477. How Trump’s Security Strategy Destroys The Old World Order

Has Trump's 2025 National Security Strategy officially upended 80 years of American foreign policy? Why does it warn of Europe's "civilisational erasure" while downplaying threats from its traditional adversaries? And is it finally time for the UK and Europe to chart their own course? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Gift The Rest Is Politics Plus this Christmas - give someone a whole year of Rory and Alastair’s miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, an exclusive members’ newsletter, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. Just go to https://therestispolitics.supportingcast.fm/gifts And of course, you can still join for yourself any time at therestispolitics.com or on apple podcasts. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away free TRIP Plus membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP Plus gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit ⁠fuseenergy.com/politics⁠ ⚡ For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to goalhanger.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green, India Dunkley Senior Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Rory Stewart?

  This is the most significant document we've seen. It's the sort of bible of Trump foreign policy.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  It's one of the most seismic documents of Trump's presidency. It's confirmation of a changed worldview.

• 0:14Rory Stewart?

  It's America ripping its own mask off, saying we're all the worst things that our enemies always said we were.

• 0:20Alastair Campbell?

  It is America amazing. Russia and China, kind of neutral, we don't really worry about them too much. But then it says Europe, bad.

• 0:28Rory Stewart?

  We're not partners or allies anymore, we're vassals. And if we twitch a tail, we're going to be punished beyond imagining.

• 0:36Alastair Campbell?

  And it makes Europe more vulnerable than we've been in our lifetime.

• 0:41Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:45Rory Stewart?

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• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN, because on my grand European tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns, the West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed... Managed to watch it. There you go.

• 1:59Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve. And of course, the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 2:23Alastair Campbell?

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  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 3:54Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 3:57Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And Rory, we're going to devote the whole episode to the US national security strategy. You and I both read it. We've read it several times. I think it's one of the most seismic documents of Trump's presidency. It's confirmation of a changed worldview and it's one that we're all of us going to have to deal with. And I think it's going to confront all of us with some very, very difficult decisions. Politicians, all of us. I think this is a really, really important document. So I think it's sensible that we devote the whole episode to it today. Although it's had quite a lot of coverage, I'm not convinced that people have really woken up to just how seismic and how big

• 4:40Alastair Campbell?

  this thing is. It's consistent with a lot of the things that we've heard. It's consistent with Project 2025. It's consistent with America First. It's consistent with J D Vance's speech in Munich last year. It's consistent with a lot of the posture that Trump has been taking in foreign policy. But when you see it all down, written down in print, page after page after page after page, what did you make of it when you first read it?

• 5:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's astonishing. So I know you've also been looking at some of the past national security strategies. I geeked out and went all the way back to George W. Bush's 2002. I read Obama's, I read Biden's, and I read the first Trump strategy. This thing comes out of a completely different universe. And in fact, actually, almost the biggest contrast is with the first Trump strategy, which was written by a woman called Nadia Shadlo, who was brought in with Fiona Hill, who we interviewed on leading, and was an attempt to provide an alternative, I guess, more realist idea of American foreign policy. But this thing is totally different. So let's just hit the highlights and maybe we

• 5:46Rory Stewart?

  can dig into the detail in a second. The first most dramatic thing is that it's very, very short, and it's very, very blunt, particularly about Western Europe. In fact, it effectively is a strategy that says,

• 6:03Rory Stewart?

  We're not going to talk about what the Chinese military is doing. We're not going to talk about what the Russian military is doing. We're not even going to mention North Korea. So those three big threats, peer competitors to the US, which have been the centre of every US national security strategy for decades, their militaries barely feature in one of those countries that's just excluded. We're going to essentially say we're not very interested in Africa. We don't have much to say about what people are doing in the Middle East or Asia. Our real focus is on saying Latin America effectively belongs to the United States. This is called the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine is about the US being dominant in its own hemisphere, particularly in relation to Latin America.

• 6:46Rory Stewart?

  And Western Europe is up in headlights as the one region of the world where they say minority governments are trampling on democracy and human rights. That's a reference to the idea that in France and Germany, parties, the governments, are trying to control far-right parties and that the US needs to resist the current trajectory of Europe. In other words, resist this whole liberal democratic move and instead put its weight behind what it calls patriotic parties, for which read far-right parties, and that America's allies in the region are the countries of Central Eastern Europe, by which they mean countries like Hungary.

• 7:24Rory Stewart?

  The Trump corollary essentially says that no foreign powers can have troops or own critical assets or minerals or rare earths or have critical investments in Latin America. Foreign, of course, does not include the United States. The United States, by implication, can have troops in Latin America, can own critical assets, but nobody else is allowed in.

• 7:46Alastair Campbell?

  You see, I think it's even more kind of malign than that in a way, if you think about it. So Monroe, just people who don't know their American history, James Monroe was the American president and the Monroe Doctrine was in 1823 and it was basically saying

• 8:01Alastair Campbell?

