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NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who once called Donald Trump \u201cdaddy,\u201d also found his private text to Donald Trump made public, in which he praised the president\u2019s \u201cincredible\u201d achievements, adding: \u201cCan\u2019t wait to see you.\u201d | \u00a0Jim lo Scalzo\/EPA<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Carney had a message for what he termed \u201cmiddle powers\u201d \u2014 countries like Canada. They could, he argued, retreat into isolation, building up their defenses against a hard and lawless world. Or they could build something \u201cbetter, stronger and more just\u201d by working together, and diversifying their alliances.\u00a0Canada, another target of Trump\u2019s territorial ambitions, has just signed a major partnership agreement with China.<\/p>\n
As they prepared for the summit in Brussels, European diplomats and officials contemplated the same questions. One official framed the new reality as the \u201cpost-Davos\u201d world. \u201cNow that the trust has gone, it\u2019s not coming back,\u201d another diplomat said. \u201cI feel the world has changed fundamentally.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A good crisis<\/p>\n
It will be up to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her team to devise ways to push the continent toward greater self-sufficiency, a state that Macron has called \u201cstrategic autonomy,\u201d the diplomat said. This should cover energy, where the EU has now become reliant on imports of American gas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The most urgent task is to reimagine a future for European defense that does not rely on NATO, the diplomat said. Already, there are many ideas in the air. These include a European Security Council, which would have the nuclear-armed non-EU U.K. as a member. Urgent efforts will be needed to create a drone industry and to boost air defenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The European Commission has already proposed a 100,000-strong standing EU army, so why not an elite special forces division as well? The Commission\u2019s officials are world experts at designing common standards for manufacturing, which leaves them well suited to the task of integrating the patchwork of weapons systems used by EU countries, the same diplomat said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet there is also a risk. Some officials fear that with Trump\u2019s having backed down and a solution to the Greenland crisis now apparently much closer, EU leaders will lose the focus and clarity about the need for change they gained this past week. In a phrase often attributed to Churchill, the risk is that EU countries will \u201clet a good crisis go to waste.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Domestic political considerations will inevitably make it harder for national governments to commit funding to shared EU defense projects. As hard-right populism grows in major regional economies, like France, the U.K. and Germany, making the case for \u201cmore Europe\u201d is harder than ever for the likes of Macron, Starmer and Merz. Even if NATO is in trouble, selling a European army will be tough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While these leaders know they can no longer trust Trump\u2019s America with Europe\u2019s security, many of them lack the trust of their own voters to do what might be required instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who once called Donald Trump \u201cdaddy,\u201d also found his private text to Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[766,1213,331,802,28,943,6725,1395,2001,1433,6659,21882,473,365,32,5898,2595,34,35,2000,299,5187,7058,20327,36,1945,1824,2826,366,475,806,807,14790,43,5167,2129,2992,54314,2452,48802,2597,6565,332,811,182,7497,479,6717,657,15,49,1220,333,12339,1116],"class_list":{"0":"post-714622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-alexander-stubb","9":"tag-americas","10":"tag-banks","11":"tag-brexit","12":"tag-buildings","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-central-banks","15":"tag-china","16":"tag-communications","17":"tag-coronavirus","18":"tag-crisis","19":"tag-davos","20":"tag-defense","21":"tag-denmark","22":"tag-donald-trump","23":"tag-donald-tusk","24":"tag-drones","25":"tag-emmanuel-macron","26":"tag-energy","27":"tag-eu","28":"tag-europe","29":"tag-european","30":"tag-european-defense","31":"tag-eurozone","32":"tag-france","33":"tag-friedrich-merz","34":"tag-germany","35":"tag-golf","36":"tag-greenland","37":"tag-imports","38":"tag-industry","39":"tag-keir-starmer","40":"tag-labels","41":"tag-macron","42":"tag-manufacturing","43":"tag-mark-carney","44":"tag-mark-rutte","45":"tag-mauritius","46":"tag-media","47":"tag-mette-frederiksen","48":"tag-military","49":"tag-populism","50":"tag-russia","51":"tag-security","52":"tag-social-media","53":"tag-strategic-autonomy","54":"tag-tariffs","55":"tag-transatlantic-relations","56":"tag-ukraine","57":"tag-united-kingdom","58":"tag-united-states","59":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","60":"tag-vladimir-putin","61":"tag-waste","62":"tag-weapons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}