The Trump administration's National Security Strategy was published recently and critics say it abandons long-standing U.S. efforts to counter foreign influence while singling out European liberal democracy as a central concern.Anne Applebaum and other analysts note the document omits sustained mention of Russian cyberwarfare, treats China mainly as a trading rival, and terminated memoranda negotiated by the Global Engagement Center with about two dozen countries while redirecting agencies toward border control, disaster response, trade and drug threats such as fentanyl.In Germany
Mathias Döpfner urged Europeans to heed parts of
Donald Trump's diagnosis of Western decline, while
Michael Hanfeld and others warned that
MAGA-aligned rhetoric and an unofficial U.S. approach portraying the EU as a rival could weaken European democracy and accelerate demands for strategic autonomy.