  European colonialism, you've had your day, get out of our, this is our sphere now. We won't interfere in Europe, you don't interfere here. But then we had, and I love the way that Trump sees himself in these great historical terms. Because we had the Monroe Doctrine, then we had the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904, which is what opened the door to them, say, well, okay, we can do Latin America as well. Okay, because we don't want those pesky Europeans coming back in it. So we've got to remember, this America Europe history is, it's, this sort of fits within that. So what Trump is saying, his corollary, as you say, is that they can, they have the right and the power to intervene in wherever they think their interests are at risk.

• 8:44Alastair Campbell?

  But nobody else can come anywhere near them. That is basically what they're saying.

• 8:48Rory Stewart?

  It is the most startling announcement of a vision.

• 8:51Alastair Campbell?

  And it is a vision, and it's a rival to the vision, as you say, that has been preceded in the national security strategies of both the Republican and Democrat presidents. Recent national security strategies have all focused in some part on the threat from climate change. The only mentions of climate change in this one are to basically sort of do their usual net zeros, a made up load of old nonsense. So it's a massive change on that front as well. The big winners in this, without a doubt, are those countries that were defined in every previous national security strategy as America's chief adversaries. There is literally nothing on North Korea, which if you remember this time in Trump's first term,

• 9:35Alastair Campbell?

  he was on his fire and fury mode because North Korea was developing nuclear weapons. They have continued to develop nuclear weapons. They now have four times as many as they had when he was doing his fire and fury, and they are not even mentioned. Russia and China, in his 2017 national security strategy, were front and centre as America's adversaries. They were trying to damage American interests. Now, that assessment was right in that China has continued to do the things that they criticised them for then. Russia's gone even further with an all out war in Europe. If you're reading this from a Russian perspective, you're basically thinking, they've sort of copied and pasted a lot of our thoughts and on the Europe stuff.

• 10:18Alastair Campbell?

  So there are four paragraphs on Russia. Four paragraphs, there are several pages on Europe, four paragraphs on Russia, and none of them are critical. None of them point out who caused this current war. They are back to the position of seeing themselves as a mediator. They talk about bringing a swift cessation so that we can get back to stable relations, by which they mean business as usual, lots of money for our rich friends. And the reaction to this in around Europe has been very, very interesting because you had the Coalition of the Willing again yesterday, you had Starmer, Merz and Macron meeting Zelensky in Downing Street, and they looked a bit more worried than they normally do,

• 11:04Alastair Campbell?

  and I think they're right to look a bit more worried. But the question is, how do they react to this? And before I hand back to you, Roy, let me just read you one of the reactions to this document, and it came from a guy called Matthias Mußdorf, and he is a 59-year-old cellist who has an attachment with a Russian university, but he's also a member of the German parliament, and he's the foreign affairs spokesman for the Alternative for Deutschland, the AFD. And he said this: "Everything the AFD has always said is now United States strategy. One, migration is suicidal for societies. Two, Islam does not belong in Europe. Three, Russia is not an enemy but pursues the same interests in terms of stability.

• 11:47Alastair Campbell?

  Four, remigration, kicking people back out even if they're German citizens, is necessary. Five, nations form diversity, not leftist rubbish." This relates to Trump saying that the nation-state is the single most important unit in the world. "Six, freedom of opinion is essential, brackets provided, is our opinions. Seven, the office for the protection of the Constitution must be dissolved." This is the entire basis of the German Constitution. They have an office for the protection of the Constitution to prevent a return to this awfulness of the past. "Eight, politicians must take responsibility. Those who have trampled on these values in the past belong in prison." "Nine, media and NGOs..."

• 12:31Alastair Campbell?

  Must be cut off from state funding. Ten undemocratic patronizing international treaties must be dissolved. And organizations that oppose national interests must be left behind. Now, that is actually a pretty, it's biased, but it's a pretty fair assessment of what the American document says. And for them, we talk a lot about democracies not interfering in each other's politics. The Americans have interfered directly now in the politics of every single European country by saying these are the parties that they want to win.

• 13:01Rory Stewart?

  I'd like to take a second just to look at the history of these national security strategies, because I think it's it's difficult to see how radical Trump two is without quite getting them. So you can almost see the whole story of American power in these strategies. These traditionally are very complicated interagency processes where the State Department, the Department of Defense, the CIA and many, many others, US Treasury, feed into a very complicated process. Somebody holds a pen and a president then signs off. And they're actually often unbelievably impressive. They're often much clearer than the British equivalents. They're not full of waffle and platitudes. They lay out a very clear idea of what America thinks is going on.

• 13:43Rory Stewart?

