This is a US administration that tells Gulf Arab monarchies that it intends to desist from lectures about their political systems, and one that has shown that it cares not a jot about Russia's war crimes, its dictatorship, its suppression of free speech.

During last year's electoral campaign Elbridge Colby, now Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and reported to be one of the principal authors of the NSS, was frequently seen on X lambasting Europeans for daring to express any views at all about American politics.

Yet this NSS declares it a US priority to move Europe off its“current trajectory” and to support what it describes as“patriotic parties”– by which it means the traitorously pro-Russian far-right in France, Britain, Germany, Italy and elsewhere.

According to the NSS, Europe's“economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure.”

Really? Most Europeans think the prospect of the erasure of American civilization is much likelier – chiefly at the hands of Donald Trump himself, so eager has he been in his so far ten months back in office to eliminate core elements of the US constitution, most notably the powers of the US Congress but also the requirement under the 22nd amendment that a president may serve only two terms.

He has sought to take control of universities, to take charge of cultural institutions and to ignore all legal constraints on personal enrichment while in office.

Our European goal should, of course, be to help America“to correct its current trajectory,” just as the NSS claims it wants to do for us.

But can anyone be expected to believe that Trump really does want to make Europe, on some definition,“great again” when this year America has imposed 15% import tariffs on many European goods, demanded that European companies and governments divert billions into investments in the US rather than at home and made common cause with Russia – a country that has invaded its neighbor, killed hundreds of thousands of people and committed acts of sabotage against European nations?

The lie to this declaration of war is given by one particular claim. The NSS reckons that“it is more than plausible that, within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.” Where to start?

First, it is up to Europeans to decide what is meant by“European,” just as Americans define what is meant by American.

Second, Turkey is already“majority non-European” and proud of it.

Thirdly, on most Europeans' definition of non-European this will never be true, for no EU member state will ever have a majority of non-EU citizens and nor will the U.K. ever have a majority of non-UK citizens.

What the NSS means is that these unnamed NATO states might eventually have a majority of non-white citizens. Jews will certainly note that some American followers of Trump would not even count them as“whites.”

This is blatant, overt racism. It is reminiscent of Nazism in the sense that it seeks to define identity in such a way as to exclude chosen groups perceived to be outsiders who are considered unreliable in terms of their true loyalties and affiliations. Coming from a nation of immigrants it is particularly shocking.

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Europeans and their governments can ignore the NSS's malignant analysis and supposed advice. But they must keep in mind the fact that this analysis and advice is not at all well-meant. It is hostile. It reveals a desire to manipulate European governments and to bend them to America's will.

And it comes alongside a clear desire to betray Ukraine's and Europe's genuine security interests by making a deal with Russia, a deal which under its known elements would enrich Americans, especially those in Trump's own circle, destabilize Ukraine and put Europe in future danger.

The Economist's encomium to its word of the year ends with what it nicely terms“sloptimism” about how slop may benefit truly trustworthy sources of information.

The sloptimist version of that for Trump's NSS is to hope that the very unreality of this supposed strategy, the fact that many members of his own Republican Party will find much of it anathema, the fact that his polling numbers are falling and that he and his Secretary of War are under fire from Republicans for their illegal killings in the Caribbean, are all indicators that this NSS will in fact be dead on arrival.

It would be good to hope for it, but not to count on it. Just as it would be good to hope that one of Trump's favored“patriotic parties,” Viktor Orbán's Fidesz, will at last be turfed out of office in elections next April, if current polls are to be believed. Fingers crossed.

Bill Emmott is a former longtime editor in chief of The Economist. This article, first published on the substack Bill Emmott's Global View, is republished with permission.

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