From Brexit to Bannon’s failed Movement, the through‑line has always been fragmentation: dismantling the European Union into smaller, more pliable states that Washington could manage one‑by‑one. Where Bannon faltered, Heritage has stepped in — not only with slogans, but with policy machinery designed to export Trump’s nationalist agenda across the Atlantic.
‘Make Europe Great Again’ and more from a longer version of the National Security Strategy
With its calls for “strong, traditional families” and the “reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health,” the latest National Security Strategy is a major departure not only from its immediate predecessor, but even the first Trump administration’s.
A longer version of the NSS, circulated before the White House published the unclassified version late Thursday night, shares the main points: competition with China, withdrawal from Europe’s defense, a new focus on the Western Hemisphere. But the unpublished version also proposes new vehicles for leadership on the world stage and a different way to put its thumb on the scales of Europe’s future—through its cultural values.
Here are some takeaways from the unpublished version, which was reviewed by Defense One.
“Make Europe Great Again”
While the publicly released NSS calls for the end of a “perpetually expanding NATO,” the full version goes more into the details of how the Trump administration would like to—quote—“Make Europe Great Again,” even as it calls on European NATO members to wean themselves from American military support.
Working from the premise that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure” because of its immigration policies and “censorship of free speech,” the NSS proposes to focus U.S. relationships with European countries on a few nations with like-minded—right-wing, presumably—current administrations and movements.
Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland are listed as countries the U.S. should “work more with…with the goal of pulling them away from the [European Union].”
“And we should support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life…while remaining pro-American,” the document says.
Related:
The Heritage Foundation goes from MAGA to MEGA — Make Europe Great Again
Better the second time
It’s not the first time MAGA has attempted to galvanize the European right. Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon unsuccessfully tried to unite populist nationalist parties under the Movement think tank in 2019, hamstrung by a lack of buy-in from the parties themselves.
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It’s not just reproductive rights. Meloni’s government has pulled out of a memorandum of understanding on the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese government’s ambitious program that aims to finance over $1 trillion in infrastructure investments. It effectively blocked Chinese telecoms giant Huawei from being a part in telecommunications development.
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Heritage and its allies in the Trump administration have everything to gain from stronger nationalist parties in Europe, which are also pushing for delays in climate and agriculture regulations and sided with the US and Big Tech on digital regulation. Earlier this year, Heritage hosted the presentation of proposals by two far-right European think tanks, Hungary’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) and Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, to overhaul and hollow out the EU, undermining the commission and the European Court of Justice.
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The unexpectedly swift and wide-ranging implementation of Project 2025 in the U.S. has boosted Heritage’s credentials in Europe, said Kenneth Haar of Corporate Europe Observatory, a non-profit that monitors lobbying in the EU. “Trump’s wholesale adoption of their agenda has given them unparalleled status,” he said. Now, Haar added, Heritage “is not just a think tank from the U.S., it is a representative of the MAGA coalition. It is not an exaggeration to say they are carrying out foreign policy on behalf of the president.”
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