  So to go through them, and you can almost see the whole story of American power here. The two thousand two strategy, which was produced when you were in government, is George W. Bush, straight after nine eleven. And this is a document that says America is at a position of unparalleled power and influence. And that the future of the world is liberal democracy, free markets and free trade. That America is going to work through its alliances, that it's profoundly proud of NATO, the UN and the post-war order. And it's always going to be on the side of democracy, free trade and free markets against its adversaries around the world. And the combination of American strength and the strength of these ideas

• 14:28Rory Stewart?

  will lead to an inevitable push of democratization. Fast forward, we then get Obama in twenty ten, just eight years later. And suddenly the national security strategy is a very different America. It begins actually with much more of a sense of American weakness. This is just after the financial crisis. So Obama is saying, security for the US actually begins with fixing things at home. He's beginning to signal American withdrawal from the world. It's all about burden sharing, but again, alliances are right at the centre. So if alliances are there for Bush as a way of reinforcing American values, for Obama, alliances are there to share burdens.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 15:10Rory Stewart?

  We then get to Biden's strategy. I'm going to come back to Trump one in a second. Biden's strategy is, and you've talked about this in the past, is a vision of America where the fundamental balance is between democracies and what he calls rule respecting countries. In other words, American allies who are not democracies, he probably means the Gulf monarchies, for example, but who are nevertheless their allies, against what he calls the non-democratic revisionist states. In other words, Russia and China, North Korea, Iran. And that strategy is all about alliances and it's all about accepting that the world can't be stopped at borders. So it emphasizes climate change, it emphasizes pandemics. Of course, you know, things like COVID and Ebola,

• 15:55Rory Stewart?

  transnational terrorism and the way that actually we're in a global world that has to work together. But the most interesting one of all, and I'll finish on this, is if you get to that extraordinary first Trump strategy. The first Trump strategy is an attempt to define a realist strategy. Those other ones that I've described so far are pretty idealistic. They're all about democracy, liberty, international institutions. This one is the best attempt, for me at least, to provide a plausible conservative vision of American foreign policy. It's one that would actually resonate with the type of Tory that I would be. And it says, look, America can't do everything in the world. We have to be prudent.

• 16:38Rory Stewart?

  We have to think about our own national interests when we're doing development projects. We have to emphasize how America can benefit. But it then says,

• 16:49Rory Stewart?

  In the end, we have to call out evil where we see it. We have to recognise that America's generosity has been good for America. So it tells the whole story. This is Trump one, tells the whole story since the Second World War in terms of America's setting up these international institutions, funding NATO generosity. But it says that has been good for American security and prosperity. It says, we may not be able to do everything and help everyone, but that doesn't mean that we can help no one. It says there is absolutely no moral equivalence between our democratic allies in Europe and countries like China and Russia. So it's actually about trying to bring a defence of the post-war liberal order and the American national interest together. And that is what's all gone out of the window.

• 17:33Rory Stewart?

  We're now in a world where America is basically saying this strategy, and it says it again and again on every page, America is going to be the most powerful country in the world, the richest country in the world, the technological leader, the unparalleled military. We're going to dominate the globe. Nobody can touch us. There's going to be no risk. We're going to be completely invulnerable and we're going to do it with no alliances, no partnerships, no international institutions. We're going to be the most powerful country in the world and we're going to do it alone by drawing up drawbridges around us. And that paradox, the fact that you're trying to, on the one hand, dominate the world and on the other hand, say you want to have nothing to do with the world, is the problem that runs through the whole document.

• 18:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I didn't go as far back as you did. I remember some of the national security strategy we were in government, but I did reread the 2017 and it's a different world. And you mentioned Fiona Hill and her role. I was told that the person who was holding the pen in 2017 was McMaster, a kind of serious grown-up guy. Now, as you say, normally, this is a process, it's an inter-agency process.

• 18:40Alastair Campbell?

  And it sort of takes quite a long time to put together. You have the feeling with this one that they've basically, and this is the power of somebody like Trump and the clarity with which he communicates himself, even with all the inconsistencies. He has written a classically Trump introduction to the thing, the new one, which essentially is all the bluster, all the bravado. I've solved all these wars, even though Thailand and Cambodia is already kind of unraveling, but I've solved all these wars. America has done more in my first year than they've done in the four years of Biden failure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the worldview in this one, the worldview 2017 was very much Russia,

• 19:21Alastair Campbell?

  China, bad, America and allies, good. Okay. This one, it is America, amazing. Russia and China, kind of neutral, we don't really worry about them too much. The Gulf monarchies, why shouldn't they be allowed to chop up people like Khashoggi? It literally says, we've got to stop hectoring the Gulf about their traditional ways of rule. I think we know what we're talking about there. But then it says, Europe, bad. So that is why this thing is such a change. And the other inconsistency with this, the nation state is the most powerful thing. We're talking today on the day that Australia is bringing in its social media ban for children under 16. And it's really interesting to think

• 20:03Alastair Campbell?

  about that. That is the nation state doing something that it thinks is good for its country and its young people. But the enemy of that are these tech giants, mainly from America, who resent any form of intrusion into their regulatory world. And one of the most, let me just give you a couple of things that I spotted online this week. Musk got fined, ex got fined $120 million by the European Commission for sort of various scams and misinformation stuff going on. His response, the EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries so that governments can better represent their people. And do you know the first response?

