Make Europe Great Again

Donald Trump wants to promote “European greatness,” according to his National Security Strategy published Dec. 4, 2025. This deeply angered European leaders.

When it comes to Europe, “hostility is official White House policy,” declared the New York Times.

Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said it sounded like something “out of some bizarre minds of the Kremlin.” Norbert Röttgen, a foreign-policy expert for Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union, declared: “For the first time since the end of the Second World War, the U.S. no longer stands with Europeans.” He said the strategy paper is a “second turning point” for European armament—the first was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz agreed, saying that some of the strategy is “unacceptable for us from a European point of view.” As a result, “we in Europe, and therefore also in Germany, must become much more independent of the United States in security policy.”

It’s easy to understand why European leaders feel insulted. Europe’s leaders are “weak,” President Trump told Politico after releasing the strategy. They’re “destroying their countries … most European nations, they’re decaying.” Politico asked him if the strategy document was supposed to be “a message of tough love to our allies to push them to make reforms” or if they’re “just weak and you don’t really want to be allies with them.” President Trump replied, “I think they’re weak.”

No nation wants to get that kind of smackdown from another national leader. Even as he was angering and alienating Europe, President Trump was committing America to supporting a military and cultural transformation in Europe. President Trump’s strategy will lead to the Continent’s revival as the Holy Roman Empire that Herbert W. Armstrong warned of decades ago.

End of European Civilization?

Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” according to the document. It criticizes the “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.”

This is a legitimate critique. Mass migration is transforming Europe. Birthrates are cratering. Authoritarian censorship is intensifying—all problems the Trumpet regularly addresses.

“Should present trends continue, the Continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” the strategy document states. “As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.”

The assessment is that Europe is actively “attacking” America, turning against American values, and rapidly declining. What is America’s response? Persuade Europe to rearm.

Make Europe Great Again?

“We want to work with aligned countries that want to restore their former greatness,” declares Trump’s strategy document. It says America should prioritize “[e]nabling Europe to stand on its own feet … including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense.” Alongside its publication, Pentagon officials told European officials they want Europe to take over most of nato’s conventional defense capabilities by 2027. German defense spending has doubled since 2015 and is on course to more than double again by 2029. But taking over nato’s defense from America will require even more spending.

“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” states the document. Instead, U.S. allies should “assume primary responsibility for their regions.” European nations are first on that list of allies.

The document asserts a new “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine that aims not only to keep foreign powers out of the Americas but also “to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States.”

The Obama administration declared the Monroe Doctrine dead. That was a mistake: A U.S. administration that pays close attention to threats in Latin America is desperately needed. But this aspect of the paper reinforces the same “Make Europe Great Again” strategy—by leaving the rest of the world alone.

The Atlantic derided President Trump’s strategic document as “incoherent babble.” They are wrong. It is part of a unified plan: America closely polices North and South America while retreating from the rest of the world. With the Western Hemisphere secure, why should America worry about what happens anywhere else?

This idea of “hemisphere defense” was popular among the original “America First,” prewar isolationist movement. The trouble is, it is almost impossible for America to keep a major outside power out of Latin America. Europe, in particular, has deep cultural, religious, linguistic and economic ties to Latin America.

“Hemisphere defense is no defense at all,” wrote Nicholas J. Spykman, one of America’s greatest thinkers on international relations, at the start of World War ii. “The Second World War will be lost or won in Europe and Asia.” Had Adolf Hitler conquered Europe, America couldn’t have stopped him from gaining a foothold in Latin America and ultimately threatening the U.S. homeland.

Blind to this threat, the Trump administration is encouraging the rise of a new, united European power.

Spirit of the Holy Roman Empire

This strategy paper is about more than a military revival. It says America wants Europe “to regain its civilizational self-confidence.” It calls for “unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history.” “America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism,” it states.

But what spirit are they reviving?

Many of the most influential voices on President Trump’s foreign-policy team—Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former U.S. ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell, even X’s Elon Musk—have openly supported the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

The AfD also wants “unapologetic celebrations” of German history—all of it. In 2017, then AfD leader Alexander Gauland said, “If the French are rightly proud of their emperor and the Britons of Nelson and Churchill, we have the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars.” The nation needs a “180-degree reversal on the politics of remembrance.” “The AfD is the last revolutionary, the last peaceful chance for our fatherland,” he said. The crowd responded by chanting, “Deutschland! Deutschland!”

