The latest National Security Strategy (NSS) highlighted the direct threat the Trump administration poses to Europe. This threat extends beyond seizing Greenland and affects a broader array of issues and groups, including various non-government organizations. As a driving policy goal, the administration seeks to internationalize its authoritarian MAGA vision to undermine democracy, rule of law, and civil/human rights in Europe, which will also weaken allies of those in the US who oppose authoritarianism domestically.

Internationalizing the MAGA Agenda

The NSS undertakes unprecedented criticism of European governance, society, and culture, reversing over 80 years of US policy. It reflects the administration’s domestic ideology and seeks to transform European societies along similar lines—ideological imperialism designed around a far-right, traditionalist concept of white, Christian, European civilization. The NSS denounces mass migration (people from non-white, Christian societies) and criticizes efforts to combat hate speech and disinformation as attacks on free speech. It also disparaged global organizations, norms, and rules guiding the European and international order since WWII.

These goals reflect an ideological stream that has secured strong positions in the administration. At the Munich Security Conference last February, Vice President Vance attacked Europe, stating his greatest fear was “the threat within.” He supported Germany’s Alliance for Democracy, which the German state considers an extremist group. Last May, the State Department issued “The Need for Civilizational Allies,” laying out similar concepts. In Fall 2025, the State Department sent talking points to US Embassies advocating harsh immigration crackdowns. In December 2025, the US revoked travel visas of five Europeans involved in restricting disinformation and hate speech.

Broad Role for Far Right Non-government Organizations

These official actions draw roots from the wider non-governmental far-right community. In June 2025, the Heritage Foundation (authors of Project 2025) produced “Toward a Nationalist Internationalism: The Case for Building a National Conservative Alliance.” This presaged elements of the NSS and indicates the administration’s ambitions to change European governments by supporting parties and movements in order to impose far-right policies on immigration, religion, culture, gender/sexuality, and traditional families—essentially taking Project 2025 on a European tour. Their goals parallel domestic policies and reflect the objective of establishing a far-right “Internationale” vaguely similar to the Soviet-led COMINTERN of the pre-WWII era.

The administration builds upon an expanding network of like-minded parties. All European countries have far-right parties with similar ideologies. Hungary, under Prime Minister Orban and FIDESZ, has emerged as the dominant element and poster-child for what the far right seeks to achieve. Since Orban returned to power in 2010, Hungary has seen significant decline in rule of law, adherence to democratic principles and policies, protection of minority rights, and free speech as measured by multiple rating groups, while corruption has steadily increased. Consequently, the EU placed sanctions on Budapest, and in early January 2025 the US sanctioned its intelligence minister for corruption.

Beyond political parties, there’s a growing web of advocacy groups and think tanks in Europe with ties to US counterparts that the administration leverages. Perhaps the two most prominent in Europe are Hungary’s Mathais Corvin Collegium (MCC) and Poland’s Ordi Luris Institute. In the US, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), for example, holds conferences in Europe, Hungary in 2022 and Poland in 2025 and regularly invites European far-right groups to US conferences. All focus on building a stronger international network for mutual support to advance their shared ideological agendas.

The growing ties among these non-governmental groups may be the greatest threat to Europe because of the administration’s embrace of changing non-far-right governments and pressuring European states to adopt authoritarian MAGA policies. From Vance’s February 2025 statement through the November NSS, the administration has a vision for Europe—parallel “Make (country) Great Again” movements running the governments.

America First Leadership Needs a Far-Right Europe to Follow It

The administration’s policy towards Europe will be shaped by trade, commercial, and traditional national security concerns, and consequently, it may turn to non-governmental allies to push its ideological agenda—not unlike the Soviet Union’s use of Communist parties in the 20^th century. While the State Department embraces this far-right agenda, the administration has not yet harnessed the US military or intelligence community to pursue authoritarian policies in Europe. Such action could undermine NATO and essential intelligence relationships, especially if seeking to actively subvert democratic governance. While once unimaginable, given actions against Venezuela and threats to Greenland and Canada, this may be on the policy menu.

