The New York Times: Trump isn’t interested in fighting a new Cold War but wants a new war of civilization
The New York Times published an op-ed by Thomas Friedman titled, “Trump isn’t interested in fighting a new Cold War, but wants a new civilizational war”.
The article is in response to the Trump administration’s 33-page National Security Strategy released last week.
“It has been widely observed that while the geopolitical rivalry between us and Russia and China is more intense than at any time since the Cold War, and with Moscow and Beijing increasingly aligned against America, Trump’s 2025 National Security Doctrine makes almost no mention of these two geopolitical adversaries,” Friedman comments.
While the report reviews US interests around the world, what interests me most is its approach to our European allies and the European Union.
It refers to activities carried out by our sister European democracies that undermine political freedom and sovereignty, migration policies that change the face of the continent and create conflicts, censorship of freedom of expression and suppression of political dissent, sharply low birth rates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.
Friedman notes that he implicitly understands, though not explicitly, from the strategy paper that “we will judge you not by the quality of your democracy, but by how tough your measures are in curbing the flow of migration from Muslim countries to southern Europe”.
“It’s language unlike any previous US national security survey, and in my opinion, it reveals a profound truth about the Trump administration’s second: the fact that it came to Washington to fight a third civil war in America, not to fight a new Cold War to defend and expand the borders of democracy”.
“In my opinion, he seeks to wage a civilizational war over the concept of the American homeland and the concept of the European homeland, with a focus on race and the Christian-Jewish faith, and who is an ally in this war and who isn’t,” Friedman adds.
“This was the main reason why the MAGA movement began to move away from Western Europe and closer to Vladimir Putin’s Russia — because Trump supporters saw Putin as a defender of white Christian nationalism and traditional values more than EU countries,” Friedman quotes economist Noah Smith on his blog on SabStack this week.
In other words, “the protection of Western civilization — with an emphasis on race and religion — becomes the focus of American national security, and the greatest threat becomes uncontrolled immigration to America and Western Europe, not Russia or China”.
Defense analyst Rick Landgraf writes on the defense website War on the Rocks that protecting American culture, spiritual health, and traditional families are portrayed as essential requirements for national security.
