NATO chief warns Europe it’s ‘dreaming’ if it thinks it can defend itself without the US
This feels like a quiet policy shift.
RUTTE: ‘GOOD LUCK’ DEFENDING EUROPE WITHOUT THE U.S.: NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — who has turned out to be one of President Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders in Europe — is warning European nations that they lack the resources and industrial base to field a military force fully capable of defending the continent. In a speech and Q-and-A session to a pair of European Union committees in Brussels, Rutte laid out a harsh reality to EU lawmakers, warning that their discussion of creating a European army independent of the U.S. is folly.
“If anyone thinks here, again, that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming. You can’t,” Rutte said. “We need each other. And why do we need each other? I tell you, first of all, because also the U.S. needs NATO.”
The blunt assessment comes as the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy asserts that “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power” and that “NATO allies are therefore strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense.”
But Rutte warned that Europe is in no position to go it alone. For one thing, it would cost far more than the 5% of GDP in defense spending NATO countries have pledged to achieve by 2035. “Those who you are pleading for that, forget that. You can never get there with 5%. It will be 10%,” Rutte said. “You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros. You will lose then in that scenario; you would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the U.S. nuclear umbrella. So, hey, good luck.”
ON THE ARCTIC: ‘I THINK HE’S RIGHT’: Despite Trump announcing that, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, he had secured a framework agreement for total U.S. access to Greenland, Rutte made clear he had no authority to do that. “I have no mandate to negotiate on behalf of Denmark, so I didn’t, and I will not.”
Instead, Rutte said, he focused on the need for NATO to do much more to secure the entire Arctic region and on how to prevent Russia and China from gaining access “in a military sense or an economic sense” to the region, not just Greenland.
“President Trump, by the way, and I will defend him,” Rutte said. “I really feel that he deserves some defense. He was the one during Trump 45 who already said there is an issue with Arctic security. And again, he did so when he came back into …
This feels like a quiet policy shift.
RUTTE: ‘GOOD LUCK’ DEFENDING EUROPE WITHOUT THE U.S.: NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — who has turned out to be one of President Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders in Europe — is warning European nations that they lack the resources and industrial base to field a military force fully capable of defending the continent. In a speech and Q-and-A session to a pair of European Union committees in Brussels, Rutte laid out a harsh reality to EU lawmakers, warning that their discussion of creating a European army independent of the U.S. is folly.
“If anyone thinks here, again, that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming. You can’t,” Rutte said. “We need each other. And why do we need each other? I tell you, first of all, because also the U.S. needs NATO.”
The blunt assessment comes as the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy asserts that “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power” and that “NATO allies are therefore strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense.”
But Rutte warned that Europe is in no position to go it alone. For one thing, it would cost far more than the 5% of GDP in defense spending NATO countries have pledged to achieve by 2035. “Those who you are pleading for that, forget that. You can never get there with 5%. It will be 10%,” Rutte said. “You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros. You will lose then in that scenario; you would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the U.S. nuclear umbrella. So, hey, good luck.”
ON THE ARCTIC: ‘I THINK HE’S RIGHT’: Despite Trump announcing that, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, he had secured a framework agreement for total U.S. access to Greenland, Rutte made clear he had no authority to do that. “I have no mandate to negotiate on behalf of Denmark, so I didn’t, and I will not.”
Instead, Rutte said, he focused on the need for NATO to do much more to secure the entire Arctic region and on how to prevent Russia and China from gaining access “in a military sense or an economic sense” to the region, not just Greenland.
“President Trump, by the way, and I will defend him,” Rutte said. “I really feel that he deserves some defense. He was the one during Trump 45 who already said there is an issue with Arctic security. And again, he did so when he came back into …
NATO chief warns Europe it’s ‘dreaming’ if it thinks it can defend itself without the US
This feels like a quiet policy shift.
RUTTE: ‘GOOD LUCK’ DEFENDING EUROPE WITHOUT THE U.S.: NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — who has turned out to be one of President Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders in Europe — is warning European nations that they lack the resources and industrial base to field a military force fully capable of defending the continent. In a speech and Q-and-A session to a pair of European Union committees in Brussels, Rutte laid out a harsh reality to EU lawmakers, warning that their discussion of creating a European army independent of the U.S. is folly.
“If anyone thinks here, again, that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming. You can’t,” Rutte said. “We need each other. And why do we need each other? I tell you, first of all, because also the U.S. needs NATO.”
The blunt assessment comes as the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy asserts that “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power” and that “NATO allies are therefore strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense.”
But Rutte warned that Europe is in no position to go it alone. For one thing, it would cost far more than the 5% of GDP in defense spending NATO countries have pledged to achieve by 2035. “Those who you are pleading for that, forget that. You can never get there with 5%. It will be 10%,” Rutte said. “You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros. You will lose then in that scenario; you would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the U.S. nuclear umbrella. So, hey, good luck.”
ON THE ARCTIC: ‘I THINK HE’S RIGHT’: Despite Trump announcing that, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, he had secured a framework agreement for total U.S. access to Greenland, Rutte made clear he had no authority to do that. “I have no mandate to negotiate on behalf of Denmark, so I didn’t, and I will not.”
Instead, Rutte said, he focused on the need for NATO to do much more to secure the entire Arctic region and on how to prevent Russia and China from gaining access “in a military sense or an economic sense” to the region, not just Greenland.
“President Trump, by the way, and I will defend him,” Rutte said. “I really feel that he deserves some defense. He was the one during Trump 45 who already said there is an issue with Arctic security. And again, he did so when he came back into …
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