Trump’s Terrifying New Security Doctrine Turns Allies into Targets

The new National Security Strategy (NSS) issued by the White House on December 4 is the real deal, a nightmarish document to be read with care and trepidation.

It can’t be dismissed as anything akin to a late-night Donald Trump tweet, a press conference outburst, or some random appearance on Fox News. It is twenty-nine pages long, and has NO CAPS. It is an encapsulation of the United States President’s belief system about how America should conduct itself in the world. In many respects, it is startlingly different from the one he issued during his first term in 2017, not least in its removal of any depiction of the threats generated by foreign state autocrats and aggressors, or any suggestion that the US should lead in responding to such threats.

One of its most telling phrases is that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” In the place of Atlas, we get a United States determined to maintain primacy of power in the world, while refocusing its efforts on defence of the American homeland, and eschewing any values-based policies. It is a pure expression of the doctrine of “America First,” beloved of the MAGA movement. As Trump says in his foreword to the strategy, “In everything we do, we are putting America First.”

The bottom line is that Trump’s NSS is out to get a good deal for the US. That means jettisoning all the bad deals that, in the eyes of the Trump regime, have led to a weakened America and have brought the US to the “brink of catastrophe and disaster.”

The list of bad deals is long. At the top are support for democracy and resistance to authoritarian regimes, unfair trade practices (a big grievance for Trump), and collective security arrangements where the US carried too much of the burden. In the Trump worldview, there are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends, only trading relations to be made advantageous for the US.

This turns the famous nineteenth century quote from British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston in an entirely new and narrow direction. Palmerston’s dictum was that “we have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

The Trumpian expression of “interests” is far from what Palmerston had in mind and will be of deep concern to many traditional allies. The NSS is value-free, denigrating any idea of a rules-based international order or the protection and expansion of democratic principles. It also takes direct aim at allies and partners around the world, much more so than the authoritarian regimes that might bring the exercise of force and coercion to their doorstep.

Japan and South Korea are extolled to take more responsibility for the security of the Indo-Pacific, while the US looks to a beneficial trading relationship with China. War over Taiwan is to be avoided so as not to disrupt the trade in semi-conductors. Latin American countries, especially those that the US supports, or props up, must do good deals with the US, right down to accepting sole-source contracts from US companies. Africa is of minor concern, a region for selective engagement only, while the Middle East is a place where the US should refrain from entanglements or the “hectoring” of Gulf regimes.

Europe comes in for the greatest heat in what is the most extraordinary part of the NSS. It seems right out of the US vice president J. D. Vance rhetorical playbook, as demonstrated in this passage: “A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.”

The Europe of the bedrock NATO alliance, home to many long-standing democracies, of the multi-state economic partnership of the European Union, is castigated as a continent in decline, facing “civilizational erasure.” In the White House’s vision, Europe is elite-driven, anti-democratic, too welcoming of migrants, suffocating in transnational regulations, unfree. Europe harbours unrealistic ideas about a confrontation with Russia. Not only must Europe open itself up to its far right but it should abandon all notions of any further expansion of NATO, patently a nod to a Vladimir Putin demand.

There is not a crumb of real support for Ukraine. Instead, the strategy looks to the renewal of relations with Russia, what it euphemistically calls re-establishing “strategic stability” with Russia. In another part of the document, we are reminded that great powers will always do what they have done: preside over the weak. In the words of the Trump doctrine, “the outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.” All right, then.

Europe is also told, in no uncertain terms, to take primary responsibility for its own defence, signalling, yet again, a determination to draw down US support for NATO and withdraw some of its armed forces from the continent, as it recently did in Romania. This is called a matter of Europe regaining its “self-confidence.”

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The suggestion in the Trump NSS is that the US will act to ensure that Europe will be “helped” to “resist” its “current trajectory.” European leaders and their people will now have to be on high alert for signs of US political (and more covert) interference in the conduct of their democracies.

Canadian readers, from the prime minister on down, may be inclined to take comfort in the US NSS on the grounds that Canada gets no real mention. Silence is golden? No talk of annexation, border security laxity, trade relations, access to critical minerals, defence spending, or the Arctic. But to take comfort would be a serious mistake.

There are two reasons for this. One is that prime minister Mark Carney has described Canada as the most European of non-European countries and he means it. It is illustrated in his ongoing support for Ukraine, his commitment to NATO, his emphasis on the Euro-Atlantic security zone, his search of new defence development opportunities with Europe, and his drive to expand economic partnerships as part of a major commitment to diversify Canadian trade beyond the US. London and Paris were the first trips he made overseas after becoming prime minister. In the meantime, Carney’s pursuit of what he once called a new comprehensive economic and security relationship with the US is going nowhere.

Canada could easily become a European-like problem in the hairline of Trumpian policies: elite-governed rather than populist, moderate centrist rather than far right in political orientation. Canada could be in the same sights as European countries, whose politics need a “course correction” with help from the US. Think of how the Liberal government treated the poor, well-meaning populists of the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protests, whose coffers were filled with US dollars, whose ideas were supported by American MAGA commentators, who Trump himself backed. A little memory jog might be in order. Here is what Trump said in support of the “Freedom Convoy” protest back in February 2022: “The Freedom Convoy is peacefully protesting the harsh policies of the far left lunatic Justin Trudeau who has destroyed Canada with insane COVID mandates.”

Trump was out of office then, plotting his comeback with the help of “Project 2025.” Now he’s back. If Europe needs to be concerned about US political interference, or worse, in its affairs, so, too, does Canada. If you think this verges on the paranoid, then check out this passage from the Trump doctrine:

“We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe [nearly us], the Anglosphere [that’s us] and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies [that’s a bull’s eye].”

A second reason why the Trump NSS should be a major worry for Canada concerns its focus on US dominance over the “western hemisphere.” While much of the policy may be directed towards Central and Latin America, the western hemisphere is also our neighbourhood. US dominance is designed to bring economic benefits, deter foreign (read Chinese) economic penetration, strengthen US borders, stop migration, and halt drug trafficking and transnational crime. We are now told to read these policies as the “Trump Corollary” to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. While dressed up as an offshoot of an America First, homeland security doctrine, it is deeply imperialist in nature, though MAGA supporters may not mind.

There are three components of the “Trump corollary” that should be seriously concerning for Canada: an insistence that we see threats to the western hemisphere through an American lens, no dissent allowed; that the US will work to secure critical supply chains in its own interests; and an insistence on the right of the US to have access to “strategically important locations.” This idea is accompanied by a direction to the US National Security Council to:

It would be the worst form of naivety to read this (bolding mine) as benevolent.

The Trump NSS is, plainly speaking, a doctrine that threatens Canada, threatens Canadian interests, and is deeply at odds with a Canadian approach to global security. It is not the doctrine of an ally, and any illusions that continue to be maintained about that in Ottawa need to be buried (the European word would be “scotched”), along with the search for a comprehensive economic and security partnership with the US.

Allies share common interests and values and agree on threats. They respect sovereignty and political differences. They share intelligence to mutual benefit. None of that defines the Canada–US relationship under Trump, as the NSS makes brutally clear.

From “Atlas Shrugs, and gets down to business” by Wesley Wark (Substack). Reprinted with permission of the author.