• 20:48Alastair Campbell?

  Medvedev, former president of Russia, exactly.

• 20:52Rory Stewart?

  And just to calculate that, I think that's something like, I don't know, I get my figures wrong, but it would be something like one three thousandths of his wealth. I mean, he's three thousand times richer than that, fine.

• 21:01Alastair Campbell?

  No, way, way, way more than that, way, way more than, if we're a trillionaire, it's peanuts, it's literally peanuts, but the EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, brackets like Australia, who we're going to try and try and sort of do in because of this silly social media thing, so that governments can better represent their people. And Medvedev agrees, but get this one, Rory. Kirill Dmitriev, who we talked about recently, he's the guy who's the sovereign wealth fund guy from Russia, who's been dealing with Whitkoff and Jared Kushner to try and sort of carve up Russia between American and Russian business people. He says this, EU bureaucrats have turned into enemies of free speech. This in a country where ex Instagram, LinkedIn, Signal, Snapchat are all banned.

• 21:45Alastair Campbell?

  Enemies of Western civilization and enemies of themselves. And the first response to that one, Elon Musk. The EU woke Stasi commissars are about to understand the full meaning of the Streisand effect. This is where the Streisand effect is this thing where Barbra Streisand tried to stop somebody taking pictures of her house and it led to there being more pictures of her house. That's what that's about. So he's basically saying Europe is making a big mistake in taking on him in this sort of so-called free speech space. Now, what this says and what this is underlined by this document is that Europe, which felt very, very comfortable in this relationship with the United States, is now sensing, we know

• 22:27Alastair Campbell?

  that Russia is an enemy, and Yvette Cooper's making a speech about some of the hybrid warfare that they're doing these days that is sort of escalating. I think she's making that speech today. We know that Russia sees us as an adversary, but what this document says is that America is looking at Europe in a similar vein. And the reason I pointed to the body language at this meeting yesterday of Starmer, Macron and Metz is that at some point, we are going to have to confront this. And the reason they don't want to confront it now is partly because we are still reliant. On American intelligence in Ukraine, we are still reliant on the ability to buy

• 23:09Alastair Campbell?

  the weapons that we need to help Ukraine from them. But as we build up our defence industries, I think we are kidding ourselves if we think that we're in the same space that allows us to sort of feel great if Donald Trump comes to on a state visit and rides around Windsor Castle in a carriage.

• 23:25Rory Stewart?

  One of the things that we've seen with the interviews with Mike Pompeo and others on leading is that America believes that there will be no blowback, there'll be no resistance. So this is a document that effectively says we can insult our allies, we can humiliate them, we can tell elected governments that they're minority governments abusing minority rights, that we can support far-right parties against our elected partners, and there will be no consequences. Their vision for it is Europe will take it lying down. Europe will spend 5% of GDP on defence and they'll spend most of that buying American kit. They

• 24:07Rory Stewart?

  will accept us saying we're going to resist the entire direction of European liberal democracy. They will accept us saying, in effect, we want to dismantle the European Union and return everybody back to sovereign independent states and hand these states to far-right parties.

• 24:22Alastair Campbell?

  Can I just jump in there? I think this relates to the thing about Musk. An individual, even Germany, even France, even the UK, on their own, not as powerful as we used to be. The only body in the world, I think, that is that's showing a bit of intent and the competence to take on some of these tech bro billionaires and trillionaires in Musk's case soon to be, is the European Union and the European Commission. That is why they have set themselves the target of seeking to destroy it. And I think we should understand that is what this is about. This is about trying to destroy the one international organisation that still believes in the rule of law, that still believes in human rights, that still believes in international law. And we have taken it for granted that America would always

• 25:07Alastair Campbell?

  believe in those things too. And that belief has gone.

• 25:10Rory Stewart?

  So they believe that we have no alternative, that we're just going to have to tolerate. Being humiliated, weakened, financial pressure, we're also going to accept opening up all our economy to American tech. We're going to come and support them in their policies in the Pacific and put our troops behind them. You know, look at what they're proposing on Gaza, which is no American troops on the ground, but the British are going to provide 1500, the French will provide 1000, the Norwegians, the Germans will operate through. We'll just do what we're told. We're not partners or allies anymore, we're vassals. And if we twitch a tail, we're going to be punished beyond imagining. We're going to be hit with tariffs and they're going to reveal that our entire tech stack

• 25:55Rory Stewart?

  depends on the United States. We got a little hints of this, didn't cover it completely, but do you remember when these sanctions came in against the head of the International Criminal Court? America shut off all his email accounts. Microsoft, a private company, was ordered by the United States government because this guy had been sanctioned by Trump to essentially shut off his entire access to data, IT, the computer system. They've just done this to UAE. They've come in and they've said to UAE, you cannot balance this against China, you are going to be 100% US-integrated in every aspect of your AI, data and tech from one end to the other. And if there are any Chinese components, we're going to shut you down. And UAE has caved.