Despite its advocacy of national sovereignty, the administration and wider far-right movement ironically see international ties as essential and view strong, far-right, non-government organizations operating in multinational networks as vital to their ideological success. In a further irony, despite disparaging views of Europe, they view Europe as essential to building a white, Christian, far-right society in the US. European heritage is central to their worldview. The movement recognizes that achieving domestic goals requires parallel success in Europe, both to legitimize itself and weaken allies of its opponents inside the US.

Some have interpreted the NSS as dividing the world into spheres of influence—the US gets the Americas, China gets East Asia, and Russia gets Europe. The NSS and administration appear to disagree; they want Europe in their sphere, but it must be a MAGA-like Europe. As the Heritage paper states, America First may become America Alone. Even as the administration downplays traditional relationships with Europe, especially the EU, it clearly has a high-priority agenda to undermine European governments that don’t adhere to its authoritarian ideology via official actions and a non-government network.

Harry Hannah retired after four decades of experience in the Intelligence Community. He retired from the CIA in 2018. About half that time was focused on analyzing the capability of multiple foreign militaries in direct support of US military planning and operations and national level decision making. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.

What happens when the rules stop protecting those who follow them? In the latest episode of The Steady State Sentinel podcast, Immigration attorney Amy Peck and former FBI executive Lauren Anderson examine how unpredictable enforcement erodes trust, legitimacy, and the rule of law—and why the consequences extend far beyond immigration.

Listen here or subscribe on your favorite platform including Apple, YouTube and Spotify.

An often-asked question since January 21, 2025, “Is America really in danger of slipping into authoritarianism?” On July 4, 2025, I wrote an essay outlining indicators of the slide toward an autocratic government, which was expanded upon in an August 8 essay. In October, it felt to me as if the authoritarianism we fear was already upon us, and I compared what I was observing to the Jim Crow era that I grew up in.

As the first anniversary of this administration approaches, I’ve been reflecting on recent events and see nothing to contradict my conclusion from October. I am convinced that the United States is now an elected autocracy closely resembling Viktor Orban of Hungary, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, Narendra Modi of India, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and, lest we forget, the man recently deposed by the U.S., Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. These are (or were, in Maduro’s case) leaders who gained power through elections (sometimes even honest elections), but who rule through manipulation and repression, and who, once in power, dismantle democratic processes and institutions. We’re not yet a full-blown dictatorship, but the signs are ever clear that this is where we could end up if the trend is not reversed.

As hard as it might be for Americans to accept that this country falls into that category, it behooves us to take a hard look at what has happened in the last year and evaluate it against the key characteristics of authoritarianism.

Concentration of Power. Since day one, the Trump administration has sought to expand the power of the executive branch, weaken institutional checks and balances, and undermine the independence of the judiciary. From the dismantling of USAID to an executive order ending birthright citizenship, actions that have been challenged in court, but not yet decided, Trump and his advisors have continued to assert that his power over the executive branch is unlimited and unquestionable. The capstone of his quest for power, and his views on limitations on his power, were highlighted in a January 8, 2026, interview with The New York Times, when he said, in answer to a question if there were any limits on his global powers, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need international law.”

Restriction of Civil Liberties. In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, he went full bore in undoing decades of civil rights work, including eliminating diversity initiatives across all federal agencies, firing staffers of agencies working on civil rights issues, and pushing to roll back provisions of the Civil Rights Act; dismantling laws intended to protect people from discrimination in schools, the workplace, and at the voting polls. In a January 11, 2026, article in The New York Times, Trump’s views on civil rights were summed up in his remarks that white people were ‘very badly treated’ by civil rights-era protections.

