Why is Trump warning about "civilisational erasure" in Europe?

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0:30of it, but he hasn't read it. So someday you'll explain that one to me, Jeff. That was President Trump, clearly irritated once again with President Zelensky saying that he hasn't read his latest iteration of a Ukraine-Russia peace deal. The latest move as Trump moves away from Zelensky. But there's perhaps something even more worrying going on. A document released in the last few days, showing that the US isn't just moving away from Ukraine, but moving from Europe in the most profound way we can think of. Yes, the national security strategy runs to some 30 pages and its attitude towards Europe is downright hostile.

1:13It sees the continent being overtaken by immigrants and civilisational erasure is what it talks about. Why is no one talking about it? And can we really still regard America as our allies? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:34The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And as we talk, the door is opening and closing at number 10 Downing Street with Keir Starmer welcoming Zelensky, Macron and others for the latest round of talks on what is going to happen in Ukraine and whether there is a peace deal that everyone finds acceptable. I frankly find it difficult to believe. I also find it difficult to believe that the problem that Donald Trump was having last night was that Zelensky hadn't read the proposals. I wonder whether Donald Trump had read the detail of the proposals, but apparently his negotiators love it, according to Donald Trump, and Russia is happy with it too.

2:12But I think that, look, we'll see what happens there, and we'll keep bringing you the kind of latest on that and whether there is a peace deal. But it is this document that I think should be our focus of attention. It came out at the end of last week. And I saw something about it somewhere over the weekend. I hadn't heard anything on any of the mainstream bulletins about it. And I thought, what is this thing? I read it and could not believe what it contained. No, indeed. This is the US National Security Strategy. It's a document which comes out from time to time from different administrations.

2:44And the idea of it is really to kind of bind and bring coherence to security, defence, foreign policy of a particular administration to give a sort of articulation of the president's worldview. And obviously we've had glimmers of that over the course of this first year of the second Trump presidency. But this brings it together in a most extraordinary way. And I think crystallises the shift that actually, John, we've been talking about on this show on and off all year. Perhaps best crystallised apart from this by that extraordinary speech that J.D. Vance made at the start of the year as the incoming vice president at the Munich Security Conference, where he basically berated Europe and European governments for losing themselves, losing their sense of European civilisation.

3:29This is that writ large in this document. It says, among other things, that the president and the administration blames the EU and migration for what they say is the imminent total cultural unravelling in Europe. It says that Europe does have economic problems, but they are, quote, eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of, as you say, John, civilisational erasure within the next 20 years. They say that the larger issues facing Europe and the EU are that the EU and other transnational bodies undermine European political liberty, sovereignty, migration policies, transforming the continent, creating strife, censorship of free speech, suppression of political opposition, cratering birth rates, loss of national identities and self-confidence.

4:17It says that the US still needs Europe, but it is not confident that Europe will continue to exist in the way that America has recognised it hitherto. Well, without being boring, let me read a tiny bit more of this document, because I think it is so profoundly telling, which it says American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression and unapologetic celebrations of Europeans, nations, individual character and history. And then it goes on. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.

4:58Hang on. When you say patriotic parties, talk about the Labour or Conservative Party? No, I don't think so. I think you're talking about reform. Are you talking about the Socialist Party or the centre-right party in France? No, I think you're talking about the Rassemblement National. Are you talking about the SPD in Germany or the Christian Democrats? No, you're talking about Alternative für Deutschland. And this is incredible that you have a US authored document, not just a kind of an ad hominem remarks. Not Steve Bannon wanging on on this podcast. This is the official view of American foreign policy and national security as it pertains to Europe right now.

5:37And this is coming out of the White House with an introduction from Donald Trump blessing this document. This is their thinking now. They want to see the far right parties of Europe taking power because that is the way they see as the route to averting civilizational erasure, as they put it. And on NATO as well, it carries on in a very similar vein, questioning whether in a few decades, at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it's an open question whether they will view their place in the world or their alliances with the United States in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.

