The Trump administration wants to convince four European nations to follow Britain’s lead and leave the EU, according to reports of a leaked extended, classified version of the US national security strategy.
American outlet Defense One reported that the document proposes a new C5 forum bringing together the US, China, India, Japan and Russia as a potential rival to the G7.
It is also said to name Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland as the EU nations the Trump administration allegedly wants to follow Britain out of the bloc.
Reports suggest the classified strategy urges the US to “support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life … while remaining pro-American”.
The document is said to suggest that the US should “work more with” the countries with a track record of challenging Brussels “with the goal of pulling them away” from EU.
However, the Trump administration has claimed that the reported classified version of the strategy released last week does not exist.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told Defense One: “No alternative, private, or classified version exists.
“President Trump is transparent and put his signature on one NSS that clearly instructs the US government to execute on his defined principles and priorities.”
Mr Trump has previously suggested expanding the G7, the coalition of the world’s seven major democratic economies, to include Russia or China, with the EU also included.
The proposals will allegedly see the new C5 hold regular summits, including one on Middle East security aimed at normalising Israel-Saudi relations.
The classified document is believed to say that the US targeting global leadership was “the wrong thing to want and it wasn’t achievable”.
It is said to read: “After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country.
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“Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”
The focus on policing its own hemisphere underpins the US’s actions in Venezuela, including sinking alleged drug boats and ramping up its military presence in the region.
Defense One’s report of the document reads: “We will reward and encourage the region’s governments, political parties, and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy.
“But we must not overlook governments with different outlooks with whom we nonetheless share interests and who want to work with us.”
The unclassified US security strategy warned that Europe is on the verge of “civilisational erasure” due to mass migration and that the continent will be “unrecognisable” within 20 years.
It also said that America will seek to “cultivate resistance” in Europe and revive “Western identity”.
Th document read: “It is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.
“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less.
“As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.”