• 26:39Rory Stewart?

  And they will rely on being able to pick off country against country and they'll feel, well, we're doing it pretty successfully. They're not holding together. It's not as if we stood up for Canada, it's not as if we stood up for Europe. We thought, oh, well, okay, you know, we'll get our 10% deal and we'll let Europe be screwed. Europe's not standing up for Switzerland. Switzerland gets hit with 37% tariffs, poor old Switzerland. Oh dear, Canada's being hit, oh dear, Japan's being hit, South Korea's being hit. We're not holding together at all. So their gamble is, yeah, you know, you and I will say, this is outrageous, our vassal slave status is being revealed. But if you're Pompeo, you just shrug and say there's absolutely nothing they're going to do about it. They're going to have to do what they're told.

• 27:18Alastair Campbell?

  And they may have a point, but it's very hard not to think, and if you look at this in a kind of historical sense, there's an awful lot of arrogance and hubris going on. And I think that's what you objected to when we interviewed Pompeo. I should just say, by the way, I think I'm right in this, Rory, I think I heard Francesca Albanese, who we interviewed on leading, the UN rapporteur on the Palestinian occupied territories, where she's been had a verified status removed on social media platforms, getting buggeration in relation to bank accounts and all sorts of stuff. So this is clearly a game that they're playing.

• 27:52Rory Stewart?

  Just quickly on this one, because I'm obsessed with this. You know, we covered that stuff around decarbonizing the fleets. So there was this meeting in London, 10, 15 years' time, what sort of vessels you buy. And America sabotaged it. But I only just realized that, talking to diplomats who were there, American officials, and I heard this directly from diplomats there, came up to individual officials from individual companies and said, countries said, if you don't vote for us, you're not going to get a visa to the US and we're going to shut down your bank account. So this very naked, America controls the dollar, America controls the financial system, America controls the tech stack, and we will use it to actually threaten individual diplomats at negotiations.

• 28:32Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, let's have a quick break and then back for more.

• 29:29Speaker 05

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• 30:04Rory Stewart?

  As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and division, one national consensus still stands firm. Roast potatoes.

• 30:16Alastair Campbell?

  Oh god, all this British stuff. If you're wondering, however, what to buy the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas, might I gently suggest a year's membership to The Rest Is Politics Plus?

• 30:32Rory Stewart?

  It's the thoughtful kind of present. Ad-free listening, bonus episodes, early access to Q and As, book discounts, and perhaps, I think, most interesting, it's our mini-series, available only to members focusing on the world's most complex characters and topics. We've already explored Rupert Murdoch and J D Vance and we're doing many more subjects to come.

• 30:51Alastair Campbell?

  So think of this as a civilised gift to allow families to disagree agreeably over Christmas. What could be nicer?

• 31:01Rory Stewart?

  And if you've left it until Christmas Eve, as I fear I often do, the great thing is it's digital. No queues, wrapping or panic. The membership lands neatly in their inbox on Christmas Day.

• 31:10Alastair Campbell?

  So spread a little political peace and goodwill. Head to therestispolitics.com and click Gifts.

• 31:23Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 31:26Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 31:27Alastair Campbell?

  So we mentioned last week that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, didn't go to NATO, even though the regular Foreign Ministers' Meeting, he was the only one. And they all turned up, apart from Rubio. He sent the deputy, this guy Christopher Lando. And I've been checking into him as well. So I'm thinking, well, maybe he's just a kind of, you know, your average deputy, and he'll just sort of, you know, toe the line with you. He said this: "When these countries", and I think we say "these countries", there's a hostility there already, he's talking about Europe, "when these countries wear their NATO hats, they insist that transatlantic cooperation is the cornerstone of our mutual security. But when these countries wear their EU hats, they pursue all sorts of agendas that are utterly adverse to US interests and security:

• 32:12Alastair Campbell?

  censorship, they're obsessed with this nonsense, economic suicide, climate fanaticism, open borders, disdain for sovereignty, promotion of multilateral governance and taxation, and get this one, support for communist Cuba." This is a sort of form of madness that they see, they are finding every reason they can to see Europe as being hostile. And I think we shouldn't shy away from the fact, and I get why it's impossible for Starmer to say this, impossible for Macron to say this, impossible for Mayors. But when they say things like, this is now back to the paper, the security paper, "it is far from obvious whether certain European countries

• 32:54Alastair Campbell?

  will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies." But then goes on to say that the worry about this is that certain NATO members are on track to become majority non-European. Now, what does that mean? What that means is majority non-white.

• 33:13Alastair Campbell?

  And that, I think, is what's linked this back to Vance, back to Project 2025. And we should be in no doubt, I go on a lot about, you know, too many governments don't have a clear, long-term compelling strategy. This is a clear, compelling, by their lights, long-term strategy.

