Trumpified Security

The Trumpified version of the National Security Strategy of the United States of America published last month has stirred up a lot of controversy (the uncontroversial 2017 National Security Strategy drafted by H. R. McMaster quickly sank into obscurity – primarily because Trump ignored it). The most controversial aspect of the document was the fact that it took Europe to task while basically giving a pass to Russia. NSS 2025 asserted that Europe faced civilizational erasure. It accused the countries of Europe not only of implementing policies that stifle economic growth and innovation but also of supporting policies that “undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.” President Trump later belittled Europe saying in an interview with Politicothat those Western democracies were decaying and led by weak people.

In my commentary, I Hate It when Trump’s Right, I agreed with the NSS 2025 that Europe was debilitated and that the continent needed “to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations.” But the principal causes of the decline described in NSS 2025 were mass migration and a policy to suppress the populist right that wants to stop the influx of immigrants and further wants to start deporting them back to their home countries.

The Wall Street Journal weighed in asserting that the principal causes of Europe’s problems were high taxes in support of a massive welfare system, a morass of bureaucratic regulations that held back economic growth and innovation, and environmental policies that exposed their vulnerabilities to Russia. The Journal pointed out that social welfare costs in Europe are around 30% of GDP (compared to around 20% in the US) and that European governments control almost 50% of their economies. As a result the World Bank reports that “in the period 2008-2023, EU GDP grew by 13.5% (from $16.37 trillion to $18.59 trillion) while U.S. GDP rose by 87% (from $14.77 trillion to $27.72 trillion). The UK’s GDP increased by 15.4%. In 2023, EU GDP was 67% of U.S. GDP — down from 110% in 2008.”

My friend, Manuel Hinds, former Salvadoran Minister of Finance, rejects the notion of European decay asserting that public spending on health and education is essential for the development of the human capital needed for the knowledge economy and “rejects U.S. condescension toward Europe.” He points out in his substack column that Europeans have benefitted from the welfare state as their life expectancy at birth exceeds that of the US (although this statistic is muddled by the fact that the US spends more – much more- per capita on healthcare than Europe). But slower economic growth and welfare spending have held back defense spending to the point that Europe cannot defend itself. Recent commitments to increase defense spending are only beginning to be realized.

NSS 2025 ignores Europe’s economic malaise caused by welfare expenditures in its analysis of it’s supposed decay focusing on mass migration and cultural collapse. That is probably because the US suffers from many of the same problems as a result of social welfare spending as Europe, as noted by Mr. Hinds in his commentary. Our expenditures on welfare are rising and not just because of Joe Biden. The Trump administration is refusing to reform the most costly programs and is shooting blanks when it comes to healthcare reform.

Joining the fray I believe that the real problem confronting Europe is that their experiment with democracy has not been able to overcome thousands of years of living in monarchical or autocratic societies. For millennia Europe had developed based on top down or vertical societies as described by Gordon S. Wood in his book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Democracy is less than a hundred years old across the continent and for many countries far less than that. Europeans are comfortable with big government. The sclerosis of bureaucratic regulations enacted by the European Union is normal for them. Of course, Europeans claim to be very happy with their big governments. The Europeans that wanted liberty and  freedom only had only one option – go to America.

As Doctor Wood described, America was unburdened by a history of autocratic rule. America was not a vertical society but a horizontal society as described in more detail in my commentaries, Vertical War in America published September 18, 2025, Vertical War published March 15, 2022 and Slanted Society published April 18, 2022.

After World War Two, Western European countries became more horizontal under the guidance of the American-led rules-based order. But the ideals and principals of the American-styled horizontal society could not fully overcome thousands of years of history bound by tradition, ethnicity, language and religion and Europe is having difficulty coping with the changes brought on by the modern world.

The Trumpian National Security Strategy drafted by J. D. Vance and other MAGA zealots recommends that Europe abandon its horizontal tilt and re-embrace its historical path – in other words return to the vertical structure that was the basis of their society for centuries. This is also the path on which President Trump wants to take America. But America has no history of being a vertical society. A vertical society led by an autocratic president, even if popularly elected, is antithetical to the liberty and freedom that made America great.

President Trump says he wants to protect Americans’ freedoms – but he is doing so by concentrating ever more power into the executive branch of government, remaking America into a vertical society. That’s not how liberty works.