6:20And in that context of the threat to NATO and becoming majority non-European, The document talks about our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory. What does that mean? I mean, that's the most chilling bit. And the most chilling bit as well is that previously far-right tropes and ideas, which had been confined, again, a theme of this year on the show, been confined once to the fringes of politics, now find themselves not just at the centre, but with the imprimatur of the president, the seal of the president on it. Specifically, and this adverts the civilizational erasure bit, the Great Replacement Theory.

6:57Basically, what the White House is saying, something that Tommy Robinson and others have long been arguing, is that basically immigrants, specifically Muslims, are coming to Europe to erase the native population, to convert these societies to Islam. The document doesn't explicitly say this, but this is the theory that it's clearly echoing. And therefore, the Europe as we've known it, European civilisation will be, if not erased, then significantly undermined. And as I say, this is a fever theory. It's a conspiracy theory. It's one that's frequently and regularly been disproven and for which there is no evidence.

7:32And yet it now finds itself at the heart of the White House's thinking. And indeed, not only in its analysis, but as you say, John, in its prescription. It's basically saying that in order to guarantee long term American security interests and to keep the European American alliance, the North American alliance on the road, the White House and American policy should be to help the forces internally within these countries who are opposing this replacement, opposing this erasure and assist them in as part of America's foreign policy. It's gobsmacking. Well, look, we did an episode, I remember, a few months ago when Suella Braverman had been in Washington and made a sort of similar kind of speech about the potential takeover of Britain and becoming a non-British state, as it were, because of the influx of Muslims.

8:18And you think, well, hang on, I think I'm right in saying it's 6 % of the UK population is Muslim. That's a pretty big stretch to say it's going to become a majority Muslim nation under Sharia law. And I just don't see. So what I thought when I read this document, it is very, very long on assertion and very, very short on any facts to back those assertions up. because they're just making, you're just saying stuff out there that you can't possibly kind of sustain the argument for. But who do we see? I mean, these ideas found an audience and therefore as a result of who he is, an even greater audience over the course of the weekend via Elon Musk, who was approvingly tweeting out the relevant bits that we were just talking about.

9:03And he had a particular reason to. Of course. Because, and this is where kind of, you know, these big abstract theories and these big geopolitical civilisational theories kind of intersect with American, very contemporary, right here, right now, American commercial technological interests. Because over the course of the weekend, we basically saw rising tension between the US and the EU in particular, after the EU imposed a$140 million fine against Elon Musk's ex for breaching the EU Digital Services Act. And this has triggered a war of words between the White House and the federal government and the EU.

9:40the US is ambassador to the EU saying the EU is guilty of regulatory overreach targeting American innovation. And the EU, which is meeting today, EU council is meeting today, basically sort of on the commission trying to work out a response to the fact that, you know, we talked again all year sort of almost feels a bit retrospective this, you know, about the relationship between Musk and Trump. And obviously that's had its ups and downs. But once again, they find themselves at one on this, seeing the EU as an enemy. in this case, not just against kind of their version of Western civilisation, but against American technological prowess, because the EU is pretty much the only regulatory block in the world, certainly in the West, outside sort of, you know, superpower like China and so on, which is acting in a serious regulatory way against American AI and American tech and so on.

10:27If you look at the history of American foreign policy from the Second World War to more or less today, you've seen that there are differences in foreign policy between, I don't know, George W. Bush and Barack Obama or Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush or go back further to Kennedy and Nixon or whoever, whatever it happens to be. But it has always been within sort of five degrees in one direction, five degrees in another. You know, what about the Vietnam War? What is the threat from the Soviet Union? Those sort of differences. But there's been a fundamental solidity in terms of belief in the NATO alliance, believing in the rules of the road that have ensured America has become the preeminent superpower since the Second World War that have favoured them on trade.

11:14This is the most significant reverse in American foreign policy that we have seen, not just in my generation, but in previous generations as well. And Donald Trump is ripping up the rules of the road by saying there's a Western Hemisphere, which broadly speaking, we America will have dominance over and you'll do what we like and the rest of the world well we don't really care what happens there we're not there to promote democracy we're not there to promote freedom of speech if people want to run dictatorships if people want to be kind of brutal oligarchs that's up to them but it's no concern of the united states of america it's it's a sort of weird inversion of that in a way which i mean that's all completely right but i think we in europe now find ourselves in a very peculiar position which is the reason this feels different is that for all of the ups and downs of different american presidents and different bits of you know foreign policy and different emphases and so on.