“Historical guilt should no longer determine the way we act,” said AfD current coleader Tino Chrupalla.

Those behind America’s strategy document would probably reply, Not that history! They would point people toward past culture, art and sophistication. “Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions,” the paper states. That is the history America wants revived.

But World War ii was not an aberration. Europe’s history of art, culture and sophistication is also a history of war, persecution and conquest. Its periods of darkest depravity coincided with some of its most sublime beauty and cultural life.

Those dark times came when Europe was dominated by the Holy Roman Empire, the church-state union that brutally punished dissent.

“About the only thing Americans can seem to think of when it comes to Europe is someone yodeling in the Alps,” writes Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry in his booklet Daniel Unlocks Revelation. “They have no idea what the Holy Roman Empire is about—or what that crown is about. They don’t know anything about this deadly beast! You can travel all over central Europe and still see some of the opulence of the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs were the sword of the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages. They did their killing while supporting artists like Mozart, Bach and Schubert—they were very sophisticated as they slaughtered people.”

Charlemagne pioneered this connection between the Holy Roman Empire and the German people. European leaders revere him as an ancestor of their unification project. When former German President Roman Herzog received the Charlemagne Prize in 1997, he stated, “Charlemagne, after whom our prize is named, made his own particular choice: the first unification of Europe. At such an hour the truth must be told: Only by wading through a sea of blood, sweat and tears did he reach his goal.”

In 2018, Mr. Flurry warned of the danger in European leaders embracing this history: “Europeans are doing something they have never done since the vile and murderous sixth head: They are publicizing the Holy Roman Empire! They don’t publicize what Adolf Hitler did; too many people remember that bloody history. Instead they cloak it in the tradition of Charlemagne. And yet it is the same story! Not as many people died in the First Reich because they didn’t have the same military technology then. But it is the same ambition!” (“The Holy Roman Empire Goes Public—Big Time!”).

Now Donald Trump’s America is embracing that same past. Hitler was inspired by it and continued that history. “The imperial crown jewels kept in Vienna, reminders of the old realm splendour, still seem to exercise a magic spell, a pledge of eternal communion,” he wrote in Mein Kampf. When he conquered Vienna, he took the jewels back to Nuremberg—a tangible sign of the connection between the Third Reich and the First.

Censorship in Europe shows the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire rising. Encouraging Europe to embrace “this revival of spirit” will not create a stable, democratic American ally. Its spirit is antithetical to America’s founding values.

Lovers Forever?

President Trump is doing more than just encouraging Europe to revive this history. He is almost forcing it to.

Europe has two choices, explained Geopolitical Futures founder George Friedman: “It can remain as it is, a continent of small nations with long histories of animosity, or it can form a federation, under a single government with a single military, with the nations becoming, to a great extent, self-governing provinces. If they do not hang together, they will surely hang apart. … If it could somehow overcome its divisions, Europe, united and armed, would be an entity on par with China and the United States” (Dec. 9, 2025).

If Europe wants to survive in this new world, it must unite. If it does, Friedman said, it will rival the United States.

The document assumes that the European power President Trump is helping to create will always remain a loyal American ally. “We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe,” it states. That “strong Europe” could never itself become an adversary, could it?

Alice Weidel, the AfD’s other coleader, answered that question in an interview with American Conservative published Jan. 6, 2025. “[W]hen President Donald Trump demands that Germany must take responsibility for its own security in the future, he should also be clear about the full consequences,” she said. “That we will listen kindly to his concerns … but that we will make our own decisions and he must accept them, whether he likes them or not.” President Trump should not expect a powerful Europe to simply maintain the American-led world order.

Before Trump’s second term in office, the AfD was a largely anti-American party. Compact, a magazine by and for AfD supporters, presents a view of World War ii in which Germany is America’s victim. Its special editions include: “Lost Homeland,” describing the “unspeakable suffering” of the 14 million Germans expelled from Eastern Europe after the war and the “martyrdom they had to endure”; “Crimes Against Germans,” about how Germany was victimized during World War ii; “Dresden 1945,” about the “Anglo-American bombing terror” and the “mass murderer” Winston Churchill; “The Death Camps of the Americans,” which accuses Gen. Dwight Eisenhower of carrying out the mass execution of German prisoners of war in 1945.

