“Dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem. And we have common enemies. At least, that’s how it’s been for the last 80 years. We need to stick to that; it’s the only sensible strategy for our shared security. Unless something has changed,” – this is how Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk responded to the publication of the new US National Security Strategy on Friday.

In this document the United States essentially returned to the vision of transatlantic relations presented by US Vice President J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025. Many experts compared it to Vladimir Putin’s 2006 Munich speech due to its frankness and harsh criticism of the transatlantic security system.
The new strategy portrays Europe as a fading civilization that has abandoned its own legal and moral principles, opened its doors to uncontrolled migration and ultimately proved incapable of providing for its own security. As the document stipulates, the United States has no intention of doing anything to save it, as the era when it, like Atlas, shouldered the burden of security costs alone, is over.
“European leaders who read this document should take the view that the traditional transatlantic relationship is dead,” -said Katja Bego, a senior fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House.
The section on Europe also assesses the situation in Ukraine. In it, Washington accuses Europeans of harboring “unrealistic expectations” about the conflict’s outcome, and presents itself more as an arbitrator between Brussels, Kyiv and Moscow.
“The Biden administration was more concerned about Ukraine’s borders than our own. … This is, of course, absurd,” – declared US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at the Reagan National Defense Forum.
Brussels and Kyiv’s hopes that pressure would force a split in the Trump administration also failed to materialize. As writes a Daily Mail reporter Elina Shirazi, on Wednesday Secretary of State Marco Rubio missed an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers for the first time since 1999. This came as a shock to the Europeans who had gathered in Brussels in order to discuss the changing situation in the Ukrainian theater. According to Shirazi, this indicates that Rubio, who has always been considered a hawk in relation to Russia, fully shares the Trump administration’s approach «America First» and prefers to concentrate on higher priority areas, in particular – the Western Hemisphere.
Le Monde correspondent Elsa ​​ Conesa notes that the conviction is growing in Europe that the US is deliberately sidelining it from the Ukraine negotiations. Following Kushner and Witkoff’s visit to Moscow, the Americans failed to notify their European allies of its results, effectively unilaterally dismantling the joint work previously accomplished in Geneva. The US intends to conclude a deal with Russia separately from Europe and present it with a fait accompli.
“For Trump, Europeans are like Guatemalans; he doesn’t respect them,” -former French Ambassador to the United States Gérard Araud told Le Monde.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also still unaware of the results of the Kushner/ Witkoff mission to Moscow. At least, that’s his official position. Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Rustem Umerov announced that he plans to personally brief the president on the results of his American visit. The fact that the talks took place on December 4-5, and Zelenskyy still knows nothing about them (or is pretending not to), can only indicate one thing: what was discussed there is extremely disadvantageous to him.