The most dangerous publication since Mein Kampf

The recently published National Security Strategy of the United States of America compresses the sprawling aspirations of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 into 29 pages of threat to the global human and physical environment.

Its model of authority and governance recalls the Führerprinzip. As well as the self-congratulatory Presidential preface, Trump’s name appears on average once every page in glowing terms

• President Trump’s Necessary, Welcome Correction
• President Trump has cemented his legacy as The President of Peace
• President Trump has leveraged his dealmaking ability
• President Trump has set a new global standard
• President Trump single-handedly reversed

And so on.

If this document were only a vanity project we could roll our eyes, regret the aesthetic vacuum and move on. But unlike the many strategy documents that get repurposed as doorstops, there is a significant risk that this malevolent text will inform the actions of tens of thousands of American state civilian and military employees.

Racism runs through it like Brighton through a stick of rock

Throughout the document what is presented as normal is to be American, white and male. The underlying assumption is that everything and everyone should aspire to this ideal or accept permanent subjugation and be rightly seen as deviant. All abilities and deficiencies are under the control of the individual, none are social. Racism, and misogyny, do not exist and so do not need to be challenged

At times this is explicitly spelled out.

Re-instilling a culture of competence, rooting out so-called “DEI” and other discriminatory and anti-competitive practices that degrade our institutions and hold us back (p.6)

Diversity is an alien concept, we could all be white, male and able-bodied. We might believe ourselves to be black or female or disabled and lock ourselves into inferior economic and social status but this is just a lack of gumption and an unwillingness to conform to the Aryan archetype. We are all already equal, even though some are paid billions and others peanuts, so no measures are needed to secure equality.

Even more disturbing is the embrace of the ‘Great Replacement Theory’.

it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European (p.27)

The unstated assumption is that these non-Europeans are Muslims and this fear is rooted in Islamophobia. Behind this lurks the antisemitic belief that this corrosion is manipulated by Jews who wish to undermine western Christian civilisation for their own ends.

Monroe doctrine redux: National sovereignty – for USA consumption only

The strategy constantly invokes the idea of national sovereignty and claims “We stand for the sovereign rights of nations”. It is clear however that it assumes that any nation’s sovereign rights only extends as far as they do not conflict the with the superior principle of American interests. Freely entered into transnational arrangements, trade blocks or regulations encoded in international treaties, are deplored as they conflict with the ability of nations to subordinate themselves to American interests. This is both American state interests of being able to exert military domination wherever they wish; and American corporate interests to engage in profit seeking activities without regulation or hindrance, in particular the interests of the US corporates who have funded Trump’s campaigns and vanity projects.

While these policies are global, they are most intense in South and Central America and, it would seem, Canada. Subaltern status is not only for Spanish and Portuguese speakers it is the God-given right of all. The document wishes to apply and intensify the nineteenth century Monroe Doctrine which proclaimed the whole of the Americas as the exclusive domain of the USA and forbade the involvement of competing European states in its affairs.

We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine; (p15)

The suggestion of a “Trump Corollary” is an echo of the [Theodore] Roosevelt Corollary which claimed the right for US to police all the Americas in addition to the Monroe prohibition of European meddling. A claim recently made concrete in the assassination of crews of small boats allegedly carrying drugs, of course not a capital offence even if proved, and even more dramatically in an act of piracy by the US Navy in seizing a Venezuelan tanker.

Alright, far-right: it’s all rights no responsibilities

This central concept of sovereignty as an American privilege is not limited to the Western hemisphere.

We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity (p5)

This is freedom only on America’s terms; security that is on terms laid down by America’s tech billionaires; civilisation as defined by a country fast retreating to Hobbsean individualised savagery; identity rooted in aggressively racist nativism.

Sovereignty is linked to the idea of self-determination, a right accorded to America and that fraction of Palestine’s inhabitants that identify as Jewish. It is definitely not extended to Ukrainians unless that self is Putin. Trump’s America wishes to imitate the worst of Europe’s colonial mentality by gifting territory to local autocrats regardless of the will of the people who inconveniently live there, whether in Gaza, in the Donbas or anywhere else.

