David E. Sanger

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.

And that the Europe that the president came to think of, the one from which his parents emerged, his mother was a Scottish immigrant, his father was the first generation descendant

of German immigrants to the United States in the late 1880s, that that Europe was almost gone.

And many read that line as a complaint that there is a diminishment of the white European allies that the president imagines when he thinks of Europe.

And I think what this document is doing is saying Europe's threatening its own future existence and identity.

I think it has to do with their image of countries with common values, not only with the United States,

but with President Trump and the MAGA movement.

And there was a lot of this in the J.D.

Vance speech to the Munich Security Conference last February that was such a shock, where he said, your big adversary is not Russia.

Your big adversary is the waves of migration.

that are changing your societies.

I think the Europeans who viewed that diversity as a strength, a revitalization of Europe, were truly shocked to hear that.