Trump Calls Europe 'Incubator of Terror Threats'

(MENAFN) President Donald Trump has signed a sweeping new national counterterrorism strategy that casts Europe as simultaneously a victim and a breeding ground for terrorism, while placing drug cartels, Islamist networks, and violent left-wing extremists alongside one another as primary threats to American security.

The 16-page document, published by the White House on Wednesday, declares that Washington's counterterrorism posture will be anchored in three governing principles: "America First," "common sense," and "Peace through Strength."

The strategy organizes terrorist threats into three broad categories: "narcoterrorists and transnational gangs," "legacy Islamist terrorists," and "violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists."

A dedicated section takes direct aim at Europe and its NATO allies, accusing them of allowing the continent to become a permissive environment for what the document calls "alien cultures" with violent designs against both Europeans and Americans.

"The world is safer when Europe is strong, but Europe is greatly threatened and is both a terror target and an incubator of terror threats," the document states. "It is unacceptable that wealthy NATO allies can serve as financial, logistical, and recruitment hubs for terrorists."

The strategy reserves particularly sharp language for European immigration policy, arguing that open borders have functioned as a pipeline for extremist infiltration.

"Unfettered mass migration has been the transmission belt for terrorists," the strategy says, urging European governments to "rediscover" freedom of speech, hold "honest conversations about Islamism," devote more resources to counterterrorism, and take greater responsibility for their own security.

The document goes further, framing the issue in civilizational terms: "As the birthplace of Western culture and values, Europe must act now and halt its willful decline. It is clear to all that well-organized hostile groups exploit open borders and related globalist ideals," the document reads, adding that "the more these alien cultures grow, and the longer current European policies persist, the more terrorism is guaranteed."

The rhetoric closely mirrors language in Trump's National Security Strategy issued in December, which lambasted the EU's political and cultural trajectory and raised the alarm about what it termed "civilizational erasure." At the time, Trump argued that Europe was "destroying itself" through what he characterized as "disastrous" immigration policies.

On other fronts, the strategy commits the US to sustained military and law-enforcement pressure on cartels and transnational gangs that have been formally designated as foreign terrorist organizations. It also identifies Iran as the foremost Middle Eastern threat to American interests, signaling that operations Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury will press forward until Tehran is "no longer a threat."

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