12:03The fundamental after the war was certainly that Western Europe, at least, and the US were aligned. We had a common enemy. I think what this document reminds us, and Vance was sort of articulating that, that there is a sort of line of continuity between the American thinking during the Cold War and now. All administrations of every colour after the war saw basically what was going on in the world as a civilisational struggle. In that case, between Soviet communism on the one hand and Western liberalism and democracy on the other. Obviously, we knew which side we were on in that case. The weird thing is now is that the US under this administration and potentially under Republican parties in the future see us as on a different side of a civilizational struggle.

12:42I.e. what I mean about that is that, in a way, Trump's thinking, talking about civilizational erasure, it's not new. It's sort of a revival of Cold War thinking. Back then it was US versus communism. Now it's MAGA versus liberalism, versus MAGA versus cosmopolitanism, versus internationalism, versus globalism. And the forces of MAGA see us, or at least, you know, the sort of centre-right, centre-left governments of Europe as being on a different side, civilisationally speaking, to them. And that is why we had the extraordinary reaction this weekend of who welcomed this, this document? It wasn't Western governments, it wasn't the British government, the French government, German government.

13:19It was the Russian government. It was Moscow saying that this document basically expands upon and supports much of their worldview. you that's what's weird that's what's disturbing and that's been you know i'm making all the froth day to day of news and week to week to me 2025 that's been one of the pivot points that really oh completely and this is why i'm i mean look the co-president of the european union antonio costa has come out and said you know what mind your own business europe is strong and powerful and it can go its own way he's speaking in french but it's worth just having a quick listen to it What we can't accept is this threat in the difference of the political life of Europe.

13:59The United States cannot accept the threats that are being made from outside to Europe over how we should be governed and governed ourselves. And, you know, rightly so. Europe is full of independent nations. And the idea that America is sinking Europe out as the problem, but aligning itself seemingly with Moscow and Moscow coming out and saying, Yeah, loving what's in this new document. It's the world turned upside down. I'm pleased that the co-president of the EU said that because what's also been really striking to me, Lewis, is that how little attention this document is getting, both in terms of the British government hasn't really said much about it because we all know that nobody wants to pick a fight with Donald Trump.

14:43when I hear the recitation of oh America is our closest ally and we are forever intertwined our destinies are intertwined la la la la you read this document think no it's not you've got to get with the thinking here America is not where it was and I think it's absolute false comfort and I'm amazed at how little coverage it's frankly had on the BBC and maybe there are reasons for that given the sort of uncertainties in the corporation after the resignation of the director general over that spat with Donald Trump, but just amazed how little coverage it's had generally. I agree with that. And I don't, I don't know whether it's because we've kind of got a bit used to it.

15:20I don't know whether it's because we don't take it seriously. I think there's a bit of use, like you say, John, it's, it's almost too horrible to contemplate. It's almost seems incredible. But I think that is, again, one of the big problems over the course of the year is not listening to what Donald Trump tells us. And I think it's very easy to dismiss Trump when he just says things off the cuff or he says things which he sort of forgets and he makes impromptu funny comments or whatever it happens to be but this is of a different order of magnitude for two reasons one as we've been saying all of the themes of this build on things that have been said things that have been done actual policy over the course of this administration so far and it is simply this 33 page document is too serious a piece of work, too serious and credible articulation of their thinking to just dismiss it with hoary old cliches about, as you say, America being our closest ally, blah, blah, blah, blah.

16:17I think it's time we need to wake up. It's something that we've been talking about all year. And yet it never quite seems to happen. At least certainly it doesn't permeate the sort of outer membrane of certainly what British governments and British ministers talk about. The other thing that's, you know, look, We've talked about Donald Trump approving of the patriotic parties, anti-immigration parties in Europe. And we've also spoken on this podcast a lot about the movement of the wrenching of the Overton window to allow conversation. You want to get a man in about that? Yeah. Talking about your Overton window.

