{"id":547064,"date":"2026-01-27T15:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/547064\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T15:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:14:11","slug":"france-snaps-back-at-nato-chief-rutte-in-feud-over-europes-defense-muscle-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/547064\/","title":{"rendered":"France snaps back at NATO chief Rutte in feud over Europe\u2019s defense muscle \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to power, however, his administration has insisted that Washington will be less involved in Europe&#8217;s security. A new U.S. National Defense Strategy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/us-national-defense-strategy-downgrade-europe-elevate-greenland-priority\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published Friday evening<\/a> said Europeans would have to take the lead against threats, arguing that Europe is economically and militarily capable of defending itself against Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Trump managed to convince European countries to boost their defense spending to 5 percent of GDP.<\/p>\n<p>Barrot wasn&#8217;t alone in France in pushing back against Rutte&#8217;s comments.<\/p>\n<p>Muriel Domenach, France&#8217;s former ambassador to NATO, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MurielDomenach\/status\/2015903078600319342?s=20\" target=\"_blank\">posted on X that<\/a> &#8220;with all due respect to the NATO Secretary General, this is not: the right question &#8230;  the right answer: brandishing European weakness to secure the U.S. guarantee is an outdated approach and sends the wrong message to Russia.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Without mentioning Rutte specifically, French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RTLFrance\/status\/2016043142609354819?s=20\" target=\"_blank\">told French radio<\/a> that &#8220;what we see today is the necessity of NATO&#8217;s European pillar.&#8221; The idea of making Europeans collectively stronger within the military alliance, first pitched by France a few years ago, is now endorsed by other countries including Germany.<\/p>\n<p>MEP Nathalie Loiseau, a former French minister who now sits in the committee where Rutte made the controversial remarks, echoed Barrot&#8217;s criticism: &#8220;It was a disgraceful moment. Rutte thinks that being rude with Europeans will please Trump. We don\u2019t need a Trump zealot. NATO needs to rebalance between US and European efforts.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rutte&#8217;s comments also contradicted the assessment of Finnish President Alexander Stubb, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/livecoverage\/greenland-trump-tariffs-trade-eu\/card\/finnish-president-says-europe-can-defend-itself-without-u-s--Ogd9oWKwzbgUTyYtMim0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">who said<\/a> at Davos last week that Europeans could defend themselves.<\/p>\n<p>This story has been updated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to power, however, his administration has insisted that Washington will be less&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":547065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[88257,230103,262,69,156,117,57717,8955,27811,240529,8959,50,257,4995,67,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-547064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-alexander-stubb","9":"tag-andrius-kubilius","10":"tag-defense","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-jean-noel-barrot","15":"tag-mark-rutte","16":"tag-meps","17":"tag-muriel-domenach","18":"tag-nato","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-security","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115967719044978358","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}