Plain Sight

By Publius (of the 21st Century)

Less than two months after its November 2025 publication, the theoretical framework of the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS-25) has become operational reality. Nicolás Maduro was extracted from Venezuela and flown to New York. Stephen Miller announced on CNN that the United States intends to acquire Greenland from Denmark—a NATO ally—because “nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” A Russian oil tanker was seized in the mid-Atlantic. The Panama Canal's sovereignty has been publicly questioned by the sitting U.S. president.

These are not isolated provocations. They are the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” in action—a comprehensive reorientation of American grand strategy that explicitly prioritizes hemispheric dominance while signaling strategic withdrawal from Europe. What Washington's strategists, however, have failed to grasp is that this pivot carries a profound unintended consequence: it is catalyzing the emergence of exactly what American foreign policy has sought to prevent for eighty years—a unified, militarily powerful, and geopolitically autonomous Europe.

The Corollary's Core Logic

The NSS-25 resurrects the Monroe Doctrine but transforms it from defensive shield to offensive economic sphere. Where James Monroe in 1823 warned European powers against colonization in the Western Hemisphere, the Trump Corollary demands control of “strategically vital assets,” the expulsion of foreign competitors, and “sole-source contracts” for U.S. firms across Latin America. Where Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 corollary justified police power to prevent European interference, Trump's version authorizes “lethal force” against cartels and criminal networks, potentially without host-nation consent.

The hemispheric pivot is paired with strategic retrenchment from Europe. The NSS describes European nations as “increasingly incapable,” threatened by “civilizational erasure,” and perhaps unable to field militaries strong enough to serve as reliable allies. It demands NATO members spend five percent of GDP on defense—the so-called “Hague Commitment”—while simultaneously signaling that American security guarantees are transactional, not treaty-bound. It seeks détente with Russia to “reestablish strategic stability,” explicitly overriding European threat perceptions. The message is clear: Europe must pay for American protection or provide for its own defense.

This represents a fundamental break with the post-1945 order. For seventy-five years, American strategy rested on two pillars: maintaining military primacy in Europe to prevent the emergence of a hostile Eurasian hegemon, and embedding that primacy within institutional frameworks—NATO, the Marshall Plan, transatlantic economic integration—that made American leadership appear benign rather than imperial. The Trump Corollary dismantles both pillars. It treats allies as burden rather than asset and replaces institutional legitimacy with naked coercion.

The Arithmetic of Miscalculation

The strategy's most consequential error lies in its assessment of relative power. The NSS treats Russia—population 145 million, GDP approximately $2 trillion—as a peer power requiring accommodation. It treats the European Union—population 450 million, GDP exceeding $19 trillion—as a collection of declining dependencies requiring rescue or abandonment.

This is not strategy. It is innumeracy.

Europe's contemporary military weakness is not evidence of civilizational exhaustion. It is the equilibrium outcome of a security architecture designed and maintained by the United States for three-quarters of a century. Since 1949, the American nuclear and conventional guarantee suppressed incentives for European strategic rearmament. This was intentional. It provided Washington with unrivaled influence over European political, military, and industrial development while ensuring that no single European state could emerge as a competitor.

Yet this influence was never absolute. Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO's integrated military command in 1966 precisely to preserve French strategic autonomy, developed an independent nuclear deterrent, and pursued policies explicitly designed to counterbalance American hegemony. Britain, while maintaining the “special relationship,” retained sovereign control over its nuclear arsenal and never extended itself toward complete dependency on Washington. These examples demonstrate that European strategic restraint was a choice within the American security framework, not evidence of inherent incapacity.

Europe's demilitarization, in other words, was an American policy success—not a European failure. The NSS reads this induced restraint as proof of intrinsic European incapacity. But once the external constraint is removed, underlying structural conditions—large populations, advanced technological bases, dense industrial networks, and the world's second-largest internal market—create latent capacity for rapid remilitarization.

The historical precedent is Germany after Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles limited the Reichswehr to 100,000 men and prohibited tanks, aircraft, and heavy artillery. Within fifteen years of Hitler's repudiation of these constraints, Germany fielded the most formidable military machine in Europe. The lesson: wealthy industrial powers with advanced technical capacity can militarize far faster than Washington's strategists apparently believe.