Political Repression. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pledged to punish his political opponents. As of November 26, 2025, a Reuters tally indicated that at least 470 Americans, individuals, institutions, and organizations had been targeted for retribution. The list included prosecutors who investigated his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, media organizations he deemed hostile, law firms associated with opponents, and government employees who questioned his policies. On January 11, 2026, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell received a subpoena and a threat of criminal indictment from the DOJ regarding his 2025 congressional testimony on renovations to the Federal Reserve’s buildings. In a video statement, Powell said the subpoena was an effort to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates. Trump has denied knowledge of the case but has clashed with Powell (whom he appointed during his first term) over interest rates, which he seeks to manipulate for political reasons, whereas Powell insists on using economic indicators to make that call.

Manipulation of Democratic Processes. While many of Trump’s early actions by executive order have been challenged in the courts, and some of those orders have been declared unconstitutional, he continues to look for workarounds and loopholes in the law to implement the proposals in the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page Project 2025, a blueprint for placing the federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control without Congressional or Judicial Branch oversight. He has tried eliminating job protections for federal employees and has weaponized federal agencies against his political opponents, overwhelming the courts—and the public—with constant policy changes, in an effort to normalize authoritarian governance through the sheer volume of controversial actions.

Use of Propaganda and Control of Information. Control of the media and use of propaganda to shape public perception is right out of the authoritarian playbook, and this has been Trump’s tactic from the start of his second administration. Even now, he continues the ‘big lie’ that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’; he denigrates and mocks opponents with ad hominem attacks; and he uses threats and intimidation to force the media to hew to his line. A prime example of the use of propaganda (outright lies) to shape public opinion and control the narrative was Trump’s comments after an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Ncole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 7, 2026. Despite video evidence showing that Good was turning her car away from the agents when the first shot was fired, and the next two shots were fired through the left front window, Trump, in a statement to The New York Times, accused the victim of “trying to run over policemen…”

Institutional Support. During his first administration, Trump, who was new to the federal government scene, appointed officials who, in many cases, placed their oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution’ over personal loyalty to him. Thus, he was restrained in some of his worst impulses, such as his desire to deploy the army to DC to deal with the demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. In his second administration, however, he appointed only loyalists to key positions, such as the DOJ, the FBI, and the DOD, which has led to National Guard deployments, primarily to Democratic-run cities and states, until the courts ordered them out of California, Oregon, and Illinois. Because he has more direct control over the DC National Guard, troops remain in the capital, and at the request of Louisiana’s Republican governor, in New Orleans. Until his raid on Venezuela and abduction of its president and his wife, and the DOJ subpoena to Fed Chair Powell, the Republican-led Congress has, for the most part, either supported his actions or looked the other way. Democratic legislators’ efforts to rein him in have been blocked by the Republican majority. The Venezuela crisis, the attack on the Fed, and his obsession with taking over Greenland, however, have exposed cracks in Congressional support that have yet to stop his actions—but they offer hope. Right-wing media outlets have been consistently supportive, or silent on his abuses of power, and his efforts to bring the rest of the media in line continue.

Fear and Violence. Finally, there is the use of fear and violence to manipulate and control the population. One need look no further than the aggressive and militarized tactics that ICE uses in its raids, and the demographics of those being detained and deported to conclude that instilling fear is as much—if not more—a goal of the administration as its stated goal of removing the worst and most dangerous undocumented alien criminals. Targets of these raids have increasingly been those with no ‘criminal’ record, legal permanent residents, and even U.S. citizens.

It is maybe premature to call the U.S. a full-blown autocracy, but it’s hard to deny that we are no longer ‘approaching’ that status. We’re now a hybrid, perhaps still more free than unfree, but the move to dictatorship seems to be accelerating each day, and one can only wonder when we’ll reach the point at which a U-turn becomes difficult.

Charles A. Ray served 20 years in the U.S. Army, including two tours in Vietnam. He retired as a senior US diplomat, serving 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with assignments as ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe, and was the first American consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He also served in senior positions with the Department of Defense and is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

Over the past several months, the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security have become unusually active in communicating directly with the American public, particularly through social-media platforms. Much of this material shares a common aesthetic and rhetorical profile: a romanticized vision of a homogeneous American past, heavy reliance on martial symbolism, and language that frames politics as an existential struggle between insiders and enemies. Many observers have noted that this style bears an uncomfortable resemblance to official propaganda produced by authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century—most notably Germany in the 1930s.

