By GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s new national security strategy underscores the need for Europe to become “much more independent” from the United States in terms of security policy.

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Merz also pushed back against the notion that European democracy needs saving.

The U.S. strategy, published Friday, paints European allies as weak, while offering tacit support to far-right political parties, and was critical of European free speech and migration policy. On Monday, European Council President António Costa warned the U.S. against interfering in Europe’s affairs and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.

Merz, the leader of the European Union’s most populous nation and its biggest economy, said he wasn’t surprised by the substance of the strategy as it was largely in line with a lecture U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave to European allies in Munich in February.

Parts of the document are understandable, but “some of it is unacceptable for us from the European point of view,” he told reporters in the western German city of Mainz.

“That the Americans want to save democracy in Europe now, I don’t see any need for that,” Merz said. “If it needed to be saved, we would manage that alone.”

He added that the new U.S. document “confirms my assessment that we in Europe, and so also in Germany, must become much more independent from the U.S. in terms of security policy. This is not a surprise, but it has now been confirmed again. It has been documented.”

Merz said that Vance’s speech earlier this year had “set off something in me as well, and you can see that today in our defense spending.”

Merz’s government, in office since May, has enabled higher spending by loosening strict rules on incurring debt — adding to an effort to bolster Germany’s military that has been underway since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022.

Under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, NATO members, including Germany, agreed in June to a massive hike in the alliance’s defense spending target.

“In my talks with the Americans, I say: ‘America first is fine,’ but ‘America alone’ can’t be in your interest. You need partners in the world too,” Merz said Tuesday. “And one of the partners can be Europe. And if you can’t do anything with Europe, then at least make Germany your partner.”

It was long overdue and published discreetly, unaccompanied by the usual presidential speechifying so far. And yet America’s new National Security Strategy — the document that in theory will guide foreign policy during the second administration of Donald Trump — speaks volumes about the president’s worldview.

Latin America, already being buzzed by American war planes, won’t be surprised to hear that it is now officially on notice, owing to a newly proclaimed “Trump Corollary” to the old Monroe Doctrine. Europe will be offended by much in the document and should pay attention. China won’t be any wiser, except in knowing that America still, sort of, backs Taiwan. The Middle East, at long last, is shrinking in relative importance. Africa is an afterthought, while North Korea isn’t mentioned at all. By contrast, anti-woke culture warriors should be doing cartwheels.

The NSS is a sporadic document, required by law, that typically signals the gist of an administration’s view on geopolitics. It also guides other papers, such as the National Defense Strategy (also overdue and forthcoming), which have far-reaching bureaucratic and budgeting consequences.

The text produced in the first Trump administration was clear, verging on belligerent, in defining great-power competition with Russia and China (as opposed to the war against terrorism, say) as the guiding principle of US foreign policy. It was also almost certainly never read by the president, who introduced it with a speech that bore little resemblance to its contents.

His second administration’s NSS is different. It is short and apparently worded to fit the attention span and interests of the president. In several passages, it is also well-written, especially as a catchy and populist — but perceptive — critique of the foreign-policy platitudes peddled since the Cold War by Washington’s foreign-policy elite, pejoratively dubbed “the blob.”

Strategy documents for the past three decades, the NSS says, “have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes.” Amen. In particular, the text goes on, “our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest.” That’s as pithy a statement of the MAGA rebellion against “liberal internationalism” or the American-led “rules-based order” as you can get.

The NSS’s authors also did their best to navigate around the many contradictions that riddle the president’s foreign policy and by extension the document. His approach, they write, is “pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist,’ realistic without being ‘realist,’ principled without being ‘idealistic,’ muscular without being ‘hawkish,’ and restrained without being ‘dovish.’” A convenient translation: Strategy is whatever Trump says tomorrow on Air Force One, or later in the Oval Office, even if it contravenes everything he said on Truth Social today.

All this preening shouldn’t obscure a shift in some emphases. Several things are consistent: It was always clear that the president views Moscow (not mentioned much, and in part as a potential partner) more favorably than did any of his predecessors since World War II, and that he regards Ukraine’s sovereignty (mentioned in passing on page 25 of 29) as a minor concern of the United States.

China, though, was expected to play a larger, if not the largest, role, since the administration includes notable China hawks who want to shift American resources from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific. That mini-pivot still appears to be happening, but is now subsumed within a much bigger reorientation from the world at large to the Western Hemisphere, which Trump seems inclined to boss around. Three months into a mighty military build-up off the coast of Venezuela — and following threats to hemispheric neighbors from Canada to Brazil — that shouldn’t come as a shock.

Some of the harshest and most gratuitous language is reserved for America’s oldest allies in Europe and seems to bear the mark of Vice President JD Vance, who struck the same tone in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February.

