President Donald J. Trump ended 2025 strong, releasing a bold new National Security Strategy (NSS) in early December that reaffirmed his America First doctrine, prioritized U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, committed to securing borders around the world, and laid the foundation for renewed prosperity and peace through strength. Mostly drafted by Michael Anton, the NSS speaks with one voice about principles, priorities, and also strategies for achieving the goal of putting America First, and Making America Great. But it also speaks of making Europe great again too—indeed, near the climax of the new strategy document is the idea that American greatness will also depend on finding our ‘civilizational allies’ in Europe.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recognized immediately the implication of the new document, commenting on social media that ‘the new American national security strategy’ was ‘the most important and most interesting document of recent years’. It’s not only a funeral for the delusional neo-con dream that America could police the globe while hollowing out its own heart, but the document also takes aim at liberal globalists in Brussels. As Orbán observed: ‘The Americans also see that Europe has hit the wall of a long economic dead end. A weak ally cannot defend itself and cannot be relied upon in international affairs either.’
The National Security Strategy is clear-eyed about the fact that Europe has reached an economic dead end, with its share of global GDP in free fall. Yet it insists that its economic failure is ‘eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.’ The NSS speaks with sharp candor: American greatness requires that we cultivate ‘resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.’ Brussels especially is identified as undermining political liberty and national sovereignty, as responsible for cratering birth rates, and exchanging European birth rights for a mess of migration potage.
While the document avoids explicit mention of Islam (NATO will soon have ‘non-European majorities’), the implication is clear that if nothing changes, not only will NATO cease to exist, but Europe itself will be lost forever. Since American greatness is inextricably bound up with the explorers, the pilgrims and pioneers who came from Europe to settle the New World, America has no choice but to be interested in the fate of Europe. Our national good is bound up with helping to make Europe great again.
This isn’t the first time western civilization has required a complete renovation. In fact, the one remarkably consistent thing about western civilization is how often it seems to be on the verge of collapse before being miraculously rejuvenated. The Roman Empire, for all its grandeur, almost caused the collapse of western civilization under the weight of universal ambitions of endless expansion, unbridled migration, and the worship of those false gods of power, pleasure, and avarice.
Yet what saved Rome from Itself was Christianity. Similarly, liberalism has collapsed under its own weight. It promised ‘perpetual peace’, and brought us forever wars. It claimed religious neutrality, but was actually anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-borders, anti-history, and anti-Political. The neo-cons and liberal globalists led us headlong into disaster, with our borders dissolved, families fractured, histories erased, and civilization once again in the dock.
‘It will be Christianity that once again infuses us with the strength to renew civilization’
But I think it will be Christianity that once again infuses us with the strength to renew civilization. While the NSS doesn’t explicitly name the Faith, it is clear that America’s ‘spiritual and cultural health’ is the bedrock of security, achievable only through ‘strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.’ Christian Faith, in turn, is the bedrock of civilizational renewal and of civilization allies.
This brings me to the other dynamic year-ending event: Hungary’s state visit to the White House. It offered a visible image of what ‘civilization allies’ must look like in this new postliberal age: the United States and Hungary locked arms against the failures of liberalism, against the Atlanticist pink police states, and united in a fight for a Christian civilization capable of cultivating strong nations—with strong borders, fair trade, and booming industry—in order to build strong families with shared faith and the freedom to lead genuinely good and decent lives. The warm friendship between President Trump and Prime Minister Orbán is itself a visible sign of hope that we can renew our countries, restore our memory of God, and recover the manifold strengths that Christian Faith brings to the world.
Orbán observed: ‘America has a precise understanding of Europe’s decline. They see the civilizational-scale decline that we in Hungary have been fighting against for fifteen years.’ But as we begin this Year of Our Lord 2026, it seems we truly can breathe a sigh of relief that, finally, ‘at last, we are not fighting against it alone.’
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