16:48I mean, there is some stuff he is saying now about what's happening in America, which, for example, Nigel Farage would never be allowed to get away with in Britain. You cannot imagine him saying, right, we'd be better off without the Pakistani community or the Bangladeshi community should go home. Listen to Donald Trump talking about Minneapolis and one Minneapolis congresswoman, Ilhan Omar. They have a representative, Ilhan Omar, who they say married her brother. It's a fraud. She tries to deny it now, but you can't really deny it because it just happened. she shouldn't be allowed to be a congresswoman and i'm sure people are looking at that and she should be thrown the hell out of our country and most of those people they have destroyed minnesota okay and all they do is complain complain complain you have her she's always talking about the constitution provides me with uh go back to your own country and figure out your constitution all she does is complain about this country without this country she would not be in very good shape she probably wouldn't be alive right now so somalia is considered by many to be the worst country on earth i don't know i've never i haven't been there i won't be there anytime soon i hope but uh what somalia what the somalian people have done to minnesota is is not even believable it's not even believable yeah so just to be clear ilana Omar did not marry her brother.

18:21That is a far right conspiracy theory that was propagated as far back as 2018. But the president is rearticulating. And just to be clear that Ilhan Omar is a US passport holder there in the United States of America, fully legitimately and elected to Congress fully legitimately. And Donald Trump is saying, go back to your own country. And so when he talks about Europe and civilizational erasure, he doesn't say, oh, you've got to get rid of all the dark coloured people from your country. But you can see that that is what it means. And again, talking about the Overton window, I mentioned Elon Musk earlier over the course of the weekend.

18:59He's been tweeting out that Europeans are facing a genocide as a result of migration. He's compared the EU to Nazi Germany, called for it to be abolished. Again, something that's been supported by Moscow. And this is the world we're in. This is 2025, right? This is 2025. These kind of crazy outlandish stuff finds itself at the heart of our political discourse. And being normalised. Oh, completely normalised. I mean, I watched that the other day when it came out. And again, barely caused a ripple over here. Even within the US, yeah, there was coverage and it was a sense that this is sort of 10 % more, 15 % more than where Trump has gone before, but only 10%, right?

19:32And we are the frog in the boiling water. This is all quite normal, or has become normal, or normalised if it's not normal. But the thing, John, that I think from this document and all this stuff that I find most worrying is the sense of kind of almost the sort of imperialism of MAGA now. It's funny, like MAGA started as a kind of quite, you know, clean nationalist and it had relatively narrow aims. It was about America first. It was about restoring a sense of kind of older American political order internally within the US. Again, this all reminds me a bit of the Cold War now. You know, this idea of a civilizational fight that MAGA and Trump and those around Trump, even more pertinently, kind of see themselves as the kind of directors, the kind of benefactors of similarly minded movements around the world.

20:18Just as Moscow used to see itself with communist parties in the Cold War. And likewise, the US saw itself with anti-communist forces in different parts of the world, almost fighting like proxy wars around the world. That's what it kind of reminds me of. It reminds me of those arguments that they had in the Soviet Union, which is, can you have socialism in one country or do you need to fight a global battle? And it seems to me, it feels to me almost that MAGA has moved, starting from a kind of purely national project to increasingly thinking, no, you know, for America to survive civilisationally, other parts of the West have to survive, quotes, civilisationally.

20:51And we're going to help them do so. And that, to me, I think is quite a disturbing development. There was a critique of Britain in the early 1960s from a US Secretary of State, Dean Aitchison, which was that Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role. It feels like the irony under Donald Trump is that, you know, it's America first. We're pulling up the drawbridge. We don't care what happens in other countries. Yes, you do. You're looking for imperial expansion into Europe. And that is why you're promoting these pro patriotic parties that are on the far right of our politics. and you are saying you will intervene, we'll have to consider how we can make sure our view pertains in Europe.

21:31Sorry, that is imperialism. That is spreading the word of MAGA to the continent of Europe and making sure that Europe bends the knee. This document needs serious, serious attention. I just don't feel it's getting it right now. Right. After this, we'll be turning our attention to domestic politics and Keir Starmer, who's had another quite difficult weekend with the news in particular that some of his closest allies appear to be thinking about who might replace him. Stay with us.