Germany's contemporary challenge is not technical incapacity but psychological paralysis. Decades of relying on the “peace dividend” to fund an expansive welfare state while pursuing global trade advantages under American security protection have created a political culture allergic to hard power. The problem is not that Germany might become too aggressive if rearmed—it is that Germany refuses to accept the responsibilities that come with sovereignty. But existential threat has a clarifying effect on political culture. A Germany facing Russian armored divisions without American protection will discover capabilities it claimed not to possess.

What European Rearmament Would Mean

If Europe actually met the NSS's five percent GDP defense spending demand—clearly intended as a “poison pill” to justify American disengagement—the result would transform global order. Five percent of $19 trillion equals $950 billion annually. For context, current U.S. defense spending approximates $850 billion, which the administration intends to extend to $1.5 trillion in 2026. China officially spends roughly $300 billion. Russia spends approximately $80 billion.

A Europe spending nearly $1 trillion on defense would possess military capability rivaling the United States and vastly exceeding Russia and China combined. This is not burden-sharing. This is the creation of a peer competitor.

Moreover, a Europe organizing its own defense industrial base to avoid “sole-source” dependency on unreliable American suppliers will inevitably develop command structures independent of NATO. Initiatives such as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the European Defence Fund, and the European Rapid Deployment Capacity—all previously hampered by political fragmentation and American ambivalence—would receive urgent priority. The logic of collective defense without the United States requires unified command, integrated procurement, and harmonized operational doctrine.

France's force de frappe—currently protecting only France—would need to extend deterrence coverage to Germany, Poland, Italy, and other European states. This means political integration of nuclear command, something Paris has historically resisted but which American abandonment would necessitate. Britain, despite Brexit, would face strong incentives to reconnect strategically with Europe, especially if Washington signals disinterest in transatlantic security. A Europe integrating British naval and intelligence capabilities with French nuclear deterrence and German industrial capacity would emerge not as a fragmented collection of dependencies, but as a coherent and formidable geopolitical actor.

The Nuclear Question: Germany's Latent Capability

The conventional assumption is that Germany would seek coverage under an expanded French nuclear umbrella. But this overlooks a more disruptive possibility: German nuclear rearmament.

Germany possesses advanced nuclear technology expertise despite shuttering its civilian nuclear facilities. It ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1975, but treaty commitments are functions of strategic context. If the United States abrogates its security guarantee—as the Trump Corollary effectively does—Germany faces an existential choice: permanent subordination to French nuclear decision-making, or development of sovereign deterrence.

The historical fear of German nuclear weapons rested on concerns about German aggression and unreliability. But contemporary Germany's problem is not excessive ambition—it is pathological risk-aversion and unwillingness to accept the responsibilities of power. A Germany that developed nuclear weapons under joint command with Poland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Britain would not represent a threat of unilateral German adventurism. It would represent the federalization of European deterrence under collective control.

This is not idle speculation. Germany's technical capacity to develop nuclear weapons is not in question—only political will. With American abandonment catalyzing existential threat perception, that political will could materialize rapidly. A Central European nuclear consortium integrating German technical capacity, Polish frontline commitment, French operational expertise, and British strategic culture would create a deterrent architecture far more credible than extension of the force de frappe alone.

The precedent is already being set elsewhere. In December 2025, Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi publicly questioned whether the country's three non-nuclear principles—no possession, no production, and no introduction of nuclear weapons onto Japanese soil—could still stand in the face of serious threats. Like her predecessor, she invoked the concept of space-based nuclear weapons as a potential way to circumvent Japan's constitutional prohibition against nuclear arms on land or sea, a commitment rooted in its 1945 unconditional surrender.

The proposal, though quickly walked back after Chinese condemnation, demonstrated that even the most constrained U.S. allies are reconsidering nuclear taboos when American guarantees appear unreliable. If Japan—constitutionally pacifist, historically traumatized by nuclear weapons, and geographically separated from European conflicts—can publicly discuss nuclear options, why would Germany not do the same when facing Russian tanks on NATO's eastern frontier?

The Trump Corollary provides precisely the strategic justification needed to overcome domestic German opposition to rearmament. If Washington treats NATO as transactional rather than treaty-bound, if it demands five percent defense spending while signaling unreliability, and if it pursues détente with Russia over European objections, then German political elites can credibly argue that the postwar settlement has ended. The Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in a world where American extended deterrence was credible. That world no longer exists.

