The new United States National Security Strategy marks a profound rupture with the order built over the last eight decades. The Trump administration does not seek to reform the multilateral system, but to replace it, and it does so with disconcerting clarity when stating that in foreign and defense policy “America First” is not a slogan electoral, but the official compass of the greatest world power.
The first rupture is conceptual. The strategy declares, bluntly, that the post-Cold War cycle of globalism is over. Multilateral institutions, which for decades were essential for moderating tensions, arbitrating conflicts and balancing ambitions, are now portrayed as unjustifiable limitations on United States action. The Trump administration proposes a return to a pre-institutional world, where force, immediate transactions and the calculation of opportunity override any idea of the international common good.
The second rupture is economic and confirms the return to strategic protectionism. China is presented as the main distortion of global trade and the American response involves aggressive reindustrialization, the protection of critical value chains and conditional alliances where partners align not out of conviction, but out of necessity. For Europe, this is the uncomfortable choice between remaining dependent on Washington or accepting an economic confrontation, even if indirect, with its main historical ally.
The third rupture is strategic and possibly the most disruptive. For the Trump administration, the United States is no longer the guarantor of European security. The allies must assume primary responsibility for the defense of the continent, a diplomatic expression that amounts to stating that Europe is alone. It’s no longer enough to spend more. It is necessary to build, from scratch, a European security architecture based on its own resources, capabilities and decisions.
With this American withdrawal, the multilateralism of the last eight decades loses its central pillar and Europe has to decide whether it wants to be a protagonist or a participant in an international system undergoing rapid fragmentation. It must transform economic weight into political power, military autonomy into effective sovereignty and dispersed national diplomacies into a common strategy. If it fails, it will be pushed into irrelevance in a world increasingly organized into blocs vying for hegemony and survival.
The challenge is monumental. Europe needs a robust and autonomous defense industrial base. It needs to speak with one voice on foreign policy, even when this means facing deep internal differences. It needs to transform the common market into a true instrument of geo-economic power. And above all, she needs strategic courage to occupy the space that the world offers her and to prevent others from occupying it for her.
To replace the United States as a global normative power, Europe will have to build new alliances, dialogue with democracies but also with countries that do not fully share its values, and build bridges where others build walls. This will be the condition to continue defending an international model based on rules, openness and cooperation.
Today, the line between a strategic Europe and an irrelevant Europe is thinner than it seems. And in a world of accelerated fragmentation, repeating old mistakes would not just be unwise. It would be fatal, because History does not wait for indecisive actors and does not forgive strategic hesitations.