Trump takes aim at Europe in new security strategy

President Donald Trump has had Europe in his crosshairs since beginning a second White House term earlier this year.

But in his new National Security Strategy -- published in the dead of night early Friday -- the US president launched an all-out attack, lambasting Europe as an over-regulated, censorious continent lacking in "self-confidence" and facing "civilizational erasure" due to immigration.

The highly anticipated document codifies in writing the offensive launched by Washington months ago against Europe, which it accuses of taking advantage of American generosity and of failing to take responsibility for its own destiny.

The new strategy, which marks a radical departure from previous US policy, targets, among other things, European institutions that "undermine political liberty and sovereignty," immigration policies, "censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition," the collapse of birth rates, and the loss of national identities.

"Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less," the document says.

Additionally, "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," it says.

The reaction in Europe was swift, with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul saying the country does not need "outside advice."

The document is "unacceptable and dangerous," France's Valerie Hayer, the head of the Renew Europe centrist grouping in the European Parliament, said on X.

For Evan Feigenbaum, a former advisor to two US secretaries of state and an expert on Asia, "the Europe section is by far the most striking - and far more so than the China/Asia sections."

It "feels inherently more confrontational and pits the U.S. as decisively opposed to the whole European project with this line: 'cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations,'" he said in a post on X.