The Strategy Europe Laughed At Is Being Executed

The U.S. National Security Strategy is now taken deadly seriously

Happy New Year friends, readers, fellow earth dwellers. I took a few weeks off over the holidays and decided to rest, collect material - and my thoughts - so that I could produce well-rounded newsletters feeding our reflections and assessments as we enter 2026.

It’s hard.

There is so much noise, there’s always been much noise, but the past months the volume is amped up so that it’s harder than ever to focus, connect the dots, and produce a coherent perspective.

US National Security Strategy (NSS) was “poorly received” in Europe

This is how Sam Freedman, the writer of the most popular UK Substack Comment is Freed, author of Sunday Times bestselling book “Failed State”, and a Senior fellow at the Institute for Government put it in his blog post on December 10th.

At the time of its launch, many in Europe ignored or dismissed the NSS because it was badly written, full of contradictions, a hodgepodge of ideas, actions and non-actions written obviously by different people and put together unedited.

But as months go by, Europeans are seeing that JD Vance’s speech in the Munich security conference, and Trump’s comments of Greenland are not one-offs but a clear execution of the section on Europe in the strategy document.

Freedman points out two concerns for Europe.

“First, it directly interferes in European affairs by explicitly siding with ‘Patriotic Parties’ and picking up on their themes of ‘civilisational erasure’. It is ‘more than plausible,’ the document says, ‘that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European’ (which we can assume to mean non-white).”

“Second, it fails to discuss Russia as an adversary that poses a direct threat to freedom in Europe and is currently waging an aggressive war against a sovereign country.”

Europe is moving troops to Greenland

Today is Thursday, January 15, 2026, a bit more than a month since Freedman’s newsletter. “Poorly received” strategy messaging has turned into Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada, France, possibly others moving actual troops to Greenland, in preparation to deter the U.S. from taking over the country, or in the worst case, respond to military aggression with a military response.

Yesterday, the Foreign Ministers of Denmark and Greenland tried to negotiate with the White House, and came out saying it is 'clear that the president has this wish of conquering Greenland.'

It is extremely difficult to understand how the U.S. policy makers are allowing for this to happen.

The Consequences

For NATO to weaken, or fall apart, will only benefit Russia and China. China will feel free to take over Taiwan, possibly other regions in Asia, and Russia will be emboldened to take over regions in Europe.

What would this mean?

Let’s look at Taiwan first. I have written extensively about the U.S.-China semiconductor trade deals, which have been, to put it mildly, confusing and unpredictable. Unpredictability is not good for business, so China has been seeking ways to be independent when it comes to (AI) semiconductors. American chip manufacturers need Chinese customers, but they also need Taiwan’s manufacturing capacity. For example, Apple’s and Nvidia’s GPUs are designed in the U.S. but manufactured by TMSC in Taiwan. If China takes over TMSC, China controls large parts of the American semiconductor industry. Not Good (NG).

Closer to home for me, Europe and Russia. With a weak NATO, Russia will be emboldened to attack the Baltic countries, which would likely lead to Finland, Poland, possibly other NATO countries coming to defend our Baltic friends. Would Russia do this? Absolutely. As I wrote in September, Russia has always had only one (political) goal - to expand territory. Mother Russia can never be too big, to have a too comfortable cushion around Moscow. Putin famously said the collapse of the Soviet empire was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and he is doing everything in his power to correct this mistake.

Europe would fight Russia - without any help from the U.S. - on multiple fronts. The EU is not a country, it is a stack of contracts and legislation holding together the economic interests of 27 nation states. It’s easy to imagine how slow and inadequate EU’s response could be. Also NG.

The Worst Case Scenario

It’s hard to conceive that Europe, together with NATO allies, would be fighting a war against the United States. It’s truly unfathomable that we are here, but here we are. I live in South France, and people here are already talking about how to survive if things get really bad, not to mention the mood in my Finnish social media. People are scared.

Europe would need to decide what to do with the U.S. military bases here.