Ukraine: Europe's Indispensable Military Asset

Any serious discussion of European strategic autonomy must begin with a counterintuitive reality: Ukraine now possesses the largest, most combat-experienced, Western-style military force on the European continent. While battered by three years of high-intensity warfare, the Ukrainian military has not merely survived—it has evolved into precisely the kind of force Europe will need if it must defend itself without American support.

Three years ago, Ukrainian soldiers traveled to Western Europe for training. Today, that experience curve has inverted. The Ukrainians now possess capabilities no other European military can match:

First, operational experience in hybrid warfare. Ukrainian forces have defended against combined Russian conventional assaults, irregular warfare, cyber operations, information warfare, and infrastructure sabotage simultaneously. No NATO military—not German, not French, not British—has faced anything remotely comparable since 1945. This experience is not theoretical. It is institutional knowledge embedded in Ukrainian command structures, tactical doctrine, and operational planning.

Second, proven capability against peer conventional forces. Ukrainian forces have systematically defeated Russian tanks, artillery, aircraft, and massed infantry assaults—the very threat European militaries would face if Russian forces push westward. They have done so despite facing numerical disadvantages in equipment, manpower, and ammunition. Western European militaries have not fought a peer conventional conflict in decades. Ukrainians do it daily.

Third, advanced autonomous drone warfare. Ukraine has pioneered AI-integrated drone systems—both aerial and maritime—that represent the future of asymmetric warfare. As documented by C.J. Chivers in “The Dawn of the A.I. Drone” (The New York Times, December 31, 2025), Ukrainian forces deploy thousands of AI-coordinated drones that neutralize targets worth millions using systems costing thousands. These capabilities can be scaled rapidly using 3D printing, commercial electronics, and open-source software. Ukrainian drone manufacturers now produce capabilities that exceed what Western defense contractors can deliver at a fraction of the cost and timeline.

This technological and tactical sophistication did not exist in 2022. It was developed under combat conditions through necessity and innovation. Europe cannot replicate this experience through exercises or procurement programs. It can only acquire it by integrating Ukraine into European defense structures immediately and completely.

The Integration Imperative

A European security architecture that excludes Ukraine is strategically incoherent. Ukraine possesses what Europe desperately needs: combat-proven forces, operational doctrine tested against Russian military systems, and technological innovations that provide asymmetric advantages. Conversely, Europe possesses what Ukraine needs: industrial scale, economic depth, and nuclear deterrence.

The conventional model assumes Ukraine would be a dependent security consumer requiring European protection. The reality is reversed. In conventional warfare capability, Ukraine is the provider and Western Europe is the dependent. A Poland-Baltic-Ukraine defense axis, integrating Ukrainian battlefield experience with Polish commitment and German industrial capacity, would create a credible eastern European deterrent without requiring consensus from risk-averse Western European capitals.

This is not charity toward Ukraine. It is strategic necessity for Europe. If Russia reconstitutes its military over the next five to seven years and faces a Europe that has failed to integrate Ukrainian capabilities, Moscow will have learned from Ukrainian resistance while Europe will have squandered its most valuable military asset.

The Nuclear Dimension: Righting a Historic Betrayal

Ukraine's integration into European defense structures must include the nuclear dimension—not merely as recipient of extended deterrence but as participant in command structures. This is not merely strategic logic; it is an obligation.

In 1994, Ukraine possessed the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal—approximately 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads inherited from the Soviet Union. Under the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine surrendered these weapons in exchange for security assurances from the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Those assurances guaranteed Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and again in 2022 with full-scale invasion. The United States and United Kingdom, while providing military aid, have not honored the spirit of the agreement—demonstrated most clearly by the Trump Corollary's pursuit of détente with Moscow over Ukrainian objections. Ukraine was told that surrendering nuclear weapons would guarantee its security. That guarantee proved worthless.

A Central European nuclear consortium integrating Germany, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Britain, and Ukraine would not merely strengthen European deterrence—it would rectify one of the most consequential broken promises in modern international relations. Ukrainian participation in nuclear command structures would ensure that any future Russian nuclear coercion against Europe would be met with credible deterrence that includes the one European state that has actually fought Russia and understands its strategic calculus intimately.

