To fix what he sees wrong in Europe, President Donald Trump has prescribed the continent’s ancient and most lethal poison — nationalism.
Nationalism is a patriotism, a love of one’s own country, that has curdled into a hatred of other countries and of minority groups at home. In the 20th century, nationalism was the driving force behind the two world wars. For 80 years since, Europeans have worked, with considerable success, to leach this poison. Now Trump wants to return it to its prewar domination of European politics.
All this is in the Trump administration’s new national security strategy, a broad overview of America’s place in the world, its friends and enemies, its priorities and how to promote them. It sweeps across the planet, arguing for U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, promoting Vladimir Putin’s Russia not as an adversary but as a potential partner and, in general, truncating American foreign policy from its traditional goal of spreading and protecting democracy to a series of business deals. The main theme is “America First” — a nationalistic slogan if there ever was one.
Basically, Trump sees Europe committing “civilizational erasure.” By this, he means a “loss of national identities and self-confidence,” brought about mostly by immigration. In the end, some “NATO members will become majority non-European.”
This is, obviously, pure racism, a frequent handmaiden of nationalism. It is the theory of the great replacement — a trope of American white supremacists in which white people become a minority in the United States — but was transported without shame to Europe.