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22:33The News Agents. Talking about jobs for young people, a lot of speculation about your job this weekend. How unsettling is it? Well, look, I'm absolutely focused on what I need to do to lead the country. and that's why today my focus is on announcing 50 ,000 extra apprentices. These are for young people. Are your chances of leading the country diminishing? No, no, no. We're introducing these apprentices today. I'm really pleased to be able to talk about that. So that's the Prime Minister on a visit, as you heard, talking about apprenticeships. Very keen to talk about apprenticeships. Not keen to talk about this extraordinary story which that journalist wanted to talk about, which appeared in The Times over the last couple of days by Patrick Maguire, which is about leadership speculation, which isn't so unusual because it's become commonplace in Westminster, especially over the last six months.

23:19Lots and lots of plotting going on about replacing Keir Starmer either before or shortly after the May elections next year. But what's unusual about this and what's potentially disturbing for Starmer about this is that this latest twist is that the people behind this one are Labour Together. Labour Together is basically the kind of think tank campaigning organisation set up by Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, who has basically been the kind of phalanx behind Starmer. his main sort of supporters within the party, the vehicle through which Starmer does his bidding. Anyway, this think tank, as I say, used to be run by McSweeney, has basically sent a survey to local Labour parties, seen by the Times, prompting members to name the politicians who, quote, stand the best chance of leading Labour to electoral victory at the next general election.

24:03Compared with Starmer, eight politicians named, including West Streeting, Shabana Mahmood, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, and Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary of the Prime Minister. This is extraordinary, isn't it? Because on one hand, you could say, well, it's just a think tank saying, well, who do you think would stand the best chance with at the next election? So nothing to see here. Hang on a minute. This is Labour together. This isn't some fringe group. This is the think tank that propelled Keir Starmer to the leadership with Morgan McSweeney.

24:36Now, I'm not suggesting there is any kind of hidden hand here that McSweeney knew that Labour Together were doing this. But it does have that feel of, my God, if Labour Together are doing this and putting out a survey, calling into question Keir Starmer's leadership and touting who would be a better replacement than him, then it shows that it's not just on the extremes and the malcontents of Labour politics that are wondering about who the next leader should be. it is right in the centre of the party. No, indeed. And if you actually look at the people involved in Labour together, as they were set up by McSweeney, but now it's run by Alison Phillips, who used to be editor of the Mirror.

25:18But it's a kind of suite, really, of kind of Labour grandees, past and present, Sally Morgan, who used to work for Tony Blair, Alan Milburn, who used to work for Blair. You know, this is the kind of men in grey suits of the Labour Party, men and women in grey suits of the Labour Party, who are clearly thinking about a potential contest to come. And one of the things that's really happened over the course of this year, and especially in the last six months that I've been so struck by, is the extent to which the conversation about Starmer's leadership has become so normalised, almost to the point that it's a given that there will be a challenge and that he might be gone in short order.

25:52I interviewed Barry Gardner, the Labour sort of veteran MP on my LBC Sunday show this weekend. He's not a close ally of Starmer and never has been. But just listen to the way he's talking about what might be about to happen. Members of Parliament are deeply worried. And we all know why they're worried. They look at the polls. Many of them are new. They came in in the last election and they thought they were coming in for a long-term career. And they're thinking, present state of things, they might not be. So of course they're talking about, should we be changing the leader? What should we be doing?

26:25How do we get ourselves out of this mess? That's speculation that's been happening and it's been fuelled by other people who are putting themselves forward to indicate that they might be willing to take over the reins at number 10. Do you think he should stay on for this parliament? That's a matter that the whole of the party must decide. And I think this is the key issue. Doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement there, Barry. Well, let me just tell you what I'm afraid of here, Lewis. What I'm afraid of is that MPs try and stitch this up. And I think that would be an extremely bad idea. And the idea that we just go to a coronation, that we simply have, you know, somebody emerges with so many votes from the members of parliament, that all the other members of parliament then put their nominations into that sack, because they don't want to be left out into the dark.