David E. Sanger

The next big debate we have, of course, is whether or not it was in our interest as well, because we get a lot of benefits from a tight alliance with the Europeans who can act as a deterrent against war with Russia and other bad actors.

So yes, it was a big win.

It may have come at some long-term cost.

But let's acknowledge that President Trump was able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Trump himself in his first term proved unable to do, which is get the Europeans belatedly to take their defense seriously.

So, Natalie, the Russia section of this is one of the strangest because it suggests that the Europeans were a greater threat to themselves than Russia is to the future of Europe.

And this is the exact opposite of how the Europeans view it, because they believe now that Russia

Russia is an existential threat to them.

And if successful in Ukraine, we'll just keep going sooner or later.

Right.

And that is a huge shift, of course.

But it's one that the Europeans have seen coming from the U.S.

all year.

They may not have seen it in black and white the way they did in this strategy, but it was certainly no surprise.

But what they weren't ready for is

was this line on page 25 of the report that talks about Europe's economic decline, but then it also discusses the waves of migration that have changed the nature of European democracies.

And it warns that this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.

And that's the line that really resonated in Europe.

Well, this has been a topic of great debate about how you interpret that.

But I think the most common interpretation is that the president is saying that the migration that has changed the face of

Germany, of France, even of Britain, has fundamentally altered the nature of these European allies.