The NSS depicts Europe as a continent facing not only “economic decline” but “civilizational erasure,” owing to immigration. The paper also alleges that Europe practices “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition,” a benevolent wink to right-wing parties such as Germany’s Alternative for Germany, which Vance favors but which the European mainstream marginalizes (for good reasons). The NSS concedes that the US can’t “afford to write Europe off” — phew, what a relief — but ominously stipulates that “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”

The rest is largely as predicted. The strategy heaps contempt on multilateral and international organizations (which Trump has been quitting, boycotting or deriding), while appearing to bless a return to 19th-century-style spheres of influence: “The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.” Presumably, Trump wants a new Yalta-like arrangement among the US, China and Russia.

And as ever, Trump’s friends, business and golf partners do well: After the document harangues the Europeans for their way of life, it graciously promises to stop “hectoring” the Gulf monarchies into “abandoning their traditions,” which have rarely resembled Madisonian democracy.

I asked Rebecca Lissner what she thought of the strategy; she co-drafted an early version of the NSS during the administration of Joe Biden, before becoming a top advisor to his vice president, Kamala Harris. The paper was “a box-checking exercise,” she emailed me, and “more polemic than policy.” Indeed, it must be the first NSS ever to mention the fight against “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) as a priority in keeping America strong and safe. As in Trump’s first term, it also won’t make much of a practical difference, she thinks, because the president is “too impulsive, erratic, and opportunistic.”

The document is nonetheless worth a read, whether you’re in Beijing or Moscow, Brussels or Berlin, Caracas, Riyadh or even Pyongyang — the latter so inexplicably ignored in the paper. This new National Security Strategy reflects an administration that claims not to have an ideology but still filters the world through its MAGA lenses. It portrays a government that will keep contorting itself to add semantic coherence to the whims of a president who does whatever he wants.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

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After years of city planning, debate and delay, the St. Paul City Council on Wednesday is poised to approve sweeping new development standards along the Mississippi River that would loosen height restrictions downtown while requiring a tiered or stepped-back approach, effectively dropping the roof line of new construction as it gets closer to the river’s edge.

It’s a decision at least seven years in the making.

Nearly a decade ago, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources mandated that the state’s riverfront cities rewrite height standards and other requirements for new real estate development overlooking some 72 miles of the Mississippi River. The state published a model set of regulations in 2019 to serve as a regulatory roadmap of sorts.

Minneapolis and St. Paul were among the first of 25 impacted cities to volunteer to take the lead on drafting their own development rules for the “Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area,” with St. Paul agreeing to have its ordinance finalized by January 2021.

That deadline was not met. On Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council is poised to approve the capital city’s MRCCA ordinance, making St. Paul the last of 25 metro cities to complete their river corridor rules.

“Of the other 24 cities and townships, none of them had a delay this long from their deadline,” said Colleen O’Connor Toberman, land use and planning program director with the Friends of the Mississippi River. “It’s been tough to get answers from the mayor’s office about why.”

On the other hand, “now all 25 cities and townships have a consistent standard in place … basically from Dayton down to Hastings,” she said. “We’ve never had that before, and this is a very, very long process.”

Six new riverfront districts

Under the new rules, St. Paul’s riverfront zoning will be separated into six distinct districts.

The downtown St. Paul area — which will have the loosest requirements around building heights — is considered the “urban core” district, as opposed to the more restrictive zoning area surrounding the Watergate Marina in Highland Park, which is dubbed the “rural and open space” district.

“Those are like the two ends of the spectrum in terms of development intensity,” Toberman said.

The new “Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area” regulations are not expected to lead to major development changes along the riverfront, but they do seek to put to bed concerns raised by developers that the rules could impede future projects, such as Ramsey County’s long-delayed RiversEdge housing-and-office tower at Wabasha Street and Kellogg Boulevard.

Early drafts of the MRCCA rules called for imposing numerical standards, allowing an extra foot of building height for every five feet of distance stepped back from the river’s edge, as calculated from midway up the downtown bluff. The sloping or layer-cake effect is intended to preserve views of the city from the river, and vice versa.

A rendition of a proposed RiversEdge development along the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul.
The project would feature four towers of mixed development as well as a bridge extension over Shepard Road and the existing railway to the edge of the Mississippi River, to create a public plaza space. (Courtesy of AECOM)

For the five-acre RiversEdge project, that would likely have limited building heights to 35 feet, or just a story or two above the bluff top near Kellogg Boulevard, before triggering an additional permit process. Proposals, ever in flux, once called for the development to rise as many as 40 stories above Kellogg Boulevard.

“That could chill development from the outset, if a developer says ‘man, I’m never going to meet 35 feet, and I’m going to have to apply for a conditional use permit,’” said St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker, in an interview Monday.

