The NSS That Could Destroy the NATO Alliance

Commentary by Max Bergmann

Published December 5, 2025

Normally, national security strategies generate much more discussion than impact. They come out well into an administration, when the policy course is already quite clear and usually not all that different from what came before. Yet this National Security Strategy (NSS) represents a truly dramatic shift in the direction of U.S. foreign policy, with potentially serious implications for Europe and the transatlantic relationship.

The strategy effectively declares war on European politics, Europe's political leaders, and the European Union.

The general expectation in Europe for the NSS and the forthcoming National Defense Strategy (NDS) was that the Trump administration would deprioritize Europe. The NSS, on the one hand, does indeed make clear that Europe is less of a defense priority, despite the threat posed by Russia. It clearly indicates that it expects Europe to take care of its own defense and that there will be no more NATO expansion, meaning no NATO for Ukraine. That is not altogether surprising.

But what is perhaps most surprising is that the strategy also says that Europe truly matters to the United States. "Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States," it reads. While that is in line with every past NSS since World War II, it is what comes next which represents a truly revolutionary, and potentially disruptive, change.

Because Europe matters so much to the United States, the United States says it must act. Europe, the NSS asserts, is apparently facing "stark prospect of civilizational erasure." The culprit it says is the "the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty," as well as migration and "suppression of political opposition."

The NSS deliberately seeks to revive European nationalism. It calls for the "unapologetic celebrations of European nations' individual character and history. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism." That is an explicit endorsement of far-right nationalist parties in Europe that have emerged over the last 15 years in European politics. It goes even further and calls for direct intervention in the democratic politics of the United States' European allies, stating that U.S. policy should prioritize "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations."

That represents a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy toward Europe. After World War II, the United States was the fiercest advocate of European political and economic integration, explicitly to suppress the destabilizing impacts of European nationalism, which was seen as causing Europe's destruction. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a fierce supporter of European integration, remarked in 1957 at the creation of the European Economic Community, the forerunner to the European Union, that "the day this common market [European Economic Community] became a reality would be one of the finest days in the history of the free world, perhaps even more so than winning the war." Uniting Europe into a union was about winning the peace, something that the European Union and NATO have very much achieved in tandem.

Moreover, while transatlantic leaders have had their preferred leaders and relationships, they have generally avoided intervening in each other's politics. When leaders do involve themselves, or are seen to inject themselves, such as when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited a munitions factory in Pennsylvania last September with a Democratic governor, they are often criticized.

The NSS, however, is calling for the United States to use the resources at its disposal to directly intervene in European politics. So, what might that mean?

First, the dramatic cuts to State Department democracy funding, as well as the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, mean there might be considerable funding available to reprogram to support far-right parties and groups in Europe. Given limits on campaign financing in most European countries, even limited amounts of funding could potentially impact European politics. Russia has been exposed on a number of occasions trying to support far-right parties by laundering funds, but the United States will likely just do so explicitly.

Second, U.S. technology companies will likely resist or ignore European technology regulation, especially relating to content moderation. They may also work to promote and amplify far-right content in European politics. These U.S. companies will likely be strongly backed by the Trump administration. In fact, the only time "democracy" is mentioned in the NSS is in the context of reversing supposed constraints on speech in Europe. In other words, efforts to prevent anti-semitic hate speech online or Germany's prohibition against explicitly pro-Nazi parties is an affront to the United States.

Lastly, the U.S. intelligence community also has significant tools and resources to deploy to support far-right parties and movements in Europe. The United States used some of these tools to support pro-democracy and anti-communist political movements in the early period of the Cold War. A question remains as to whether the United States invokes these tools and authorities to upend European politics.

While European leaders will hope that the NSS is just political bluster, it is a document worth taking seriously. The strategy signals that the Trump administration plans to orchestrate the downfall of almost all of Europe's political leaders, which come from center-right and center-left parties.

Should the United States act to implement the NSS, European leaders and the European Union will inevitably react. While the Trump administration assumes that European leaders are weak, they are not going to stand for direct political intervention in their politics. Following through on the NSS, therefore, could trigger a major collision and potentially the end of the alliance.

Max Bergmann is the director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program and the Stuart Center in Euro-Atlantic and Northern European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

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