EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Saturday that the United States was still Europe's main ally as she sought to downplay a new US National Security Strategy critical of European institutions.
"Of course, there's a lot of criticism, but I think some of it is also true," Kallas told the Doha Forum, an annual diplomatic conference in Qatar's capital, in response to a question about the US strategy.
The"US is still our biggest ally", she said.
"I think we haven't always seen eye to eye on different topics, but I think the overall principle is still there. We are the biggest allies, and we should stick together."
Kaja Kallas says Washington EU's 'biggest ally' after US security strategy published
Washington's new National Security Strategy, published early Friday, took aim at Europe, calling it over-regulated, lacking in"self-confidence" and facing "civilisational erasure" due to immigration.
The document puts into writing the offensive launched months ago by US President Donald Trump's administration against Europe, which the US has accused of taking advantage of American generosity, a radical departure from previous US policy.
"Europe has been underestimating its own power. Towards Russia, for example... we should be more self-confident," Kallas said.
Just weeks after taking office, US Vice President JD Vance dismayed Germans in particular and Europeans more generally with a speech in Munich claiming freedom of expression was receding on the continent, aligning himself with far-right parties such as Germany's AfD.
The new US National Security Strategy, which refers to the restoration of the primacy of nation-states, fits into this approach.
"What the Trump administration is telegraphing through this national security strategy is that it wants to see an entirely different Europe," said Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think-tank.
She said the questioning of European governments' legitimacy amounts to"significant political attacks" against Washington's allies, even as the Trump administration says it wants to strengthen European security amid the war in Ukraine.
Trump since returning to office in January has ordered sweeping curbs on migration, after a political career built on fanning fears that America's white majority is losing its status.
The strategy speaks in explicit terms of pressing US dominance in Latin America, where the Trump administration has been striking alleged drug traffickers at sea, intervening to bring down leftist leaders including in Venezuela and seeking to take charge of key resources such as the Panama Canal.
The strategy cast Trump as modernising the two-century-old Monroe Doctrine, in which the then young United States declared Latin America off-limits to rival powers.
