France describes the new US security doctrine as “an extremely brutal clarification”. “Europe will only be respected if it knows how to be respected”

Europe must accelerate its rearmament in response to a drastic change in US military doctrine, a French government official said on Tuesday, saying Washington's new security strategy represented “an extremely brutal clarification” of its ideological stance.

The new US national security strategy released last week calls for “cultivating resilience” in Europe, saying the continent is undermining democracy, blocking peace in Ukraine and facing the “disappearance of civilization” due to high migration and falling birthrates, according to the Financial Times and Politico.

“The new American security strategy is an extremely brutal clarification of the ideological posture of the United States,” Alice Rufo, France's junior armed forces minister, told lawmakers at the weekly question-and-answer session in the National Assembly.

“We live in a world of carnivores, Europe is not an island, and Europe will only be respected if it knows how to be respected,” she added.

The statement by Rufo, who previously served as deputy national security adviser on President Macron's team, is the harshest public remark yet from a French official following the emergence of the new US national security strategy.

Rufo, who met this weekend in Washington with Pentagon officials and other US security officials, said he was aware the document was causing internal “debate” within the US administration, particularly over how it portrayed Russia.

Since Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022, US security strategies have pointed to Russia as a major threat. However, the new policy takes a more moderate tone, urging limited cooperation.

Restoring strategic stability with Russia is one of the points indicated by the new strategy as a priority in terms of the general policy for Europe.

Russia welcomed the new American strategy

The Kremlin, through the voice of its spokesman, on Sunday welcomed the Trump administration's decision to revise the US national security strategy and no longer consider Russia a “direct threat”, according to TASS and Reuters.

Speaking to Russia's state news agency, Peskov said the updated American strategy dropped wording that described Russia as a direct threat and instead called for cooperation with Moscow on issues of strategic stability.

“We consider this a positive step,” he said, adding that Moscow would examine the document carefully before drawing broader conclusions.

“We definitely need to look into it more carefully,” Peskov said, according to TASS.