATO, not a mere ‘appendage’ of US strategy.

For us, Atlanticist Europeans, this is not a warning: it is a historic opportunity.

European defence: theopportunity not to be wasted (again)

Instead of being scandalised by Washington’s language, we should ask ourselves why, despite two border wars and an increasingly polarised global context, Europe has not yet:

• an integrated military capability,
• real coordination of expenditure,
• a strategy of deterrence,
• a clear cultural and political vision of its role in the West.

The US, even when speaking brutally, is telling us: wake up.

Not only for them, but for ourselves.

The warning we must heed, for our own good

The Trumpian new strategy document is not a loyalty test. It is a mirror. Sometimes ungenerous, sometimes distorted, but a mirror nonetheless.

In the end, the point is simple:

• Europe must once again believe in itself as an essential part of the West,
• must strengthen NATO and not weaken it,
• must defend the values of western civilisation,
• must recover the awareness of being a pillar of the free world, not a periphery.

The ‘Trump warning’, with all its excesses, offers us something that is too often missing in European politics: an external, frank, even brutal perspective, but one that can help us refocus on where we are going.

And perhaps, this time, we should listen to it.