America has released a new National Security Strategy (pdf link) – which is telling Europe and Asia they’re on their own, while vowing to interfere with the western hemisphere.

TLDR:

My impression is that Putin has outlined a vision to Trump where the U.S. withdraws from Europe and Asia, and in return is given a free hand to focus on dominating the Americas. This is where the Greenland and Canada annexation talk comes from.

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) December 4, 2025 at 11:12 PM

What the Trump administration wants to do with Europe:

Phillips P. OBrien / Phillips’s Newsletter

The New US National Security Strategy
Trump Says Openly That the US Wants to Dominate Europe and Make it MAGA
…One thing that stands out (and we can see it in other recent moves such as the Trump administration weakening its already pathetic sanctions on Russia, cozying up to China, sandbagging Ukraine and Europe, and weakening its commitment to NATO) is that the administration is being more and more open about its intentions.
…this is a US, openly-stated plan to dominate Europe through the expansion of power of populist-right wing (and pro-Putin it must always be remembered) parties. It means European unity will weaken, the EU will be downgraded, NATO will be de-fanged, much of Europe will be made reliant on buying US weapons. and the continent will have to take economic dictation from the USA. At the same time Russia’s needs and interests will now be high on the agenda….

What the Trump administration wants to do with Ukraine and Russia:

Justin Ling / Bug-eyed and Shameless

A League of Extraordinary Putinists
A cabal around Donald Trump won’t rest until they’ve sold out Ukraine made nice with Putin
….It’s easy to weave a grand conspiracy theory from all these linkages and shady meetings. But you needn’t, because there is a very simple narrative to sum all this up: Putin thinks he can trade sweetheart resource deals to the U.S. for a chunk of Ukraine, and he thinks having interlocutors trusted by Trump pitching the idea will make it more likely to succeed. More than that, he thinks that marrying this overt corruption to the very ideologues who want to abandon Ukraine for being corrupt will be a one-two punch that will solidify both Russia’s presence with the White House and Trump’s popularity with his base.
And he’s right. Witkoff wants that too. It worked….
…So, to my mind, it’s done. Trump held out for Ukraine longer than anyone expected him to, but the administration is going to succumb to the pressure and temptation, and he will opt for rubles instead of principles.
In chatting with some Ukrainian contacts, however, there’s a clear message coming from Kyiv: It’s not the end of the world.
As one well-connected Ukrainian put it, “this isn’t 2023.”
Even two years ago, Ukraine was utterly reliant on American shipments of 155m shells, anti-air missiles, drones, intelligence, cash, and so on. But Kyiv always knew it couldn’t win a war on donations alone.
Since then, Ukraine (with American investment) has built up its own defense industrial base. By the end of 2024, Kyiv reported that fully 30% of its weaponry was made locally. In September of this year, Zelensky reported that number had jumped to 60%. With respect to drones — which have come to replace Ukrainian artillery amid a global shell shortage — 96% of those used on the battlefield were made in Ukraine.
Europe, meanwhile, has accelerated donations in a huge way, donating more in the first three quarters of this year than the Biden administration gave all last year.
There are American donations that will be tough to replace. Its anti-air missiles are critical in stopping incoming Russian drones and missiles. But Ukraine is getting better and better at deploying more sustainable made-at-home solutions: Disrupting ballistic missiles with Ukrainian music that spoofs the missile’s location as Lima, Peru; and developing cheap-to-make interceptor drones.
…America finally giving it to the bombardment of Russian flattery has a perverse upside. It will allow the world to stop pretending as though Washington remains relevant.
Earlier this year, Ukraine’s non-American allies set up a structure to manage exactly this: The Coalition of the Willing. It is the vehicle through which the rest of the world can continue defending against this imperial aggression, regardless of what the wannabe imperialist in the White House does.
Throughout this Potemkin peace process, Europe and Canada have had to continue pretending that America is reliable. Soon, perhaps, the charade can end….