• 33:32Rory Stewart?

  I just had the delight of being on a stage with Alex Brusovitz, who many listeners won't have heard of, but almost all Americans will have done. He's the, the big America First Trump social media champion. He's 29, he now talks like Trump, his hand gestures imitate Trump. And I challenged him exactly about this. I said, you know, what, I, I read the national security strategy, what does it mean that the majority will become non-European? You mean non-white, don't you? And he went, no, no, no, no, I, I just mean you're being overrun by people from poor third world countries who are violent and carry weapons and are going to destroy your countries and don't share your values, right? And of course, he has a part of a movement that has this new idea of heritage Americans.

• 34:17Rory Stewart?

  So what I said to him, you know, what, what would happen if I said to you, America is going to become majority non-American within a few decades? What, what would you interpret by that statement, right? These people are European citizens, talking about race, aren't you? It seems as though their idea is that a real American is a non-indigenous American who arrived between about 1600 and 1850 voluntarily. And everybody else is somehow not really a real American in the same sense. And I guess the same vision of Europe. Um, the other thing though, that I don't get, and I'd, I'd love your view on this, is what is their long-term thinking? Because this is a policy that talks about making America strong and invulnerable.

• 35:04Rory Stewart?

  But doesn't actually name any of the actors, any of the countries that really threaten American strength and vulnerability, China, Russia, North Korea. Instead, what it does is it weakens allies and probably, I think, turns allies into adversaries. It dismantles organisations like the European Union, rearms countries in Europe, gets proto-fascist parties like the AFD into Germany, hands them big defence budgets. So creates a Europe with heavily armed nationalist governments without any European Union cover on it, and therefore creating a much more dangerous, unstable, conflict-prone world, which will

• 35:49Rory Stewart?

  give huge opportunities for Russia if it wishes to increase its influence in Europe. So all of this, over the medium term, makes America weaker, much more exposed, much less secure. So what's in their heads? I mean, they can't be stupid. So what are they doing? Why are they pushing a vision that will make exactly what they fear, just as Musk, I think, is trying to create the civil war that he claims already exists in Britain? What's going on here?

• 36:17Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I mean, it's funny. I was talking to somebody yesterday who's writing a book about Putin, and we were discussing what it must be like to be working alongside Putin, the Putin of today, rather than the Putin, say, of 20 years ago, when, you know, there was a debate about which direction he was going to take Russia in. We now know, there's no doubt about the direction he's taken Russia in. And Putin is now surrounded by people. When we talked to Radek Sikorski, the deputy prime minister of Poland, he made this point that Lavrov used to be a kind of a foreign minister who was taken seriously because he injected into the debate, he had his own ideas. He's now just a complete vassal for

• 37:00Alastair Campbell?

  a dictator. Now, I think what we've got with Trump is, you know, and I was thinking about, as this document was being put together, this security strategy, it is, it is Trumpy and through and through. He has written this introduction, and then everything that follows flows from that. I think they believe.

• 37:21Alastair Campbell?

  They really believe that this is going to make them the richest, most powerful country in the world ad infinitum. I think they believe that. Now, I think, what I haven't heard is a sense of how the Democrats intend to handle this, because I think there is, let's just imagine, because Trump's ratings are falling, you keep saying the opposite, but his ratings are falling, they're actually quite low for a serving president. Why? Because the economy is not doing that well for the people that he said he was going to help. Let's imagine it gets worse, and let's imagine the Democrats are able to make the link between the worsening economic conditions for working people and this isolationist, far more aggressive foreign policy. I think that opens an opportunity for the Democrats.

• 38:06Alastair Campbell?

  But the, I think, honestly Rory, I think the answer to your question, why are they doing this, is because Trump believes this is working, and all the people around him have to confirm that bias in everything they say and do every day.

• 38:20Rory Stewart?

  One more question for you. Why on earth, if that's what you thought about the world and were doing, why would you say it? I mean, this is literally, makes no sense to me at all. If you genuinely have a worldview where what you're going to do is screw over your allies, bully your way into their markets, weaken them economically, destroy the European Union, why would you say it? A traditional gangster would go around being polite. In fact, the traditional American policy, even when it was doing naughty things, was to frame it in positive language. You know, this is a partnership, we share values, we

• 39:00Rory Stewart?

  have common interests, etc. What I simply cannot understand is, if you believed this stuff, if you really were that cynical, that aggressive, really wanted to destroy the world order, it doesn't help you to say it so explicitly. Why on earth would you announce your evil plan? No doctor evil announces their evil plan.

• 39:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, because, go back to what we've said about Trump for some time, that he sees the world in very, very simple terms. America has to be the most powerful country in the world. No other country can threaten America. What happens over there is none of our business. So China, they can have another massive sphere of influence. Russia, they can do what they want. The one we worry about is Europe, because actually they can be a bit of a threat to us, particularly on the commercial business side. So- Russia and China, they've read this report and they've thought, yeah, we like that.