Development advocates weigh in

During a Nov. 19 public hearing before the city council, Claudia Klinkhammer, a redevelopment program manager with Ramsey County, asked the council to loosen height limits downtown in light of the RiversEdge project, which could generate as much as $10 million to $15 million in annual property taxes.

Klinkhammer urged the council to promote the county’s fiscal health while promoting “a more vibrant, a more resilient, and a more economically inclusive downtown.”

Those comments were echoed by John Perlich, a representative of the St. Paul Area Chamber, Jon Fure, executive director of the downtown CapitolRiver Council, and Jacob Hooper, a representative of the pro-development group Sustain St. Paul.

They pointed to the recent loss of downtown commercial properties like Lunds and Byerlys, in contrast to public-facing waterfront projects in cities like Seattle.

“I hope we don’t set back downtown with setbacks,” Hooper said.

Removing numerical standard

At Noecker’s urging, the city council agreed to amend the draft ordinance this month and remove the numerical standard, leaving the more general rules in place surrounding tiered development. The city would still retain some development controls through a site plan review process.

The decision to drop the numerical standard drew some mild pushback at first from the Friends of the Mississippi River, which ultimately accepted the proposal after working closely with the council president.

“The city wants to give developers predictable standards. You don’t want everything to be a public debate,” acknowledged Toberman.

“On the other hand, the downtown riverfront is pretty unique … and the city will want to retain a bit of power over how (downtown riverfront projects are) developed,” she added. “The process this ordinance puts in place will be an OK way to do that.”

Why the delay?

In explaining the delay in 2023, former Planning and Economic Development Director Nicolle Goodman said city planners needed to model how various conceptual projects might fit into the six proposed riverfront zoning districts, including RiversEdge.

“We’re very close to finishing our analysis in the next few weeks, looking at each of those development sites or projects,” said Goodman, in September 2023. “Then we need to decide.”

Goodman stepped down from city employment this year, but Toberman noted the finished plans presented to the St. Paul Planning Commission this fall seemed to reflect hours — not two years — of additional staff analysis.

“Honestly, I think there was some disagreement in the (mayor’s) administration about what direction they wanted to take,” Noecker said. “I think it took way too long to get in front of us. It caused some good questions in the community, and some distrust.”

Bird safety

Even after the council adopts the new rules, some outstanding questions about bird safety remain up in the air, so to speak. Bird advocates have called upon the city to include requirements for bird-safe glass in the riverfront development regulations. St. Paul officials noted that no other city along the Mississippi River corridor had done so, though Minneapolis has created bird-safe standards for its skyway windows.

Still, the St. Paul Planning Commission agreed to conduct a study of how bird-safe glass might eventually be woven into the riverfront zoning rules, “given what a major migratory fly-way the river is for migratory birds,” Toberman said.

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“They’ll be looking at the possibility of putting in a bird-safe standard, possibly citywide, maybe for buildings of a certain size,” she explained. “There’s a lot of good information out there they can use. My concern is not with the study. My concern is with the timing. I don’t think advocates have a lot of confidence in the city following through.”

Noecker said she has asked the city’s department of Planning and Economic Development to update the city council on its progress and findings over the course of the year-long study, rather than waiting until the work is complete.

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 9, the 343rd day of 2025. There are 22 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Dec. 9, 1965, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the first animated TV special featuring characters from the “Peanuts” comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, premiered on CBS.

Also on this date:

In 1979, scientists certified the global eradication of smallpox, a disease which killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century.

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In 1990, Solidarity founder Lech Wałęsa (lek vah-WEN’-sah) won Poland’s first free presidential election since 1926.

In 1992, the first U.S. Marines made a predawn beach landing in Somalia in support of Operation Restore Hope; they were met by hundreds of reporters awaiting their arrival.

In 2006, the space shuttle Discovery launched on a mission to add to and rewire the International Space Station.

In 2013, scientists revealed that NASA’s Curiosity rover had uncovered signs of an ancient freshwater lake on Mars.

In 2019, an island volcano off New Zealand’s coast called Whakaari, or White Island, erupted, killing 22 tourists and guides and seriously injuring several others. Most of the 47 people on the island were U.S. and Australian cruise ship passengers on a walking tour with the guides.

In 2021, a cargo truck jammed with migrants crashed in southern Mexico, killing at least 53 people and injuring dozens more.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Judi Dench is 91.
Actor Beau Bridges is 84.
World Golf Hall of Famer Tom Kite is 76.
Actor John Malkovich is 72.
Singer Donny Osmond is 68.
Actor Felicity Huffman is 63.
Empress Masako of Japan is 62.
Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is 59.
Rock singer-musician Jakob Dylan (Wallflowers) is 56.
Actor Simon Helberg is 45.
Olympic gymnastics gold medalist McKayla Maroney is 30.
Actor Nico Parker is 21.