A new national security document released by the White House late Thursday claimed without evidence that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure” and will be “unrecognizable in 20 years or less” due to immigration that has made European powers militarily weak.
The 33-page document, titled National Security Strategy and dated November 2025, is a detailed expression of President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and argues the United States should scale back its vast commitments around the world and focus its efforts on securing the Western Hemisphere.
The document has no listed author but features a foreword by Trump. The president calls the document a “roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history.”
The comments on immigration echo the “great replacement theory,” experts told NBC News, a debunked white nationalist conspiracy theory that white populations are being replaced by immigrants from majority nonwhite nations, particularly from Africa.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the comparison was "total nonsense."
"The devastating impacts of unchecked migration, and those migrants’ inability to assimilate, are not just a concern for President Trump, but for Europeans themselves, who have increasingly noted immigration as one of their top concerns," she said. "These open border policies have led to widespread examples of violence, spikes in crime, and more, with detrimental impacts on the fiscal sustainability of social safety net programs. As the President remarked at the United Nations General Assembly, his efforts to secure the border saved America from such destruction, and other countries would be wise to follow suit.”
Some believers of the theory, which include Elon Musk and various far-right groups, think the racial replacement is actively planned and administered by national and multinational governments, often as part of a wider Jewish conspiracy.
Mark Sedgwick, a professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark, who has written about the great replacement conspiracy theory, told NBC News that the language of the White House document fits in with the language typically used by proponents of the theory.
Sedgwick said the assertion that Europe would be unrecognizable in 20 years was “obviously complete nonsense.”
“Demographic change just doesn’t happen that quickly. So they’re drawing on not very well-grounded panic scenarios,” he said.
In a section titled “Promoting European Greatness,” the national security document references the long-term economic decline of European nations’ share of global economic output, which is blamed on “transnational regulations” — referring to the 27-nation European Union — and the changing ethnic mix of the continent.
“But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” the document says.
“The larger issues facing Europe include 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,” the document continues.
The document adds that as a result, it is “far from obvious” whether European countries can “remain reliable allies.”
“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the document reads.
In listing the strategy’s priorities, the document says ending mass migration is essential.
“In countries throughout the world, mass migration has strained domestic resources, increased violence and other crime, weakened social cohesion, distorted labor markets, and undermined national security,” it says.
Rod Dacombe, a politics expert from King’s College London, said: “The phrase 'civilizational erasure' does indeed sound aligned to Great Replacement Theory and this shouldn’t be a surprise — it has been a feature of populist right rhetoric for some years now.”
The comments are the latest in a line of incendiary comments on race from Trump and his allies. In a campaign speech in 2023, Trump said migrants were "poisoning the blood of our country," comments which then-President Joe Biden’s campaign compared to Adolf Hitler.
This week, Trump attacked Minnesota’s Somali population and said they should “go back where they came from.”
The document breaks with decades of U.S. foreign policy under previous administrations that viewed European governments as a democratic bulwark against Russia, and that the United States had a role to play in helping bolster the continent’s security to deter Moscow.
Apart from painting European states as weak and in decline, the document also accuses NATO allies of pushing for “unrealistic” goals in the war in Ukraine in alleged defiance of their own citizens — and avoids referring to Russia as a threat.
“The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war,” the document says, without elaborating. “A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes,” it states.
That passage carried echoes of Russia’s repeated accusations that European powers have been fueling the war in Ukraine and undermining peace efforts.
Carl Bildt, a former Swedish foreign minister, wrote on social media that the document appeared to fixate on European countries as a danger to democracy: “The only part of the world where the new security strategy sees any threat to democracy seems to be Europe. Bizarre.”
Instead of vowing to counter Russia, the strategy called for reestablishing “strategic stability with Russia” by negotiating a ceasefire in the Ukraine war.
More broadly, the strategy paper also suggests the U.S. will scale back its role and commitments around the world and focus its resources primarily on the Western hemisphere, as it did in the 1800s.
“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” it says.
Elsewhere, the document sets out how Trump’s foreign policy fits with his ongoing trade war, in which trade tariffs were raised against both economic rivals and political allies.
The document says Trump’s predecessors “placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called ‘free trade’ that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend.”
The document argues that the U.S. must be the dominant power in what it calls the “western hemisphere” and says any alliance or aid must be “contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence,” a possible reference to the growing influence of China in Western countries. The remarks come as China has touted its stability to Latin American countries amid Trump’s second term.
In practical terms, the document calls for the U.S. to have a “more suitable” Coast Guard and Navy presence to tackle illegal migration, human trafficking and drug trafficking. It adds that there should be “targeted deployments” to secure the border and defeat cartels, using lethal force where necessary.
Beginning in September, the Navy has carried out at least 22 lethal strikes on boats the government has said were being used to smuggle drugs such as fentanyl into the U.S, including the most recent on Thursday. Experts have said the boats are more likely to be carrying cocaine bound for Europe.
Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed an aircraft carrier strike group to move to the Caribbean to support Trump’s efforts to “counter narco-terroism.” The president has also suggested the U.S. could target alleged drug traffickers on land in Venezuela.
This is part of what the strategy document calls a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, the policy set out by President James Monroe in 1823 that said the U.S. wouldn’t accept foreign interference in American affairs.