The objection that Ukraine is “too unstable” or “too corrupt” for nuclear participation reflects outdated assessments. Ukraine in 2026 is not Ukraine in 2014. Three years of existential warfare have clarified Ukrainian strategic culture, professionalized its military institutions, and eliminated the ambiguity about Russian threat that paralyzed European decision-making. If Germany—with its psychological allergies to hard power—can be trusted with nuclear weapons under collective control, then Ukraine—which has demonstrated willingness to fight and die for European security—certainly can.

The Federalist Logic of European Integration

In Federalist No. 7 and No. 8, Alexander Hamilton warned that a loose confederation of sovereign states would succumb to foreign intrigue and internal dissension. He argued that only a strong, consolidated union could deter external powers and prevent separate states from becoming clients of competing empires. James Madison developed this in Federalist No. 41 and No. 42: foreign powers will use trade, diplomatic recognition, and military support selectively to reward some states and punish others, thereby deepening intra-confederal divisions.

The 2025 NSS recreates precisely these conditions in Europe. By demanding five percent defense spending while threatening to withdraw security guarantees, by seeking bilateral deals with individual European capitals rather than treating the EU as a negotiating partner, and by signaling that American commitments are transactional rather than treaty-bound, Washington exposes the vulnerability that drove the thirteen American colonies to federate in 1787.

The Federalists argued that “safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct.” The colonies united not from mutual affection but from recognition that Britain or Spain would pick them off individually. The 2025 NSS provides Europe with dual external unifiers: Russian threat from the east, American abandonment from the west. If Europe follows the Federalist prescription, it will centralize foreign policy, replacing unanimity rules with majority voting to prevent external exploitation of single veto-wielding states. It will federalize debt and defense, creating a common treasury to fund continental military-industrial capacity explicitly to avoid sole-source dependency on American arms.

Recent Events as Proof of Concept

The Greenland crisis provides the clearest demonstration that this dynamic is already underway. Miller's CNN statement—”the United States is the power of NATO”—reduces alliance to hierarchy. His question—”by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?“—delegitimizes a NATO ally's territorial sovereignty. The Danish Prime Minister's response that U.S. annexation would “effectively end NATO” understates the case. NATO is already over. It simply has not yet been officially dissolved.

European responses to the Greenland announcement have been telling. Eastern European states—Poland, the Baltics—remain largely silent, unwilling to alienate Washington while Russian forces sit on their borders. But Western European capitals are beginning to speak openly about what was previously taboo: strategic autonomy from the United States. French President Macron has renewed calls for European defense integration. German defense minister Pistorius has advocated accelerated procurement timelines. Even traditionally Atlanticist voices in Britain are questioning whether Five Eyes intelligence sharing is worth subordination to an erratic American administration.

The Maduro extraction demonstrates operational capability—the United States can and will conduct military operations in the hemisphere without consultation. The Russian tanker seizure in the mid-Atlantic shows willingness to escalate economically. Threats regarding the Panama Canal indicate that no previous settlement, however long-standing, is considered permanent. Collectively, these actions signal that the United States views the Western Hemisphere as exclusive domain and European interests as secondary considerations.

The Realignment Risk

The NSS assumes a spurned Europe has nowhere else to go. This is the “America First” fallacy: the belief that the United States remains the indispensable node in global networks. If Washington adopts protectionist postures—tariffs, sole-source demands, weaponized dollar access—Europe will rationally seek survival elsewhere.

One can expect accelerating European economic engagement with the Global South. To secure energy and critical minerals without American interference, a strategically autonomous Europe will court Africa with trade terms that undercut American exclusivity demands. To maintain export economies, Europe may refuse American pressure to decouple from China, opting instead for a “middle path” preserving access to the Chinese market while managing security risks. Even India—currently a key U.S. partner in containing China—may find a rearmed, non-aligned Europe a more compatible partner than an erratic, isolationist America.

The result would be a multi-aligned Europe no longer structurally tied to the United States. Such a Europe would maintain economic ties with China, energy partnerships with Africa and the Middle East, and strategic coordination with India, Japan, and other middle powers. American influence would no longer be institutional or automatic. It would have to be earned in competition with other global actors.

