'Civilizational Erasure': Trump Says Europe Risks Being Wiped Away Unless It Changes

The White House said Europe risks “civilizational erasure” as a result of decades of economic decline, political censorship and immigration, according to a new national security document that amounts to another sharp Trump administration broadside against the continent.

The 29-page National Security Strategy, published overnight and signed by President Donald Trump, said that Europe’s cultural and political failures pose a bigger threat to the continent’s way of life than its poor economic performance. 

“This economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” the report said. “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”

Almost a year after Trump returned to office, the ideological divisions between the US and its traditional allies in Europe have become stark. The White House has lashed out over European Union regulation of US tech companies, offered public support to far-right parties across the continent and threatened to cut off support for Ukraine unless Kyiv makes sweeping concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The National Security Strategy, meant to be released every year, carries no legal weight but signals White House priorities around the globe. Past iterations under former President Joe Biden and in Trump’s first term focused on the threat posed by China and other US adversaries rather than directing US criticism at allies in Europe.

In this strategy, the language on US adversaries including China and Russia is muted. 

It said Trump has “reversed” three decades of “mistaken” policy after “China got rich and powerful, and used its wealth and power to its considerable advantage.” The new US strategy doubles down on a Trump pledge to “rebalance” the economic relationship with China by working with allies to counter state subsidies, intellectual property theft and influence operations. 

The document said deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan remains a priority, but the US military “cannot, and should not have to, do this alone,” stressing that countries in the region need to increase defense spending and allow the US military more access to ports and other facilities. “Our allies must step up and spend — and more importantly do — much more for collective defense,” it reads.

The strategy barely mentions Russia’s invasion of Ukraine until some references near the very end — and even then, the document takes swipes at European leaders while saying that solving the war is key to having “strategic stability” with Russia.

“The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition,” the document said. 

European leaders have been scrambling to formulate a coherent response ever since Vice President JD Vance’s attack on the EU in February. Most recently, they’ve been struggling to reach agreement on a plan to use frozen Russian assets held mostly in Belgium to back a new loan that Ukraine needs to maintain its fight against the Russian invasion.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will meet with his Belgian counterpart Bart de Wever and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a bid to reassure the Belgians that they won’t be on the hook if Russia mounts a successful legal challenge to the plan. 

While European governments have been tussling over guarantees for Belgium, the US has also been encouraging some EU nations to hold up the plan, Bloomberg reported earlier on Friday.

The US administration has identified some $140 billion of Russian assets held in Belgium as a potentially lucrative source of profits after the war. Under the 28-point peace plan drafted between the US and Russia last month, the money would be invested in the reconstruction of Ukraine and US-Russian business ventures, with 50% of the profits going to the US. 

The US administration was given further reasons to bristle when the European Commission imposed a €120 million fine on Elon Musk’s X social network on Friday for violating the EU’s content moderation laws. 

“The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” Vance said in a post on X before the fine was announced. 

The strategy report published by the White House blames the EU itself for many of Europe’s problems, saying the bloc has undermined political freedoms and failed to clamp down on immigration that the US said is fueling social tensions. The report also attacks what it calls censorship and restrictions on opposition political movements.

The US’s main goals in Europe will be to secure a quick end to the war in Ukraine, to cultivate “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” to open up the continent’s markets for US companies and to prevent the further expansion of NATO, the report says. 

“Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States,” the report said. “Not only can we not afford to write Europe off — doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.”