France and Germany warn US could ‘betray’ Ukraine’ in push for peace, Speigel reports
➡️ https://t.co/kN2BuXAqHN pic.twitter.com/ej1BUAXwbo

— FRANCE 24 (@FRANCE24) December 4, 2025

Dean Blundell

🇺🇦💥 BREAKING: France & Germany Just Told Ukraine “Don’t Trust the U.S.” — And That Should Terrify Every Democracy on Earth
A leaked call with Zelenskyy just shattered 75 years of transatlantic certainty.
If you ever needed proof that the world has officially slid into the geopolitical Upside Down, here it is:
France and Germany just warned Ukraine not to trust the United States.
The two backbone countries of the European Union — the same ones who’ve spent 75 years depending on American leadership — just told Volodymyr Zelenskyy privately (and now, thanks to a leak, very publicly):
“Be careful. The U.S. might sell you out.”
That’s not a diplomatic whisper.
That’s not a “concern.”
That’s a five-alarm fire.
…Europe didn’t warn Ukraine because it doesn’t trust Kyiv.
They warned Ukraine because they don’t trust Washington.
They see the Trump Regime willing to treat Ukraine like a bargaining chip.
They see a Dictator who wants a headline, not a solution.
They see a peace plan that rewards the invader and punishes the invaded.
And they see a world about to slide into something dark and familiar.
So here we are:
-Ukraine is being pressured to sign away land.
-Europe is telling them not to trust America.
-Russia is sitting back, grinning like a Bond villain.
-And the U.S. — once the adult in the room — is now the wildcard no one knows how to manage.
The West is at a crossroads.
If America betrays Ukraine now, it won’t just lose a partner.
It will lose the world’s trust.
And once that’s gone, it doesn’t come back.

So how are Europe and Canada responding?

🇨🇦🇪🇺 Canada has reached a final agreement to join the EU’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe program, – POLITICO

The breakthrough follows months of technically complex negotiations and was communicated directly to ministers taking part in Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council;

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— MAKS 25 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) December 1, 2025 at 12:58 PM

The Gripen Question: How U.S. Tariffs and Strategic Drift Are Pushing Canada Toward Europe’s SAFE Armaments Program

Canada’s decision to join the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) armament credit program changes the strategic context of its future fighter procurement.
1/17

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— OSINT Intuit™ (@urikikaski.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 5:31 AM

Shankar Narayan / The Concis

Merz and Pistorius Just Closed the One Gap Putin Was Counting On
Europe’s Entire Defense Collapsed Into One Question. Germany Answered It.
… the picture becomes unmissable: Merz and Pistorius are not improvising. They are building an air-defense architecture layer by layer, system by system, factory by factory.
….Putin’s entire plan to expand the war and outmaneuver NATO rests on one core assumption: Russia can produce missiles and drones faster than Europe can produce the interceptors to stop them.
He bet the war on saturation.
Europe made that bet look rational. Europe had almost no layered air-defense. It had almost no interceptor reserves. It relied almost entirely on U.S. Patriot stocks, which were already stretched thin by the demands of Ukraine and the Middle East. A single Russian missile surge could have cracked the system.
Putin saw that gap and built his posture around it. If Ukraine ran out of Patriot interceptors, the next Russian campaign would have punched straight through civilian infrastructure and command nodes….
Pistorius understood this before most European defense ministers even grasped the scale of the problem. Merz acted on it faster than any other head of government. Together they did the one thing Putin was not prepared for: they closed the gap.
Germany identified the vulnerability, redirected money, redirected procurement, and built the industrial base that Europe did not have. In a war defined by missiles, Germany made sure Europe would no longer be defined by dependency.
By the end of next year, Germany will have the one thing Europe has never had in its modern history: its own layered air-defense shield, with its own interceptor production, and its own ability to sustain a long war without waiting for U.S. permission or U.S. inventory….

So what’s next?

List of countries or blocks that need to urgently decouple from the US to protect themselves:
– Europe
– Canada
– Greenland
– Literally everyone except Russia and Saudi Arabia

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— Irrelephant (@onewheeldoin200.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 6:39 PM

This is why Trump’s National Security Strategy is a fantasy.

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— emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 2:30 PM

I think I would probably care a lot more about the National Security Strategy if we had an administration that actually cared about acting in line with their own stated policies

— James (@gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 8:01 AM

A final word:

shorter trump national security strategy: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”

— Oliver Willis (@owillis.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 8:36 AM