Fyodor Lukyanov: Washington no longer sees Russia as Mordor
The new edition of the US National Security Strategy breaks sharply with past documents. It looks, at first glance, like a standard presidential framework, but it reads more like an ideological manifesto. One might be tempted to treat it as a political pamphlet from Trump’s circle, destined to fade once he leaves office.
But that would be a mistake. There are two reasons to take it seriously. First, the United States is an ideological power by definition. It’s a country founded on slogans and principles. Every American policy line, no matter how pragmatic in appearance, is infused with ideology. Second, even an unconventional president produces guidelines that outlive him. Trump’s 2017 strategy, for example, announced the era of great-power confrontation and shaped much of what followed. Biden softened the rhetoric in 2021, but the underlying framework remained. This new document will also endure.
What stands out is the tone toward Western Europe. The sharpest criticism is aimed not at Russia or China, but at the European Union. For the authors, the EU is an aberration of the liberal order. A structure that has led European nations astray. The US now identifies its true continental partners in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, pointedly omitting the western and northern states that drove post-war integration.
The Strategy touches on the wider world, but Western Europe occupies symbolic ground. American identity was forged as a rejection of the Old World, the corrupt, tyrannical Europe from which settlers fled in search of religious and economic freedom. The “farmer’s republic” is long gone, but its founding myth remains potent. In today’s conservative revival, that myth has returned with force. Trump’s supporters hope not only to revive an idealized past, but to undo much of the 20th century. Most specifically the liberal internationalism launched when Woodrow Wilson took the US into the First World War.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth made this rejection explicit in a recent speech at the Reagan Forum. Down with utopian idealism; long live hard realism. Washington, in this vision, sees the world as a collection of spheres of influence controlled by the most powerful states, two of which are the US and China. The role of the others, presumably including Russia, will be clarified in the Pentagon’s upcoming military strategy.
Historically, these oscillations in American doctrine have always been tied to Europe. The City on a Hill emerged as a repudiation of Europe. The liberal order of the 20th century, by contrast, rested on an unbreakable Atlantic bond. That bond was never realized after 1918, but it became the organizing principle of the West after 1945.
Today, Washington blends both impulses. On one hand, it tells Western Europe to solve its own internal problems rather than “parasitize on America.” On the other, it encourages resistance within the bloc to what it sees as failed EU policies. This is not disengagement; it is an attempt at a political reformation of the half-continent. The goal is regime change. Not in the old Cold War sense, but in cultural and ideological terms: a shift from liberal-globalist to national-conservative values. Through this, Washington hopes to strengthen its grip on a “revitalized Europe” that will serve as a key ally in America’s broader goals: dominance in the Western Hemisphere, hence the explicit resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine, and a trade arrangement with China that favors US interests.
The most unexpected element is how Russia is treated. Unlike in previous strategies, Russia is not depicted as a threat or a rogue actor. Nor is it framed as a global challenger. Instead, Russia appears as part of the European landscape. As an essential component of the continental balance. Washington’s new goal is to engineer a European settlement in which Russia participates, but not as an equal global power. The logic is simple: Europeans themselves cannot calibrate this balance, so America must intervene on their behalf.
In essence, the authors are proposing a return, in a new form, to a 19th-century “concert of Europe.” With Russia included, but confined. The parallel with the post-Cold War liberal project is striking. Back then, the West also imagined Russia integrated into a stable European system, but under Western ideological leadership. The slogans have changed; the hierarchy remains.
It is at least encouraging that Washington has abandoned the cartoonish portrayal of Russia as a kind of Mordor, the fantasy imagery that dominated Western discourse in recent years. The new tone is calmer, pragmatic, almost clinical. But the place assigned to Russia is still not one the country can accept. A junior partner in a reconstructed European house is not a role befitting Russia’s strategic ambitions.
Moreover, even the premise feels dubious. The idea that Europe can rebuild itself into a coherent political entity, with or without Russia, is far from certain. The continent’s fragmentation is deep, its interests divergent, and its dependence on external powers entrenched. The US Strategy imagines a Europe reorganized along American preferences, integrated into an Atlantic framework that ultimately serves Washington’s goals. Whether such a Europe exists even as a theoretical possibility is another question entirely.
Russia, for its part, will study this American project closely. But its trajectory is already set. Moscow’s long-term strategic objectives – sovereignty, a multipolar order, and freedom of maneuver beyond the European theater – do not fit neatly into a US-designed continental balance. Even if a pan-European house could be rebuilt, Russia would not be content to serve as one of its decorative pillars.
The new American doctrine may be more measured than the rhetoric of recent years, but it still imagines Russia constrained within a Western-centered system. That vision belongs to the past. Russia will proceed along its own path, guided not by ideological proclamations from abroad, but by its own understanding of its future role in world politics.
This article was first published in the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta and was translated and edited by the RT team
