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International Security includes military and diplomatic measures that nations and international organizations ‒ such as the United Nations and NATO ‒ take to ensure their safety and security.
Kaja Kallas is the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission. Kaja Kallas was the first female prime minister of Estonia.
Trump rocked European allies this month by threatening to seize Greenland from NATO and EU member Denmark. The crisis has reinforced calls for the European continent to cut its decades-long reliance on the US for defences.
Politico spoke to more than a dozen NATO insiders, diplomats, and current and former colleagues of NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte. They described a leader admired as a skilled crisis manager who recently pulled off a win on Greenland, but at the cost of deepening European unease about NATO’s long-term future.
Continue reading “NATO chief’s Trump flattery strains the alliance”
The aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle set sail from the Mediterranean port of Toulon.
French officials declined to give precise details of its route, sources said the carrier strike group is heading into the North Atlantic,
“If anyone thinks here … that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming,” NATO chief Mark Rutte told lawmakers on the European Parliament’s defence and foreign affairs committees. “You can’t.”
Rutte then went on to criticize NATO allies. A “European pillar [of NATO] is a bit of an empty word,” arguing a European army would create “a lot of duplication” with the alliance. Moreover, Russian President Vladimir “Putin will love it,” Rutte added.
Continue reading “NATO’s security general says Europe cannot defend itself without the US”
German defence manufacturer Rheinmetall are in talks with satellite builder OHB about a satellite project for the German armed forces.
The proposed joint venture would bid for a multibillion-euro contract to create a secure, military-grade satellite communications network in low Earth orbit (LEO) for the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces.
In any age of economic stagnation and extremes of inequality, popular trust in democratic institutions corrodes. It has been corroding not just in the US but across the Western world for decades now. As such Trump may be a symptom, not a cause, of Carney’s “rupture” with the post-World War Two order.
Watching those old men making their way through the Normandy cemeteries was a graphic and poignant reminder that democracy, the rule of law, accountable government are not naturally occurring phenomena. They are not even, historically speaking, normal. They have to be fought for, built, sustained, defended.
And that is the challenge from here facing what Mark Carney called “the middle powers”.
Source:
Allan Little, BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99kkerr93ko
Lucas believes “NATO is dying,” comparing it to a “marriage where you have one of the partners in the marriage using threats of violence and mocking the other partner for being trusting and idealistic.”
Source: Deutsche Welle (DW)
Trump has backed down from his threats of tariffs on European countries to push them to agree to a US purchase of Greenland.
While the European Union wants to continue trade ties with it’s largest trading partner, it warned the bloc will stand up for its interests.
Former NATO boss and former Danish Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen said on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, that Trump’s insistence that Greenland should become part of the US represented the biggest challenge to NATO since its establishment in 1949.
“It’s really the future of NATO that is at stake,” said Rasmussen, who offers a unique perspective on the crisis as a former leader of both Denmark – from 2001 to 2009 – and NATO, where he served as secretary general from 2009 to 2014.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Mark Carney urged middle powers to unite against coercion from aggressive superpowers, warning “compliance will not buy safety” in a world where the rules-based international order has collapsed.