In March 1945, just weeks before the defeat of Nazi Germany, the U.S. War Department issued Army Talk 64, a pamphlet with a blunt, one-word title: “FASCISM!” It was part of a broader series—Army Talks—distributed to American service members in the European theater. The purpose was not morale-boosting or cheerleading. It was civic education.

As historian Heather Cox Richardson recently explained, the Army Talks were designed to help soldiers “become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.” The War Department understood that fighting fascism required more than weapons. It required clarity—about what fascism is, how it operates, and why it poses a mortal threat to democratic societies.

What is striking about Army Talk 64 is not merely its historical provenance, but its enduring relevance. The pamphlet warned that fascism does not announce itself with a single uniform or symbol. It grows gradually, exploiting fear, resentment, and nostalgia. It thrives, the document cautioned, on indifference and ignorance.

The pamphlet reminded American soldiers that freedom is not self-executing. It requires vigilance—not only against foreign enemies, but against domestic practices that corrode democratic norms. “If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights,” the authors warned, “our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

This was not radical language. It was official U.S. government doctrine.

The men and women reading Army Talk 64 were preparing to liberate Europe from fascist rule. But the War Department understood that the ideology they were fighting was not confined to foreign soil. Fascism, the pamphlet made clear, is a recurring political disease. It can emerge anywhere citizens lose the habit of critical thinking or surrender democratic responsibility in exchange for a promise of restored greatness.

That clarity stands in stark contrast to our present moment.

Today, public discourse often treats “fascism” as either an insult or a taboo—too inflammatory to name, too dangerous to define. Yet the United States once insisted that its soldiers confront the concept directly, analytically, and without euphemism. The government trusted Americans to understand the warning.

Re-engaging with Army Talk 64 would not be an act of nostalgia. It would be an act of democratic self-respect. The document is not partisan. It does not target any individual or movement by name. Instead, it offers a framework—rooted in American experience—for recognizing when political culture begins to slide toward authoritarianism.

The lesson is simple and unsettling: democracies do not fail only because of force. They fail when citizens stop paying attention.

Nearly eighty years ago, the United States told its soldiers that the defense of freedom begins with understanding what threatens it. That message was true in 1945. It is no less true today.

The question is whether we are still willing to hear it.

Steven A. Cash served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office before joining the CIA in 1994 as Assistant General counsel and subsequently serving as an intelligence officer in the Directorate of Operations. In 2001 he joined the Senate Select committee on Intelligence as Counsel and designee-staffer to Senator Diane Feinstein). He later served as a senior staffer in the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security and the Department of Energy. In the private sector he has advised on national security, counterintelligence, and technology policy and served on the Biological Sciences Experts Group under the Director of National Intelligence. Mr. Cash is currently the Executive Director of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

The Steady State Sentinel is produced by The Steady State, a community of former national security professionals who spent their careers safeguarding the United States at home and abroad. Today, we continue that mission by staying true to our oaths to defend the Constitution, uphold democracy, and protect national security. Each episode features expert hosts in conversation with accomplished guests whose experience sheds light on the crises and challenges facing the nation.

In Episode 2, The Steady State Executive Director Steven A. Cash draws on decades of experience watching foreign democracies fail to highlight the existential risks the United States faces under President Donald Trump. Award-winning CIA operative James Lawler conducts this provocative discussion about encroaching dictatorship in the United States.

Listen Here

Steven A. Cash served as a former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office before joining the CIA in 1994 as Assistant General counsel and subsequently serving as an intelligence officer in the Directorate of Operations. He subsequently served in the Senate Select committee on Intelligence as Counsel and designee-staffer to Senator Diane Feinstein), as a senior staffer in House Select Committee on Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology , the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy. In the private sector he has advised on national security, counterintelligence, and technology policy and served on the Biological Sciences Experts Group under the Director of National Intelligence.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions. Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.