{"id":729040,"date":"2026-01-29T17:36:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/729040\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T17:36:29","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:36:29","slug":"us-defense-chief-pete-hegseth-to-skip-key-nato-ministerial-meeting-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/729040\/","title":{"rendered":"US defense chief Pete Hegseth to skip key NATO ministerial meeting\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instead, Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary for defense policy, is set to attend in his place, the diplomat and official said, a decision that is still subject to change. Colby is the third-highest-ranking civilian defense official at the Pentagon and a close ally of U.S. Vice President JD Vance.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Defense didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by POLITICO.<\/p>\n

Colby, nicknamed \u201cBridge,\u201d is seen as a hardliner on Europe inside the Pentagon and is a staunch supporter of an isolationist U.S. foreign policy that advocates a less active American role \u2014 especially militarily \u2014 worldwide. He is also responsible for drafting plans on an expected drawdown of U.S. troops from Europe<\/a>, which has faced repeated delays.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Colby was responsible for crafting the new American defense strategy, published last week, which downgraded Europe<\/a> and said Washington would instead \u201cprioritize\u201d defending the U.S. homeland and China. <\/p>\n

Before publication, the document underwent deep revisions<\/a> by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who pushed for changes to the China section in light of trade talks between Beijing and Washington. Bessent\u2019s input also toned down the China language in the White House\u2019s National Security Strategy, released late last year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The defense strategy also makes clear that in Europe \u201callies will take the lead\u201d against threats that are \u201cless severe\u201d for the United States \u2014 a euphemism for Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Instead, Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary for defense policy, is set to attend in his place, the diplomat and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[1395,473,365,32,7704,7058,366,2820,2821,8723,602,332,1772,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-729040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-defense","10":"tag-denmark","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-eu-us-military-ties","13":"tag-european-defense","14":"tag-greenland","15":"tag-marco-rubio","16":"tag-nato","17":"tag-pentagon","18":"tag-pete-hegseth","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-u-s-politics","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115979602021300013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729040","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=729040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}