When the United States released its 33-page National Security Strategy in 2025, many Europeans were struck by the severity of its language—especially its warning that Europe risks “civilizational erasure.”

But to truly understand what the document is saying, Europe needs to take several steps back—into history, into political philosophy, and into honest self-reflection. Only from that distance can Europe see that the U.S. is not simply lecturing. It is diagnosing.

1. America as Rome, Europe as Post-Empire

The comparison with ancient Rome is unavoidable.
Rome spent centuries defending and financing order beyond its natural borders. Eventually the burden became too heavy. The empire shrank, refocused, and demanded more responsibility from its allies.

The new U.S. strategy says almost exactly the same thing:

• America will no longer carry the world like Atlas.
• Allies, especially Europe, must carry their share.
• Sovereign nations must defend themselves.

Yet, paradoxically, in this historical comparison:

America—not Europe—is Rome.
And Europe—not America—is the post-imperial region that lost its power long ago.

Europe’s influence already peaked before 1945. The European Union was built afterwards not as a new empire but as a system to prevent further wars, not to project power.

2. Europe’s Identity Crisis: A Union Without a Soul

The United States argues in its strategy that Europe’s deeper problem is not only economic or military weakness, but civilizational exhaustion. It lists:

• Unsustainable migration patterns
• Weakening national identities
• Declining birth rates
• Suppression of debate and free expression
• Overregulation and bureaucratic expansion

This brings us to the heart of the problem:
a strong national entity requires a strong national identity.

And this is precisely what Europe has diluted.

3. Europe United Only in One Domain: Migration

For decades, Europe failed to unify in defense, foreign policy, energy, or economic policy.
But it did unify in one crucial area—the area with the greatest long-term impact on identity:

immigration.

The opening of Europe’s borders to extraordinary levels of migration created a demographic shift across the continent. But unlike the U.S., which integrates new communities into a well-defined, decades-old national identity, Europe had no shared identity to absorb newcomers.

And many member states gradually lost the clarity of their own identities.

• What does it mean today to be French, beyond institutions and cuisine?
• What is the distinct identity of Germany?
• What does Italy represent as a national narrative?
• What is the shared cultural core of Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain?

These questions are no longer easy to answer.
Mass migration blurred them, creating societies where identity became fragmented, diluted, and—for many—confused.

4. How Mass Migration Contributed to National Identity Erosion

Migration alone is not the cause of identity loss—but it accelerates the weakening of identities that were already fragile after World War II.

Historically, national identities rest on:

• A shared historical memory
• A shared physical and cultural space
• A shared religion or worldview
• A shared language
• A common social contract

When all these elements are diluted simultaneously—and rapidly—the identity itself becomes blurred.
This is what Europe faces today.

The U.S. strategy describes it in stark terms:

Europe faces “migration policies that are transforming the continent” and “creating strife,” contributing to a “loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

In turn, the weakening of national identities ironically strengthens the European Union’s administrative structures, because:

• Strong nations resist centralization.
• Weak, confused nations depend on it.

Thus, the EU gains more authority precisely as its members lose their sense of identity.

This is why Europe risks becoming:

a strong bureaucratic entity,
but a weak cultural and civilizational one.

5. Without National Identities, Europe Becomes Only an Administration

A continent cannot survive historically on bureaucracy alone.
Every major civilization had at its core:

• A people
• A culture
• A faith
• A story
• A destiny

The European Union, however, has:

• Committees
• Regulations
• Civil servants
• Mechanisms
• Procedures

What it lacks is a unifying soul.
And as national identities fade, nothing replaces them.

A Europe composed of 27 weakened, identity-confused states held together only by administrative glue cannot project power, cannot defend itself, and cannot inspire loyalty.

It becomes, in effect:

an administrative empire without citizens,
a structure without culture,
a union without unity.

6. America’s Question: Are Sovereign Nations More Resilient?

The U.S. strategy implicitly says yes.
It argues Europe must:

• Rebuild national identities
• Strengthen sovereign nations
• Reduce dependency on Brussels
• Resist bureaucratic excess
• Restore self-confidence
• Return to national responsibility for defense and society

This is not an attack on Europe—it is a philosophical argument about history:

Sovereign nations shaped world history.
Bureaucracies administered it.

The Roman Empire declined when bureaucracy replaced civic virtue.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed under its own administrative contradictions.
The Soviet Union fell because it had structure but no soul.

The U.S. document warns that Europe risks the same fate.

7. The Core Insight: Europe Cannot Compete With the U.S. or China as It Is

A multi-layered, over-regulated, identity-diluted union cannot compete against:

• A continental superstate with a unified identity (USA)
• A centralized civilizational state with a millennia-old identity (China)

Europe is the only player built not on national unity or civilizational continuity, but on:

• rules,
• process,
• negotiation,
• and the lowest common denominator.

In geopolitics, this is fatal.

Conclusion: Europe’s Future Depends on Rediscovering Identity

The message of the U.S. strategy is not simply critical—it is existential:

Europe cannot survive as a global force if it loses its national souls.

A union of:

• strong nations,
• each rooted in its own history,
• each confident in its identity,
• each capable of self-defense,
• cooperating voluntarily,

is far stronger than a centralized union defined only by its rules and civil servants.

A Europe without identities is a body without a heartbeat.
The administrative machinery may continue to function—but history will no longer hear its voice.

The challenge for Europe is clear:

Restore national identity.
Rebalance sovereignty.
Cooperate as strong nations—
not as weakened provinces of a bureaucratic empire.

Otherwise, Europe may have institutions, but it will have no civilization.