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| Europe |
| NATO Chief Warns ‘Dreaming' Europe It Cannot Defend Itself Without U.S. Support |
| 2026-01-28 |
| [Breitbart] Europe is “dreaming” if it thinks it can defend itself without U.S. support. So says NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte who warned Monday the European Union (E.U.) would have to more than double current military spending targets to be able to replicate America’s contribution to the security of the continent. “If anyone thinks here … that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming. You can’t,” Rutte told E.U. lawmakers in Brussels per an AP report. Europe and the United States “need each other,” he further warned as Russia continues to hammer at the door in Eastern Europe with its aggression against Ukraine. NATO’s geo-political ambitions have been tested since U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed his push to annex Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. The 32-nation military organization is bound together by a mutual defense clause, Article 5 of NATO’s founding Washington treaty, which commits every country to come to the defense of an ally whose territory is under threat. The AP report further sets out at NATO’s summit in The Hague last year, European allies — with the exception of Spain — plus Canada agreed to Trump’s demand they invest the same percentage of their economic output on defense as the United States within a decade. They pledged to spend 3.5 percent of gross domestic product on core defense, and a further 1.5 percent on security-related infrastructure – a total of five percent of GDP – by 2035, as Breitbart News reported. “If you really want to go it alone,” Rutte said, “forget that you can ever get there with 5 percent. It will be 10 percent. You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros.” France has led calls for Europe to build its “strategic autonomy,” and support for its stance has grown since the Trump administration warned last year its security priorities lie elsewhere and Europeans should consider their options. The AP report concludes with the note Rutte told the lawmakers that without the United States, Europe “would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the U.S. nuclear umbrella. So, hey, good luck!” Related: Mark Rutte 01/22/2026 Ukrainian Perspective: Invasion of Ukraine: January 21, 2026 Mark Rutte 01/21/2026 'Macron is not needed': Trump twice humiliated the French president Mark Rutte 12/27/2025 Ukrainian Perspective: Invasion of Ukraine: December 26, 2025 |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #2 |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2026-01-28 12:45 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2026-01-28 07:14 |