Garvan Walshe: Trump’s new National Security Strategy – an unexploded bomb under the transatlantic alliance

Garvan Walshe is a former a national and international security policy adviser to the Conservative Party

Observers of the Trump administration make two mistakes about its foreign policy statements, whether speeches by JD Vance such as that at the Munich Security Conference or this latest National Security Strategy (NSS) published on the White House website with little fanfare.

The first is to treat them as the outcome of a policy process, and therefore binding on the administration and a guide to its plans. The second is to dismiss them as posturing for an online or domestic audience and imagine that can straightforwardly be subverted by appealing to the administration’s underlying transactionalism.

But the second Trump administration doesn’t have anything resembling a policy process. It’s a court, and the NSS should be thought of as part of the manoeuvring for Donald Trump’s ear not its outcome. Moreover Trump, though often called transactional, is not transactional for the sake of the United States. He has better uses for American power: the extortion of all and sundry for the private enrichment of himself and his family.

Among the Trump court’s factions is a group of extreme ethno-nationalists led by JD Vance and to which Michael Anton, a major author of the NSS, adheres. They are white supremacists convinced America and Europe are suffering “civilisational erasure” through dark skinned immigration that can only be prevented by extreme right movements taking power on this side of the Atlantic  as they already have across the pond.

They share a coincidence of interest a pro-Russian, faction gathered around Trump himself.

Russia’s interest is clear. Bigger than any one European state but smaller than a coalition of a even a few others, it wants to keep Europe divided. Furthermore, Putin personally wants to reverse as much of the post Soviet imperial retreat as he can.

As such, Russia has taken pains to support nationalist extremists across Europe knowing they’ll make it harder for Europeans to band together against Moscow. Its links to the RN in France, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Robert Fico in Slovakia and Matteo Salvini in Italy are well known. Here in the UK, Reform have faced awkward questions about Nathan Gill’s closeness to the Kremlin.

Vance’s racism and Putin’s realpolitik coincide. One supports nationalists on principle and is happy to see Europe divided by their coming to power. The other wants to see Europe divided so supports nationalists.

Both back the sham peace proposals conveyed by Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, based on Russian drafts, that would force Ukraine to hand over to Moscow what the  more than a million dead and wounded Russian soldiers have been unable to take in battle.

The Kremlin’s hope is to first weaken andthen subsume Ukraine, after which it will conscript Ukrainians to fight against their former defenders in the Baltic States and Poland. Putin’s men calculate – possibly correctly – that without backing from Washington, France, Germany, Spain and Italy could be intimidated into non-belligerency.

This would leave free north-east Europe, stretching from the UK to Poland and perhaps Romania through the Nordic and Baltic regions. Our 150 million people confronting 180 million: 140 million Russians plus 40 million press-ganged Ukrainians. With 40 million free Ukrainians the population balance would swing notably in favour of active free Europe, at 190 million to 140 million even if Russia manages to scare off the others.

These are the grim, nineteenth-century-style calculations the Russo-Trumpian realignment forces us to make, and are why no so called peace agreement that weakens Ukraine can be tolerated.

But in the current negotiations the Trump Administration is manufacturing a perception of Ukrainian dependence on American support to force Kyiv into an unfavourable peace that would allow Russia to to threaten to seal Ukraine off from the sea and invest Odessa, Moldova and Romania.

In fact the lion’s share of military support for Ukraine comes from European countries and the EU’s collective resources (Sweden’s Ukraine budget is now as big as its own defence budget). The remaining US capabilities are bought by European countries under the PURL programme. Trump’s error and our good fortune was that he withdrew aid before making his threats to withdraw support, rather than being able use them to force the negotiations.

Monday’s negotiating statement prepared in Berlin on Monday by Friedrich Merz, Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Donald Tusk, Georgia Meloni, and others reinforced European opposition to Witkoff’s Yalta 2.0 plan. It rejected forcing Ukraine to accept territorial concessions, while keeping the appearance of accepting the unworkable Trump administration formula of a peace deal backed by European security guarantees and an American one of dubious value.

If the NSS should disabuse those officials who contemplate a modus vivendi with the Trump administration (they still exist in London and Berlin in particular), it does not herald a full attack on Europe by the United States as a country.  We continue to have powerful allies in the United States, particularly in Congress.

The National Defence Authorisation Act, supported by veto proof majorities in both houses prevents the US stationing fewer than 76,000 troops in Europe to defend NATO blocks the Administration from relinquishing the post of Supreme Allied Commander and requires a Baltic Security Initiative to block Trump from withdrawing protection from the Baltic states. Unlike the NSS, the NDAA identifies Russia as a security threat.

In addition the defence industrial relationship is more two sided than usually granted. The US welcomes European investment in its defence industry: Norway’s Kongsberg just bought an American missile manufacturer.

Despite the perfidy of the White House, Atlanticist America is fighting back.

The Trump Administration is also coming under increasing domestic pressure. His approval ratings on the economy are deeply negative (at least -15 per cent) and the Republicans are expected to lose the House heavily next year. Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has mysteriously begun leaking to  Vanity Fair. The Epstein scandal will weaken him further. This does not mean MAGA will be out of office; absent new revelations the Senate will not convict Trump, even if the House impeaches him in 2027. But it does provide us with levers to ensure the National Security Strategy’s pro-Kremlin pro-extreme right is not implemented.

Traditional allies of the United States have no need to cringe before the NSS, nor should they treat it as more than a rhetorical declaration of war. It is more accurate to see it as an unexploded bomb.

They have plenty of instruments to ensure it can be defused, while building up their independent military industrial base and armed forces so that they can deter the Russian threat on their own.