• 39:55Rory Stewart?

  Maybe domestic audience, authenticity, playing well with the MAGA base. I mean, maybe even if it's a mad thing to do to signal to Europe what you're about to do to them. Maybe it, maybe they're less concerned actually with the real impact of this. Just more interested in creating media chat, provoking, keeping the whole reality TV show going.

• 40:17Alastair Campbell?

  But if you go back to what you said about Mike Pompeo, I think they will sit there and think, you watch, the Europeans won't fight back on this. So yesterday, for example, Keir Starmer made a point when talking about Ukraine, about how grateful everybody was to Donald Trump for taking this forward and getting us as close as we have. Now Meares, to be fair to him, he basically said, there's a lot in the American paper that we really disagree with. Now, I think that is a better way to approach this. I think we have to call this stuff out, even though there's a risk, there's a risk to it. But the other thing, Rory, I wouldn't underestimate, pardon me, doesn't want to say this, but I think we've seen enough of Trump now to know that the guy's a complete narcissist. He believes that he's popular in the polls. He believes that the American economy is doing better because of tariffs.

• 41:03Alastair Campbell?

  He believes that every country in the world sits there thinking, we just want to be like America. And on the thing about where the pen was held on this one, I mean, I, I, I, there are various sort of versions of this, but I know that it's quite a, I, I, I sort of do detect the, I detect the worldview of Stephen Miller for sure. But somebody who kind of is pretty well plugged in told me that the, the guy holding the pen in the latter stages was a guy called Andy Baker, who is National Security Advisor to Vance and Deputy National Security Advisor to Trump. So in quite an interesting position where he's covering both bases. And he is, he is the guy who apparently in the pre Munich was the one who was persuading Vance,

• 41:44Alastair Campbell?

  we've already really go for them, really go for Europe and really go for Ukraine. Now, there's been a consistency to that. And I think that they'll be sitting there thinking, this is about American power. As you say, it is blatant and open now. When he, when they said, we've said this, when he says America first, he totally means that, okay? But where they see it going is, is the American economy has to go well. They have to really win all this battle for rare earths and quantum and all that stuff, which he thinks they're doing. Not least because of the tariff game that he's been playing. So if that succeeds, he will say job done. If it doesn't succeed, and my sense is it probably

• 42:26Alastair Campbell?

  won't, then I think there is a massive opening to his opponents, his opponents at home and his opponents abroad. The trouble with all his opponents abroad at the moment, they cannot out themselves as opponents because they're worried of the consequences. Does that make sense?

• 42:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, I think that does. I mean, my, my final thing, which is maybe too mad, is I sometimes wonder whether there isn't a sort of, that at some level, they don't desire chaos, that if you, subconsciously, maybe they're actually, they're sort of, they're bringing on the god of amaral, they're accelerating the whole thing, they're people who feel, I mean, some of the tech bros talk about this explicitly, that they thrive in chaos. If you were to say, but you're creating a more violent, unstable, nationalistic, conflict-prone, heavily armed world, there's part of them that's like, yeah, better than managing decline slowly, let's have the apocalypse, let's have the god of amaral, and let's produce a national

• 43:23Rory Stewart?

  security strategy that brings it on. They're like a, an aging prizefighter that, that wants to go out and sort of kind of blaze of dramatic madness.

• 43:32Alastair Campbell?

  I've used this phrase before about Trump, strategic chaos. You're sort of carrying on, you've got a, you've got a few points that you never divert from, America first, only I can resolve this, America's the most powerful country in the world. He's got a few things that he says every single time he makes an outing, but surrounding it is chaos. That's always been the case with Trump. But there is a strategy to it, that's the point. And I think what we're seeing here is the strategy that you and I have talked about a lot, that Europe has actually seen coming. And I mean, you know, Tim Snyder, who we interviewed, and who's like us, very critical of Trump and what have you, but he wrote a very interesting piece of comment where I saw it, but he's basically pointing out, there are within this

• 44:15Alastair Campbell?

  document, literally direct echoes of the Russian equivalent, in terms of the ideological direction that it's, that it's pointing to. And so I, I think we, we've just got to accept, I think, that this is a, this is a seismic change, it's a strategic change from their perspective. We can argue about whether that's sensible from their perspective or not, but it is real, and it makes Europe, I think, more vulnerable than we've been in our lifetime. And I think you can see that in the desperation in that meeting yesterday. Yet another coalition of the willing. Yeah, but what we're actually going to do? The answer to that is all we can do is build up our own defenses, our own defense industries and develop them. And keep trying to buy time with Trump.

• 45:00Alastair Campbell?

