Author: staff

What Kristersson’s comments lay bare is the lasting damage done to relations between many European governments and the U.S. after Trump’s demands to take “ownership” of the island away from Sweden’s neighbor Denmark. “For very obvious reasons, trust took a hit, no doubt,” Kristersson said this week, shortly before traveling to the Munich Security Conference. “I’m not at all saying that it is unreparable, and I don’t think it is either, but of course the tone the Americans used against Europeans, Canadians, Denmark, is not building trust.” It is clear that the conflict between the U.S. and European countries reached…

Europe and the U.S. “face the same sort of threat and the same threat actors,” said Cairncross, who advises Trump on cybersecurity policy. Rather than weaning off America, wean off China, he said: “There is a clean tech stack. It is primarily American. And then there is a Chinese tech stack.” Claiming that U.S. tech is as risky as Chinese tech is “a giant false equivalency,” according to Cairncross. “Personal data doesn’t get piped to the state in the United States,” he said, referencing concerns that the Beijing government has laws requiring firms to hand over data for Chinese surveillance and…

At a Thursday meeting of NATO’s defense ministers, “I felt a shift in mindset where the Europeans were not only saying, ‘Hey, we are going to spend much more,’” Rutte said. “The shift in mindset is Europeans saying, ‘We need to take more the lead in NATO,’ … and this is exactly what the United States wanted.” That “makes it easier for the United States to stay anchored in NATO,” Rutte added.  The remarks come one day after an unusually cordial intervention from Deputy Pentagon chief Elbridge Colby at Thursday’s meeting of alliance ministers in Brussels — which some Europeans…

Europe needs to rebuild a new defense architecture, and that includes nuclear deterrence, especially now that the New START treaty limiting the American and Russian arsenals has expired, the French president said. Earlier on Friday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz confirmed that talks were ongoing with Paris about how France’s nuclear weapons could contribute to Europe’s security. Pressed about Merz’s comments, Macron said he will provide more “details” in his upcoming speech. France and some European countries are looking to see “how we can articulate our national doctrine with special cooperation, common security interest, this is what we’re doing for the…

Other European leaders, suggesting coordination among them, also stressed the mutual benefits of the postwar alliance, including Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.  As leaders gathered in Munich, he wrote on X that the Western alliance is far too important to be allowed to fall apart. “The relationship between the U.S. and Europe is wounded, but should be maintained,” he wrote, adding, “We need to be honest about the fact that our relationship has suffered a blow. This does not at all mean we should abandon the transatlantic relation.” EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius also talked in terms of reshaping the Western alliance,…

Published on 13/02/2026 – 21:10 GMT+1 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not attend the Berlin Format meeting on Ukraine held on the sideline of the Munich Security Conference (MSC). The meeting was attended by leaders from a dozen European countries including Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, France’s Macron, Germany’s Merz, as well as the heads of the European Commission, European Council and the NATO military alliance. The cancellation reportedly came at the last minute amid scheduling conflicts. Rubio is set to address the conference on Saturday morning, but arrived already on Friday, where he met the Syrian, Chinese and German delegations,…

MUNICH — Europe must be able to strike back in cyberspace, as the strategy to deter adversaries is no longer enough, the EU executive’s tech and security chief told POLITICO. “It’s not enough that we are just defending … We also have to have offensive capacity,” the European Commission’s Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen said in an interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday. For years, European capitals have held back from stating publicly that they support offensive cyber operations — known as “hacking back” — because of fears that such operations could trigger retaliation and escalation from…

However, after an appeal, CAS backed the IOC, saying that although it was fully sympathetic to Heraskevych’s decision to commemorate his compatriots, the focus must be on the Olympic Games and other athletes. Heraskevych said his helmet displayed only portraits and no political slogans, and that he was disqualified before the race, so he did not violate any rules. “The court sided with the IOC and upheld a decision that an athlete could be disqualified from the Olympic Games without actual misconduct, without a technical or safety threat, and before the start,” Pronin Law Firm, representing Heraskevych, said in a…

“What we are talking about is a rapid reaction force of 100,000 or 80,000 capability, which should replace American forces,” if and when they reduce their presence in Europe, he said. “That’s why I started to use much more this terminology of rapid reaction force, in order not to make this misleading connection with the European army.” However, he acknowledged that even such a force would face difficulties as it would be controlled by member countries, making rapid and coherent action very difficult. He did not address whether such a European force would be part of NATO, although he did…

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that a multinational peacekeeping force would be “vital” in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised his country’s support for Ukraine following any peace agreement, but it remains unclear whether Canada would deploy troops. Respondents in the U.S., Germany and France are more likely than not to prefer keeping their militaries out of Ukraine, “even if that means risking peace in the region.”  Germany and France are the most strongly opposed to deployments, with more than half of those in Germany — 53 percent — saying No to sending peacekeeping troops. In France,…