If the just-published “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” was intended to infuriate the old line globalist elites in Europe and the United States, then it has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its authors. Take, for example, the essay this morning by Jacob Heilbrunn over at that “other” Spectator. Heilbrunn manages the not inconsiderable feat of dismissing the document as “incomprehensible” and “negligible,” while at the same time suggesting that it’s important enough to cause our key allies consternation and dismay. European leaders should ask themselves why young Americans should be asked to fight and die on their behalf. One can find similar comments virtually everywhere one cares to look, but Heilbrunn and those like him miss altogether two absolutely essential points. Like so many foreign policy establishment pundits, Heilbrunn routinely dismisses Trump as incompetent and lacking the consistency of purpose necessary to sustain a coherent foreign policy strategy worthy of the name. Heilbrunn contemptuously asserts that “President Trump has most likely never read” the document, a sentiment in accord with much elite commentary. I beg to differ, for two reasons. First, anyone who has bothered to follow Trump’s formal foreign policy statements over the course of the years, will see this “National Security Strategy” as the further articulation of themes he has articulated for many years. I’ve frequently called attention to Trump’s major foreign policy address in Warsaw in 2017, which prefigures, at a broader level, essential themes of policy philosophy elaborated in the new National Security Strategy. Respect for alliances, alliances built on mutual respect and conditioned by the notion that everyone pulls their own weight. Check. Endorsement of nationhood as the fundamental building block of the international order. Check. The idea that all nations should take care of their own interests, while working together for the common good. Check. Europe, in particular, should take greater responsibility for its own security. Check. Most fundamentally, the Warsaw speech identifies, in no uncertain terms, what Heilbrunn and others insistently condemn within the new National Security Strategy, namely, the manner in which European elites have opened the door to a civilizational threat from Islamist radicalism, a threat already far advanced through uncontrolled immigration, a threat that these elites seem utterly unwilling to address. The Warsaw speech characterized the threat as “radical Islamic terrorism” and insisted that we — and the “we” clearly includes Poland and other like-minded European nations — will “always welcome new citizens who share our value, our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.” And in the very next paragraph, he makes the connection with Islamic terrorism explicit. The National Security Strategy builds directly on this, and this is the nub of its supposed “grave insult” to our European allies. The offending passages read as follows: [Europe’s] economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. 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. Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation. There’s nothing novel in this, and the contrast is not between “Trumpism” and European values, but rather between those Europeans who still hope to save their own civilizations and those who’ve wholeheartedly drunk the globalist Kool-Aid. The National Security Strategy raises a serious question: if the current civilizational erasure continues, will there be anything left worth fighting for? Germany’s beloved Christmas street markets now take place only behind heavily armed security against Islamist attacks. French churches are desecrated or destroyed, and whole suburbs have become sharia “no-go” zones. In the UK, rape gangs too often go unpunished, and the governing class goes out of its way to ignore their connection to the “religion of peace.” And as the foregoing excerpts make clear, it’s not just the surrender to the Islamic tidal wave, but also the civilizational solvent of rampant secularism that is at play. Too often, the secular elites simply want to bury their heads in the sand. A commonplace of current conservative commentary in these European countries is that military rearmament is largely pointless when governments no longer believe their countries worth defending, when young patriots are alienated from their homelands, and when the enemy — quite literally, thousands of radicalized, military aged young men, have already taken residence “inside the walls.” Why should we fight for a country that hates us is the question often asked by young men across western Europe, even as it was asked until very recently here in the U.S. Instead of venting their hurt feelings about Trump’s National Security Strategy, European leaders should ask themselves why young Americans should be asked to fight and die on their behalf — and on their terms — when they seem hell bent on surrendering everything we might have in common. If they won’t defend their civilization, why should we? Living comfortably in their well-off enclaves, communicating only within the globalist bubble, the European elites and their American counterparts refuse to see that their civilization is gravely threatened, not by Donald Trump, or Giorgia Meloni, or Jordan Bardella, or Nigel Farage, but instead by the genuinely civilizational threat of radical Islam. The elites will not fare well when the caliphate comes to claim them. When the time comes — and, make no mistake, the time is coming — it will be the ordinary folk, the workers and farmers, those connected to a place, those nurtured in a love for family, community, and country, who will answer the call, and this will be true in every country. Killers will only be stopped by those with something genuine to defend and the courage to fight back. Donald Trump may not be a conservative by many traditional measures — that’s a discussion for another time — and his foreign policy often zigs when some of us wish it would zag. But through two presidencies he has consistently articulated a world view that is conservative in the best sense, a world view that upholds the values of what we once called Western civilization. He’s not always a nice guy, his National Security Strategy — and it is definitely his strategy is not wrapped up in the usual back-slapping feel good platitudes beloved by the transatlantic foreign policy community. But they are very much the words that community needs to hear. Trump kids himself if he thinks that he’ll ever be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, but if he succeeds in chivvying the Europeans to finally grow up — and grow a pair — then he’ll have earned a more lasting reward, the gratitude of generations to come. Perhaps Jacob Heilbrunn and his ilk might pause to ponder that. READ MORE from James H. McGee: The Burning of Bethany Magee Getting Ahead of Ourselves About the 2028 Elections TDS Now Resembles Orwell’s ‘Two Minutes Hate’ James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk finds the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian backed terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.