“The German soldiers fought mostly chivalrously and honorably in the Second World War,” stated Compact. The number of criminals was few, and “offenses were usually severely punished by the military justice system.”

President Trump is promoting a movement that fundamentally hates America to give America latitude to retreat and leave this new European power to dominate the world.

Mr. Flurry wrote in 1995, “Assyria (Germany) has continually throughout history used war as an instrument to pursue their national goals. Their cruelty has been inflicted upon all of this Earth’s nations! So says history and your Bible.

“And now America is acting as if none of this history has even occurred! Our nation is acting like Germany has had a peace-loving history.

“I can understand our leaders ignoring Bible prophecy. But how can you explain their ignoring history? No superpower can do this and survive!” (Trumpet, November 1995).

Prophesied Warning

Herbert W. Armstrong, guided by Bible prophecy, sounded the warning about this Holy Roman Empire for decades. In March 1950, he wrote that “10 powerful European nations will combine their forces.” In August 1978, he warned: “The Europeans are far more disturbed about their safety in relying on United States military power to protect them than Americans realize! … Europeans want their own united military power! They know that a political union of Europe would produce a third major world power, as strong as either the United States or the ussr—possibly stronger!”

Yet the United States has consistently helped build this power. “Against the common enemy, the ussr, dedicated to conquering and ruling the whole world, Britain and America began fostering ideas of a united Europe,” wrote Mr. Armstrong. “Yes, paradoxically, the very Frankenstein monster that prophecy warns is to destroy us has been proposed, encouraged, aided and abetted by both the U.S.A. and Britain!” (Plain Truth, September 1961).

As shown in Mr. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, the Bible reveals that Britain and America are modern-day descendants of ancient Israel. Biblical prophecy warns that Israel will trust in “lovers”—foreign allies—that will destroy it.

Britain and America were prophesied to encourage and build up the very powers that will destroy them.

“They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom,” God says in Ezekiel 16:33. Could this apply to any nation more than to the modern United States? America has given away some of the most powerful weapons ever created. Yet despite all the favors, these powers are turning against the U.S.

God says He is the one ultimately directing this retribution: “All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not; for I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy …” (Jeremiah 30:14). In Ezekiel 16:37, God says, “Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure … I will even gather them round about against thee ….”

Why? God explains in Ezekiel 23:35 that Israel “hast forgotten me, and cast me behind thy back.” We have rejected God. We have not trusted Him for protection, and we seek to rectify that lack of protection by looking to foreign powers. God says that, in the end, this foolish policy will fail.

God’s problem with America’s foreign policy is that America trusts in foreign nations rather than in Him.

Senior figures in the Trump administration have quoted 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” They are right: This verse applies to America. God promises to protect us. But that protection has conditions. It requires the nation to “turn from their wicked ways,” a part of the verse often left out.

Instead, we trust foreign powers. Mr. Armstrong explained that in doing so we violate the first and great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). He said in a World Tomorrow broadcast in the 1980s: “We violate that as a nation. Now I don’t think we realize we are doing it—I don’t think we do at all. I think we sincerely think—we’ve just kidded ourselves into thinking, we’ve been deceived into believing—that we are really relying on God. But then you know, we think that God is sort of a myth, and He’s far off. Maybe He is not real? And maybe He couldn’t really help us? So we must depend on something that is real. We must depend on something that we can see. And so now we are so afraid of Russia that the United States government feels that it must take what we call a ‘calculated risk’ … and try to build up Germany and Central Europe against Russia.”

The U.S. built modern Europe. The Continent’s prosperity and security rest on American foundations. Yet now it is turning against America—exactly as the Bible warns.

The National Security Strategy document America needs would declare God’s protection as the only sure defense. It would urge the nation toward humble repentance and obedience to God’s law to secure that protection.

Such a document would be met with even more scorn and ridicule than the one the Trump administration released in December—but it is America’s only path to security. God is empowering this empire within Europe to teach America, and the world, that lesson.