ANDREW NEIL: A brand new safety plan reveals what Trump actually thinks about Europe – and it could not be extra chilling: ‘You’re by yourself, losers. Bye!’

Donald Trump to Europe: ‘You’re on your own, losers. Bye!’ That’s the blunt message at the heart of his administration’s new National Security Strategy.

It was slipped out by the White House in the early hours of last Friday morning, to not nearly enough scrutiny, given the harrowing implications for a Europe left to its own devices without American protection.

You could see it as a wake-up call for a slumbering continent. But Europe’s ignored plenty of wake-up calls in the past. So don’t hold your breath.

At the weekend, Europe’s leaders consoled themselves with the thought that the document was probably just the work of a few Europhobic MAGA militants – why, the President himself probably hadn’t even read it. That optimism was swiftly punctured yesterday when Trump doubled down on the anti-Europe rhetoric, in echoes of his new strategy paper. He denounced Europe as ‘decaying’, led by ‘weak’ leaders who ‘don’t know what to do’.

The President lambasted them for failing to control mass migration, which – he says – is changing Europe beyond recognition.

And he slammed them for having no clue about how to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, which is about to enter its fourth year.

Now, in a lot of what Trump has to say about Europe, he’s not wrong. Europe is indeed cursed with a weak and feckless leadership. It has gorged itself on welfare spending for too long, while leaving America to do the heavy lifting when it comes to defence.

Its leaders love to put their arms around Ukraine’s president Zelensky in visual proof of their solidarity – they were at it again in London this week – but won’t provide him with the military means to beat Russia nor proffer a peace plan to bring hostilities to an end.

Trump welcomed Vladimir Putin to Alaska in August as he tried to find a solution to the war in Ukraine

Trump has denounced Europe as ‘decaying’, led by ‘weak’ leaders who ‘don’t know what to do’

Even so, the implications of Trump’s new strategy document are chilling. It argues that economic decline, military weakness and the loss of national identity are leading to the ‘stark prospect of [Europe’s] civilisational erasure’. ‘It is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest,’ it warns ‘certain Nato members will become majority non-European’ – by which it means non-white.

It offers not one example of a European country where this will happen any time soon – and I can’t think of any. But that doesn’t stop it from rallying behind Europe’s ‘patriotic’ parties of the nationalist hard Right, which it declares to be the only ‘cause for great optimism’ in Europe these days.

In his subsequent interview Trump mused about throwing his support behind far- Right European leaders who align with his own vision of the continent. It would be hard to think of a more dramatic rupture between America and the governing elites of Europe’s most important countries, including Germany, France and even Britain. If Trump truly means what his strategy paper says, it’s hard to see Nato in its current guise surviving for long.

An exaggeration? Then see what the Trump strategy document has to say about Russia. Even as it beats up relentlessly on America’s European allies, there is not a word of criticism of the Kremlin or Trump’s pal, president Putin. Indeed, it explicitly blames Europe, not Russia, for prolonging the war in Ukraine.

It has nothing to say about Russian aggression. It doesn’t even describe Russia as a competitor, much less a threat. Instead it seeks ‘strategic stability’ with Moscow.

It claims, wrongly, that ‘a large European majority wants peace’ along the lines Trump has proposed. It then argues, even more wrongly, ‘that desire is not translated into policy’ largely because of European governments’ ‘subversion of democratic processes’.

So in Trump World the autocrats are not to be found in Moscow. They’re the ones running things in Berlin, Paris and London.

No wonder the Kremlin has described the strategy document as a ‘positive step’ and ‘largely consistent with Moscow’s vision’. That pretty much says all you need to know about Trump’s national strategy.

But it’s not just Kremlin autocrats cheering it on. It is now official US policy not to urge on other countries’ ‘democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories’.

Cue applause from Beijing to Tehran, with the absolute monarchies of the Middle East chiming in. Trump and JD Vance are fond of lecturing Europe about the need for more free speech – and, again, they have a case. But nary a word about free speech where it doesn’t even exist, such as China and the Gulf states.

Trump’s indifference to Europe contrasts with a more measured approach to Asia. Most importantly, he does not hang Taiwan out to dry, as his Pacific allies, such as Japan, the Philippines and South Korea, feared. US strategy ‘does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait’.

It recognises Taiwan’s importance as a bulwark against Chinese expansion in the middle of the ‘First Island Chain’ that runs from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines, penning in China’s navies and air forces.

It promises to sustain American forces capable of deterring any attempt to take Taiwan or to control the sea lanes near that island or in the South China Sea. There are no equivalent words of comfort or reassurance for Europeans.

Long before this latest strategy statement, I wrote in these pages that Trump was primarily concerned with his own backyard – the Western Hemisphere – but that a need to control the rise of China would keep the US involved in the Asia Pacific region, if not as much as America’s allies there would wish. 

But in Europe he had essentially no interest. Trump’s National Security Strategy puts rocket boosters under that world view. It concentrates on the Western Hemisphere, reasserting the Munroe Doctrine (named after an early 19th century president) which warned the rest of the world to stay away from America’s own backyard. It even adds what’s being called a Trump Corollary – asserting America’s right to intervene when it sees fit. Watch out, Venezuela and Colombia!

More backyard interventions will propel Trump’s European withdrawal. His Ukraine peace plan is going nowhere. I suspect he’ll simply throw his toys out of the pram and give up, abandoning Europe at a time when it is ill-equipped to stand on its own two feet.

It is bereft of leadership capable of providing direction. It is struggling to rearm when budget deficits and national debts are already monstrous. It remains addicted to welfare even as Putin, encouraged by Trump’s indifference, grows more emboldened on Europe’s eastern borders.

In all this Britain is complicit. We used to lead the way in military matters in Europe, second only to America. Under Keir Starmer we’ve become part of the problem, not the solution.

Our PM exaggerates a slight increase in UK defence spending which is barely more than an upward nudge. He has committed himself to a bigger rise early in the next decade, without a clue how to get there. He heads a government which prefers to pour billions more into welfare.

Starmer says he wants Britain to be closer to Europe again. In all of the above he is already swimming in the European mainstream. He is part of a burnt-out European establishment that fears being swept away by the populist Right – a sea-change Trump says he wants to encourage.

A populist Right, we should remember, which has the same soft spot for the Kremlin as Trump. So perhaps there is method – or at least consistency – in Trump’s madness. But it’s hard to imagine a grimmer prospect for Europe – or a Starmer Britain tagging along with it.