WORLD ROUNDUPWhat Would Teddy Roosevelt Think of the “Trump Corollary”? | Japan’s Efforts to Wean Itself Off Chinese Rare Earths | Vietnam Tries to Escape the U.S.-China Trap, and more

Trump Calls Europe “Decaying” Group of Nations with Weak Leaders  (Lara Spirit, The Times)
US president singles out London, saying it is now a “different place” and referring to London mayor Sadiq Khan as “vicious and disgusting.”

Why Trump’s “America First” Security Strategy Is Misguided, and Dangerous  (Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, New York Times)
The administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, released last week, is by turns incoherent, ahistorical, and specious. This strategy document focuses the United States’  attention on the Western Hemisphere. It subjects strategically crucial regions and allies to relegation and, in the case of Europe, outright subversion. It denigrates the European Union “and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty,” while implicitly contemplating Europe’s right-wing nativist parties as instruments for “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory.” Those comments effectively codify JD Vance’s hectoring speech at the Munich Security Conference last February. As the United States systematically eviscerates its constitutional order and international standing, it presumes to tell Europe that it risks “civilizational erasure.”
This exposes an America morally and politically devouring itself while its true enemies, like Russia, watch astonished by their good fortune. The strategy looks like the Janus face of a fraying domestic constitutional order, providing geopolitical cover for domestic authoritarian rule and corporate aggrandizement.

It’s Time Europe Got to Grips with the MAGA Challenge  (Economist)
How Donald Trump can be used as a weapon against his ideological allies on the old continent.

The Neocons Were Right  (David Brooks, The Atlantic)
Not about Iraq. But the moral tenor of their political writings could be an antidote to Trumpism.

Trump’s Team Sees Europe’s “Erasure.” Europeans See a Hostile U.S.  (Ellen Francis, Washington Post)
Relations between the U.S. and Europe hit a low point as President Donald Trump’s security strategy slams Europe but largely ignores threats from Russia and China.

What Would Teddy Roosevelt Think of the “Trump Corollary”?  (James Holmes, National Interest)
The new “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine echoes a similar set of ideas promoted by Teddy Roosevelt a century earlier—but differs in at least three ways.

Vietnam Tries to Escape the U.S.-China Trap  (Derek Grossman, Foreign Policy)
Hanoi has been quietly expanding partnerships beyond the Indo-Pacific.

China Knows How to Punish Countries That Offend It  (Economist)
It is skillful in the dark arts of economic leverage.

Lessons from Japan’s Efforts to Wean Itself Off Chinese Rare Earths  (Economist)
Numbers one, two and three: it’s a lot harder than it sounds.