Good article, Anne Applebaum; obviously, I agree. Two quick points: The NSS was reportedly drafted by Michael Anton, of “Flight 93” fame, when he was head of the Policy Planning Staff at State. He resigned in September in a fit of pique over being passed up for a job at the NSC (reportedly), so Stephen Miller (reportedly) finished it. Hence the multiple voices you detect. I’d venture there’s a third author—someone like Dmitriev, if not Dmitriev himself, because this is so obviously a collection of Russian fantasies and a Russian wish list.(The continuity between Russia’s 2021 national security strategy and this one is quite striking—it’s worth looking at them side by side.) If not a Russian, then probably a Hungarian, acting as a Russian cut-out.

Second, while it’s true, as you write, that this wouldn’t be the first time Americans have grievously misunderstood the external world, and to our own detriment, I’m fairly sure we have never before so completely misunderstood countries that are in no way difficult to understand. We misunderstood the USSR, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, because these were closed societies that strove ferociously to prevent us from acquiring any understanding of them. We had no embassy in Iraq. We had almost no way of gathering information about it, apart from speaking to exiles. The Soviet Union was notoriously deceptive, and the difficulty of understanding it a cliché—riddle, mystery, enigma, etc. But this document reflects an extraordinary ignorance about Europe. Figuring out what’s going on in Europe isn’t hard (and looking for oneself isn’t exactly hardship duty).

These are open societies. Americans are entirely welcome to visit, explore, go anywhere, and speak to as many officials and ordinary Europeans as they like. Thousands of European newspapers are published daily. The press is free. Every variety of European political opinion is available on the Internet for Americans to consult. There’s a massive exchange of tourists between Europe and the US every year—in the DC area, you can go to any Starbucks and find at least one European capable of reading the draft and telling you, “This isn’t accurate. It’s embarrassing, actually.”

European statistical agencies produce reliable statistics. European demographers make sound projections. European economists understand Europe’s economies as well as American economists understand theirs. European journalists report freely; Europeans chat with Americans without fear. You don’t need to recruit spies to learn about Europe; you don’t need to smuggle dissidents out of Europe in the back of a van—Europeans will happily talk to you. You don’t even need to visit: You can talk to them on social media.

I’m sure our diplomats send back cable after cable that could have informed this crew, were they willing to read a single word, that they’re laboring under severe misapprehensions about our allies. Pretty much any European they encountered could have told them that the things they believe are not so—are laughably false, in fact, except that it’s not so funny—and even if they were true, that this document would have precisely the opposite of the intended effect (if indeed they intended it to have any effect; I think you’re right to say this was strictly for domestic consumption. Unfortunately, the whole world read it.)

A very large number of Europeans speak excellent English, and besides, we now live in the age of AI-powered machine translation, so there’s no language barrier. European societies are culturally quite similar to ours, too: it’s not as if they were tasked with figuring out Trobriand Islander Kula-ring ceremonies.

So no, this isn’t analogous. Yes, we’ve made deadly errors about other regimes and countries before. But we haven’t made errors that could only be made by people who put their fingers in their ears, covered their eyes, and insisted that every bit of the relevant and abundant information available to them be banished from their sight so better to allow their imaginations to run wild.

There’s no normalizing this. It is, as you say, a suicide note.