Late in the first week of December, the Trump administration released the president’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), a document designed to show how Washington views the rest of the world in regard to its national interests. As Trump himself writes in the opening cover letter:

What follows is a National Security Strategy to describe and build upon the extraordinary strides we have made. This document is a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth. In the years ahead, we will continue to develop every dimension of our national strength—and we will make America safer, richer, freer, greater, and more powerful than ever. (p. 2)

It is, in brief, a snapshot of the world as it is and of how the United States intends to respond to it to maintain and improve its place in the world. Written with typical Trumpian candor, it states its case without the expected diplomatic verbiage.

European leaders took the weekend to study it, and by Monday, they reacted with harsh words, accusations, and a bit of insecurity. For instance, French political analyst Sylvie Metelly described the NSS section on Europe as “three pages of vitriol.” The continent’s governments reacted most strongly to the NSS’s criticism of Europe for its widespread “censorship of free speech,” misguided immigration policies, “suppression of political opposition,” demographic decline, economic stagnation, “loss of national identities and self-confidence,” and deficiencies in national defense.

The NSS concludes that these factors combine to make the “prospect of civilizational erasure” an imminent prospect:

Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. (p. 25)

Sebastian Hille, deputy spokesperson for the German government, brushed aside some of the criticisms in the document as “ideology rather than strategy.” He also said the German government rejected the NSS’s failure to classify Russia as a threat, accusing the Trump administration of ramping up pressure on Ukraine (which Europe backs) and sidling closer to an aggressive Russia. Many European leaders’ rhetoric accuses Trump of wanting to improve his relationship with Russia at Europe’s expense.

Their disagreements, however, sound increasingly like whining because, despite their gruff tone, the NSS’s observations are accurate. Europe is facing the consequences of unwise policy decisions made over the last half-century, including wide-open borders, slashed military budgets, hyper-regulation, progressive social policies, and the political suppression and even exclusion of dissenting voices. These consequences are rapidly approaching a crisis point, and only swift, emergency actions can avoid it.

Sadly, the NSS concludes: “Many of these countries [within Europe] are currently doubling down on their present path.” Indeed, Ursula von der Leyen, newly re-elected as President of the European Commission by the European Parliament, recently declared, to solve the illegal immigration crisis, “[W]e must open more safe and legal pathways to Europe.” She then announced her plan to expand Indian immigration. As one critic of the proposal opined, “This is like bringing down the murder rate by making it legal to kill people.”

The NSS’s criticisms of Europe are designed to inspire a mutually beneficial effect, but the document questions whether any change will be too little, too late:

Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory. We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe. . . . [Yet o]ver the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter. (p. 26-27)

For these last two sentences, European leaders and pundits branded President Trump as a racist and xenophobe, accusing him of rupturing the longstanding Western Alliance, seen most visibly in NATO, the American-led security shield that has defended Europe from outside aggression since 1949. However, the NSS, read objectively, is simultaneously trying to warn and encourage Europe to get its house in order to maintain the alliance for both American and European peace and prosperity.

If they do not act soon, their nations will, due to unchecked immigration from the global south, demographically and culturally transform to the point that they will no longer support the Western values that made the alliance possible in the years after World War II. Their people will shout “Allahu Akbar!” rather than “Liberté, égalité, fraternité!”

The Bible prophesies that the modern nations of Israel will suffer Great Tribulation, “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7). They will be beaten militarily, and their surviving people taken into captivity. Along with other continent-wide political and cultural weaknesses, human migration will play a significant role in weakening them.

Clearly, it has already begun its work, destabilizing once-strong European nations. If it continues—and too few in Europe are rising to stand against it—it may lead to shattering the longstanding ties between them and their powerful brother across the Atlantic. At that point, their enemies can pull them down one by one. The viability of the Western Alliance is worth watching closely.