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Notes -
US Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg gave a somewhat surprising briefing in Brussels to the European press today. See the Official transcript and UK Grauniad coverage - the most comprehensive coverage in an English-language publication.
The quote that attracted most attention is in response to a question about EU AI regulation. Helberg says "I know that the National Security Strategy, the language around Europe and around civilizational erasure, drew a lot of attention in Europe. What I’d like to highlight is that that language is a warning. It’s not an insult. And – because there is a growing sense of concern and alarm in the United States about the fact that Europe’s economic – relative economic decline as a share of the global GDP is a crisis." The Guardian's headline writer describes this as "doubling down" on the criticism of Europe in the published strategy, but the actual article correctly points out that Helberg is doing the opposite - he is walking it back. The published strategy is crystal clear that "civilisational erasure" the US wants to prevent is about cultural change driven by mass immigration, that the main threat to the Atlantic alliance is the possibility that major European countries will cease to be majority white*, and that concerns about economic policy are secondary.
The reason why I wanted to post about this is that this is the latest in a number of pieces of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the US has fallen into the common trap of running one foreign policy out of the White House and a different one out of the State Department. Rubio being both SecState and National Security Advisor should make this impossible, but Vance seems to have taken over the usual role of the NSA as the principal opponent of the State Department in intra-administration battles. A dual foreign policy seems to be the best way to make sense of why the Trump administration is trying to make nice to Putin (in order to end the Ukraine war) with one hand while bombing and invading his clients with the other.
Two things are unusual about the way the Trump national security strategy was published - neither my search-fu nor ChatGPT identifies who wrote it (this would normally be a relatively senior person working for the NSA, and they were unofficially identified with previous strategies), and it wasn't publicly launched by the NSA (i.e. Rubio) at a major press event. Apart from a linguist helpfully pointing out that (unlike the 28-point Ukraine peace plan), the national security strategy was not translated from Russian, the only name mentioned by the press is Vance, with multiple outlets comparing the discussion of Europe to Vance's Munich speech. Does all this suggest that Rubio as NSA was not responsible for the document? Helberg, of course, works for Rubio, and quietly but publicly said that the strategy does not mean the Vance-aligned things it says. [Helberg is also, personally, a China hawk, and a major theme of his press briefing is that the main thing the US wants from Europe is for us to work with you on keeping China out of key supply chains].
In terms of the major foreign policy priorities of the Trump administration, Rubio is clearly in charge on Latin America - now apparently adding Paraviceroy of Venezuela to his increasing stack of hats. Vance has the unenviable job of going from TV station to TV station telling the ridiculously obvious lie that the ousting of Maduro was actually about drugs. (To anyone paying attention, including e.g. other corrupt Latin American leaders, the Hernandez pardon is a credible signal that it isn't). Whereas on Ukraine Rubio appears to be largely cut out, with diplomacy handled by people who work directly for Trump (Kellogg, Witkoff, and now Jared Kushner) and Vance conducting most of the open mouth operations.
If I had to sum up the difference between Team Rubio and Team Vance it would be that Team Rubio sees the number one threat as Chinese influence (and particularly Chinese influence in the Americas), Europe as a crappy ally that needs to stop freeloading, Russia as a committed Chinese ally, and defending Ukraine as a good idea in principle but a dubious use of US resources, whereas Team Vance sees the main threat as ideological, Europe as part of the woke enemy, Russia as a potential ally that needs to be brought in from the cold and offered a better alternative to their current arrangement with China, and the war in Ukraine as an obstacle to this. All factions seem to agree on Israel/Iran.
* The strategy says "majority non-European" but the meaning is clear in context.
One could sum it up as the two approaches being, respectively, geostrategic and civilizational. The Rubio doctrine seeks a correction of US state policy to respond to a changing environment, the Vance doctrine understands that the fundamental danger to the American people is the regime (not the administration, the permanent regime) and that Europe will be an enemy in that balance until they have their own regime changes. Eh, I like 'em both, and they often work together well - for instance, if you want to make nice with Putin, effortlessly slapping his client states gives him more incentive to respond in kind.
What does interest me is the Helberg quote. Looking at the transcript, he seems to be fumbling to give a non-answer to a question he maybe wasn't prepared for or didn't want to give specifics on (“Has the EU/UK done enough to limit the use of Chinese tech? Will the U.S. respect separate and distinct regulations by the EU/UK of AI and other tech-related activities, including search and so on?”), and when he brings up the National Security Strategy, he justifies it by referring to the previous question, also unrelated (“Would you like any further changes to the EU’s AI Act? If so, can you explain why?”). The sense I get from all of Helberg's responses is that he didn't really want to do a Q&A, he had some talking points about economic growth/deregulation he wanted to make without going into specifics, and the National Security Strategy line was a throwaway. Always a rough day at work first Monday after New Year's, I guess.
I think your idea that Helberg was rolled by the journalists makes sense. But I don't think the message Helberg had hoped to deliver was particularly about growth and deregulation. Given his personal interests, and the stuff he was talking about when he was in control of the agenda, I think the message he was trying to deliver was that the US and EU could and should still co-operate on anti-Chinese supply chain policy even as the relationship deteriorates in other areas.
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