  But every, every step so far, you point, you were one of the first people to point this out. You said, listen, I think we have ages ago, you said, we might just have to face the fact that in the Ukraine war, he's on Russia's side. Well, yeah, and that's become clearer. This is why I feel so, we're going to talk in question time about reform and the funding. And we've talked a bit today about the AFD. What Russia is banking on is that conventional politics, which is now being fueled by Trump and this document across Europe will lead to the fall of Macron replaced by the hard right. Metz replaced by the hard right. Starmer replaced by the hard right in the UK.

• 45:44Alastair Campbell?

  Maloney already, I mean, she's, you know, doing quite a good job of not being as hard right as we thought she'd be. But she's still a very, very right wing politician. They were talking in this document about countries, they don't even say what they were, what they were. It's all, you know, that we, we're having to rely on these unstable democracies, they call them. Whether they meant Romania, whether they meant Poland, I don't know what they meant. But they basically are saying, we want to call out their weaknesses, get their weaknesses exploited by the hard right. And that is a massive, massive, massive change. And, you know, I don't think we are waking up to it enough.

• 46:23Alastair Campbell?

  And I think we've got to, our public, those who are tempted to vote for these hard right parties of where saying, I don't like here Starmer. This is now, I think, a kind of generational battle about what sort, not just what sort of country we want, what sort of world do we want? There's another line, this is me speaking very much as a Brit that really leapt out at me. Let me just read you this sentence. America is understandably sentimentally attached to the European continent. And of course to Britain and Ireland. I thought that was a fascinating piece of writing because basically saying, reminding us, we're no longer part of Europe. Ireland, of course, is part of the European Union, but we're Britain and Ireland.

• 47:07Alastair Campbell?

  And, but it's also sort of. I don't know if this is me being a little bit paranoid, a little bit too defensive, but I sort of felt that was a way of saying you lot don't really matter that much. And if you think about the whole special relationship thing, this, this is virtually the only time that the United Kingdom itself is mentioned. So America is understandably sentimentally attached to the European continent and of course to Britain and Ireland.

• 47:33Rory Stewart?

  There's one small one on that. I, I think one word, a pompous word here, is this whole question of legitimacy. In other words, the way that traditionally we thought about soft power is that it's very important for countries like the United States to have a degree of legitimacy, to have values, to have allies, to have partnerships, because those things actually make you stronger and safer. Other people have often, since Second World War, tried to tear the mask off the United States and say it's nothing but a brutal neo-imperial power imposing its will on its vassals. And it's been very important for America to deny that and say, no, that isn't the nature of our relationships with the world. And that's really helped it.

• 48:16Rory Stewart?

  It's helped it build coalitions of allies, it's helped it project its values, it's used rules-based international institutions in order to achieve a level playing field for American businesses, for American security. What's so odd about this document is it's America ripping its own mask off, saying we're all the worst things that our enemies always said we were. We are completely naked and transactional. These people are not our allies, they are our vassals that will do what we say. And in doing so, they're basically suggesting there's no point in soft power, there's no such thing as legitimacy, there's no such thing as values, that it's possible to rule the world through simply asserting your strength. And that's never been true historically.

• 48:59Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's a mad vision. The Roman Empire didn't do it, the British Empire didn't do it, Ming Dynasty China didn't do it, and there's a very good reason why you don't do that in the world.

• 49:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 49:10Rory Stewart?

  You began by saying this is the most significant document we've seen, and I think it is. It's the sort of bible. Of Trump foreign policy. I think it's astonishing that they've chosen to rip the mask off and be quite so explicit. I think it's mesmerizing that the Vance contempt for Europe and the sheer aggression is put on paper in this way. And I think it suggests some very, very interesting things about the way they operate that they can be that clear. But we're now in a world in which there can no longer be any doubt and shimmying around. No longer people saying, oh, no, Trump doesn't really believe that. That really isn't what their foreign policy is. This connects logically, absolutely clearly to

• 49:55Rory Stewart?

  Vance's Munich security speech, to Musk's support for the AFD, to Trump's statements at the United Nations. A common theme of a vision of America is going to be the biggest, most powerful country in the world, and it's going to do so by trampling on former European and Latin American allies and not really accepting that it faces a military threat from Russia and China. It's a recipe for chaos, but it's a chaos in which they somehow believe they're somehow going to thrive.

• 50:25Alastair Campbell?

  Strategic chaos. There we are. We'll be coming back to it again and again and again and again, I suspect. Right. Question time tomorrow, Rory. I think we should talk about, we had a lot of questions about Nigel Farage getting a nine million pound donation from a Thailand-based cryptocurrency dealer. We're still getting a lot of feedback on the Zach Polanski interview. Some of the things you said about some of his economic heroes and mentors. And we want to talk about that. We want to talk about massive problems facing young graduates at the moment, which I think is fueling a lot of this anger about inequality. And then we should touch on that really quite remarkable World Cup draw with Mr. Sicafantino.

• 51:06Rory Stewart?

  Great. Well, looking forward to talking to you then. So much more to do.

• 51:09Alastair Campbell?

  See you then.

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