The document is strong on rights but unclear from where they derive:

The purpose of the American government is to secure the God-given natural rights of American citizens (p12)

They are either God-given or natural, they cannot be both. The strategy then asserts the authority given to the US Government to secure these rights ‘must never be abused’. We then get a list the of abuses they claim must be avoided but which are all hallmark practices of the current American regime, including restrictions on the freedom of speech and conscience.

We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies. (p12)

We would welcome the pursuance of these aims in America’s claimed closest ally, Israel. We have yet to see any sanction against the multiple restrictions on core liberties by Netanyahu, Ben Gvir et al, even when they curtail the most basic right of all, the right to life, not only for Gazans but even for America’s own citizens murdered by Israel’s armed forces.

However, it is not the right to life or free speech but concerns Trump: it is the unfettered right of America’s social media and surveillance corporations to seek profits without restraint.

There are sections of the document that are refreshingly honest and open. For instance, the section headed “Preserving and Growing America’s Financial Sector Dominance” is as clear a claim to imperial dominance as anything since Victorian British arrogance.

Regarding Europe, the document is unapologetic in asserting that America’s interests are best advanced by strengthening European racism and xenophobia. Trump has long consolidated his power in America by pleasing and underpinning some of the most racist, misogynistic and homophobic elements in American society. He wishes to extend those embraces to Europe.

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 … it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European (p26/7)

There is nothing new in America ‘encouraging’ its political allies in Europe and elsewhere. Sometimes this is by financing politicians and parties, sometimes by financial interference to weaken the economies of states ruled by America’s critics; sometimes by bribery and media manipulation; sometimes, when these ‘more gentle’ methods fail, by direct armed intervention.

Trumps historical misremembering is given full rein.

Throughout history, sovereign nations prohibited uncontrolled migration and granted citizenship only rarely to foreigners, who also had to meet demanding criteria. (p11)

Every one of those Irish, Italians, Britons, Poles, Jews et al who were beckoned by the statue of Liberty must each have clearly met such demanding criteria.

The West’s experience over the past decades vindicates this enduring wisdom. (p11)

Native Americans would surely fully endorse this observation through their experience but were unable to set appropriate criteria for entry into their land.

Drill and mine like there’s no tomorrow – and there won’t be

We might be able to relax and indulge in a little schadenfreude if the increased frequency and intensity of hurricane, floods and fire only wrecked the USA, but oil addiction threatens us all

We reject the disastrous “climate change” and “Net Zero” ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries. (p14)

It might be true that

Cheap and abundant energy will produce well-paying jobs in the United States, reduce costs for American consumers and businesses (p14)

But only if that energy comes from clean. renewable sources rather than from fossil fuels.

It should be unnecessary to quote the findings of the myriads of dutiful scientists who have rigorously compiled the evidence of the disaster that continued, let alone increasing, reliance on fossil fuels will cause. It appears to be useless to recount them to those whose wilful blindness and addiction to coal and oil industry funding is condemning us and our children to increasing danger, hunger and immiseration.

All the science that fits

Trump’s disdain for science goes beyond embracing climate induced death and destruction. In his other actions he appears to think that is too slow a way to kill Americans. It is far quicker to let them shoot each other by abolishing gun control despite all the evidence of its utility. He also appears to hope that those who evade bullets will die from preventable diseases, especially children, by indulging anti-vaccine pseudo-scientists. The strategy’s authors imply that it is only decaying European states that value preservation of their people; the civilisation celebrated by Trump is sub-Nietzerian, crudely believing that what does not kill you makes you stronger.

Hypocrisy is too mild a word

Throughout the document ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, civilisation’ are repeated as Amerca’s aims and this strategy is means to deliver them.  As often as they are invoked, they are followed by proposals that crush one or more of them. A narrow, depressing ‘devil take the hindmost’ Weltanschauung drives it. It is a worldview that insists that no tech billionaire can be wrong; no industrialist has exploited anyone; no mining company ever damaged anyone’s environment or health; and that unfettered American power is good for everyone.

The 50 million who died as result of Hitler’s regime could be dwarfed by Trump induced deaths from storm, fire, flood, famine and disease if this strategy is enacted. Hollowing out of state and community structures that preserve and enhance civilisation is its aim. Rosa Luxemburg famously offered us socialism or barbarism. This strategy offers us the barbarism; it is up to the rest of us to select the socialism option.

As Euripides almost said, those who the gods would destroy they first make President