DEMOCRACY WATCHThe First MAGA National Security Strategy
Trump’s ideologically driven statement of strategic intent indicates that the United States could be willing to interfere abroad to promote an illiberal world—a stunning victory for the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.
It would be a mistake for allies or adversaries to read President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released late at night on December 4, as a guide to Washington’s moves over the next three years. But it is significant for a different reason: the first MAGA national security strategy previews a new vision of the United States as an illiberal superpower. The United States’ democratic allies around the world, and especially in Europe, should take notice.
Elevating once-fringe views into the United States’ most authoritative statement of strategic intent is a stunning victory for the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, which is represented most prominently by Vice President JD Vance. It constitutes a sea change in U.S. foreign policy.
Perhaps most illustrative of this remarkable shift is that the strategy marks “correcting” the political trajectory of Europe as an explicit goal of American foreign policy. That includes encouragement of “the growing influence of patriotic European parties.” And, in a stark statement, it calls for U.S. policy to prioritize “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”
The ideological roots of this turn have been spreading for years. As the analysts Sophia Besch and Tara Varma have shown, MAGA has a dense network of ties with revisionist parties on the European far right. Trump’s own affection for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is well known. And Vance has been outspoken, defending far-right parties and meeting with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in February on the eve of their national elections.
What is new, however, is the mandate for interference. The strategy and recent policy decisions suggest that Trump is developing a toolkit to help his illiberal political allies around the world.
Ahead of Argentina’s midterm elections in October, the president offered a $20 billion currency swap and a further $20 billion in economic support—contingent on the electoral success of Trump ally Javier Milei’s party. The gambit paid off and Milei’s party exceeded expectations with 41 percent of the vote.
