Niall Ferguson
The good Old Scots word stramash is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “an uproar, state of noise and confusion; a ‘row.’ ” I was reminded of it as I read the media coverage of President Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), a 33-page document released last week to lay out his administration’s foreign policy priorities—”a road map,” according to the president’s own introduction, “to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history.”
Unlike, say, Europe. The most eye-catching feature of the document was its highly critical references to this country’s European allies. Their military spending was “insufficient.” Their economies were afflicted by “stagnation” and “decline.” They even faced the prospect of “civilizational erasure.”
Cue the media outrage. “A new White House policy document formalizes President Trump’s long-held contempt for Europe’s leaders,” said a piece in The New York Times. Jason Horowitz wrote, “Hostility [to Europe] is official White House policy.” Horowitz’s argument featured learned authorities: “[It] is very similar to language which you’ll find in the analogous Russian national security document,” observed the historian Timothy D. Snyder, formerly of Yale, conjuring up visions of the president furtively employing Google Translate while surfing Kremlin websites.
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