Moreover, a Europe that feels strategically betrayed may adopt industrial policies designed to protect technological sovereignty from American extraterritorial controls. This includes reducing reliance on the dollar, creating alternative payment systems, and designing export regimes immune to American sanctions pressure. Over time, these developments would erode the structural foundations of the transatlantic relationship that have defined global order since 1945.

The Trump Corollary, in effect, presents America's allies with a menu of strategic options they previously lacked political justification to pursue: German nuclear weapons development under multilateral control, Japanese space-based deterrence, European monetary independence, and comprehensive realignment toward the Global South and China. These are not outcomes Washington desires—but they are outcomes Washington's own strategy makes rational for threatened allies. When a guarantor becomes unreliable, clients develop alternatives. The NSS assumes this development can be controlled through economic coercion and military threats. It cannot.

Doctrinal Incoherence

The Trump Corollary belongs to no recognizable tradition of American grand strategy. Classical realism, as articulated by Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz, stresses prudent limits and balance-of-power logic; the Corollary pursues maximalist exclusion that invites balancing behavior. Liberal internationalism, developed by G. John Ikenberry and Robert Keohane, depends on institutions, norms, and mutual legitimacy; the Corollary rejects multilateralism and undermines alliance cohesion. Neo-isolationism, advocated by Barry Posen and Stephen Walt, counsels restraint and avoidance of unnecessary entanglements; the Corollary dramatically expands military commitments in the Western Hemisphere while abandoning commitments elsewhere.

The Corollary is a hybrid whose internal contradictions undermine strategic coherence. It combines the worst elements of overreach and abandonment: aggressive intervention in the Americas paired with strategic withdrawal from Europe, economic coercion toward allies paired with accommodation of adversaries. This incoherence creates practical difficulties for implementation and generates confusion among both allies and adversaries about American intentions and redlines.

The Ultimate Irony

The 2025 National Security Strategy attempts to reshape global order through reassertion of American hemispheric dominance and strategic retrenchment from Europe. Yet by devaluing allies, imposing coercive economic conditions, and pursuing détente with Russia at Europe's expense, it risks producing outcomes directly contrary to American long-term interests.

The authors of the Federalist Papers would likely view the Trump Corollary not as strategic realism but as profound miscalculation. By removing the security guarantee that kept Europe dependent and militarily restrained, and simultaneously applying economic coercion, the United States is eliminating obstacles to European federation. The NSS assumes Europe will revert to a collection of weak nineteenth-century nation-states. It fails to account for the Hamiltonian alternative: that faced with partition by external powers, Europe will do exactly what American states did in 1787—form a more perfect union to secure liberty and power.

In attempting to unburden itself of European security commitments, the United States may inadvertently create its most formidable competitor. This is the ultimate irony: a strategy intended to restore American primacy instead accelerates multipolarity. By destroying the transatlantic dependence that ensured American primacy for nearly a century, Washington is not “making America great.” It is making Europe a superpower.

The blowback will not be the submission Washington expects, but the awakening of a dormant giant.

References

Chivers, C.J. (2025, December 31, updated January 5, 2026). The dawn of the A.I. drone. The New York Times.

Farrell, H., & Newman, A. L. (2019). Weaponized interdependence: How global economic networks shape state coercion. International Security, 44(1), 42–79.

Hamilton, A., Madison, J., & Jay, J. (2008). The Federalist Papers (L. Goldman, Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1788)

Ikenberry, G. J. (2011). Liberal Leviathan: The origins, crisis, and transformation of the American world order. Princeton University Press.

Keohane, R. O. (1984). After hegemony: Cooperation and discord in the world political economy. Princeton University Press.

Mearsheimer, J. J. (2001). The tragedy of great power politics. W. W. Norton.

Morgenthau, H. J. (1948). Politics among nations: The struggle for power and peace. Knopf.

National Security Strategy of the United States of America. (2025). The White House.

Posen, B. R. (2014). Restraint: A new foundation for U.S. grand strategy. Cornell University Press.

Retter, L., Frinking, E., Hoorens, S., Lynch, A., Nederveen, F., & Aalberse, P. (2021). European strategic autonomy in defence: Transatlantic visions and implications for NATO. RAND Corporation.

Walt, S. M. (2018). The hell of good intentions: America's foreign policy elite and the decline of U.S. primacy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of international politics. Addison-Wesley.