Europe
will be 'unrecognizable' in 20 years due to immigration, White House strategy
document claims
Political
experts told NBC News that the reports' language regarding "civilization
erasure" and immigration echoes "great replacement theory."
Dec. 5,
2025, 11:00 PM GMT+1
By
Patrick Smith and Dan De Luce
A new
national security document released by the White House late Thursday claimed
without evidence that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure” and will be
“unrecognizable in 20 years or less” due to immigration that has made European
powers militarily weak.
The
33-page document, titled National Security Strategy and dated November 2025, is
a detailed expression of President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign
policy and argues the United States should scale back its vast commitments
around the world and focus its efforts on securing the Western Hemisphere.
The
document has no listed author but features a foreword by Trump. The president
calls the document a “roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most
successful nation in human history.”
The
comments on immigration echo the “great replacement theory,” experts told NBC
News, a debunked white nationalist conspiracy theory that white populations are
being replaced by immigrants from majority nonwhite nations, particularly from
Africa.
White
House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the comparison was "total
nonsense."
"The
devastating impacts of unchecked migration, and those migrants’ inability to
assimilate, are not just a concern for President Trump, but for Europeans
themselves, who have increasingly noted immigration as one of their top
concerns," she said. "These open border policies have led to
widespread examples of violence, spikes in crime, and more, with detrimental
impacts on the fiscal sustainability of social safety net programs. As the
President remarked at the United Nations General Assembly, his efforts to
secure the border saved America from such destruction, and other countries
would be wise to follow suit.”
Some
believers of the theory, which include Elon Musk and various far-right groups,
think the racial replacement is actively planned and administered by national
and multinational governments, often as part of a wider Jewish conspiracy.
Mark
Sedgwick, a professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University in
Denmark, who has written about the great replacement conspiracy theory, told
NBC News that the language of the White House document fits in with the
language typically used by proponents of the theory.
Sedgwick
said the assertion that Europe would be unrecognizable in 20 years was
“obviously complete nonsense.”
“Demographic
change just doesn’t happen that quickly. So they’re drawing on not very
well-grounded panic scenarios,” he said.
In a
section titled “Promoting European Greatness,” the national security document
references the long-term economic decline of European nations’ share of global
economic output, which is blamed on “transnational regulations” — referring to
the 27-nation European Union — and the changing ethnic mix of the continent.
“But this
economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of
civilizational erasure,” the document says.
“The
larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other
transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty,
migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife,
censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering
birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence,” the document
continues.
The
document adds that as a result, it is “far from obvious” whether European
countries can “remain reliable allies.”
“We want
Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to
abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the document reads.
In
listing the strategy’s priorities, the document says ending mass migration is
essential.
“In
countries throughout the world, mass migration has strained domestic resources,
increased violence and other crime, weakened social cohesion, distorted labor
markets, and undermined national security,” it says.
Rod
Dacombe, a politics expert from King’s College London, said: “The phrase
'civilizational erasure' does indeed sound aligned to Great Replacement Theory
and this shouldn’t be a surprise — it has been a feature of populist right
rhetoric for some years now.”
The
comments are the latest in a line of incendiary comments on race from Trump and
his allies. In a campaign speech in 2023, Trump said migrants were
"poisoning the blood of our country," comments which then-President
Joe Biden’s campaign compared to Adolf Hitler.
Epstein
files
Epstein's
final hours: A 'flash of orange,' a Google search and a makeshift noose
This
week, Trump attacked Minnesota’s Somali population and said they should “go
back where they came from.”
The
document breaks with decades of U.S. foreign policy under previous
administrations that viewed European governments as a democratic bulwark
against Russia, and that the United States had a role to play in helping
bolster the continent’s security to deter Moscow.
Apart
from painting European states as weak and in decline, the document also accuses
NATO allies of pushing for “unrealistic” goals in the war in Ukraine in alleged
defiance of their own citizens — and avoids referring to Russia as a threat.
“The
Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold
unrealistic expectations for the war,” the document says, without elaborating.
“A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into
policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic
processes,” it states.
That
passage carried echoes of Russia’s repeated accusations that European powers
have been fueling the war in Ukraine and undermining peace efforts.
Carl
Bildt, a former Swedish foreign minister, wrote on social media that the
document appeared to fixate on European countries as a danger to democracy:
“The only part of the world where the new security strategy sees any threat to
democracy seems to be Europe. Bizarre.”
Instead
of vowing to counter Russia, the strategy called for reestablishing “strategic
stability with Russia” by negotiating a ceasefire in the Ukraine war.
More
broadly, the strategy paper also suggests the U.S. will scale back its role and
commitments around the world and focus its resources primarily on the Western
hemisphere, as it did in the 1800s.
“The days
of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,”
it says.
Elsewhere,
the document sets out how Trump’s foreign policy fits with his ongoing trade
war, in which trade tariffs were raised against both economic rivals and
political allies.
The
document says Trump’s predecessors “placed hugely misguided and destructive
bets on globalism and so-called ‘free trade’ that hollowed out the very middle
class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence
depend.”
The
document argues that the U.S. must be the dominant power in what it calls the
“western hemisphere” and says any alliance or aid must be “contingent on
winding down adversarial outside influence,” a possible reference to the
growing influence of China in Western countries. The remarks come as China has
touted its stability to Latin American countries amid Trump’s second term.
In
practical terms, the document calls for the U.S. to have a “more suitable”
Coast Guard and Navy presence to tackle illegal migration, human trafficking
and drug trafficking. It adds that there should be “targeted deployments” to
secure the border and defeat cartels, using lethal force where necessary.
Beginning
in September, the Navy has carried out at least 22 lethal strikes on boats the
government has said were being used to smuggle drugs such as fentanyl into the
U.S, including the most recent on Thursday. Experts have said the boats are
more likely to be carrying cocaine bound for Europe.
Last
month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed an aircraft carrier strike group
to move to the Caribbean to support Trump’s efforts to “counter
narco-terroism.” The president has also suggested the U.S. could target alleged
drug traffickers on land in Venezuela.
This is
part of what the strategy document calls a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe
Doctrine, the policy set out by President James Monroe in 1823 that said the
U.S. wouldn’t accept foreign interference in American affairs.
Patrick
Smith
Patrick
Smith is a London-based editor and reporter for NBC News Digital.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário