Europe

Rubio’s charm conceals a brutal truth – Europe is on its own

What a difference a year makes. At this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was given a standing ovation for a speech that echoed what Vice President JD Vance had said so scandalously 12 months earlier. Rubio accused Europeans of trying “to appease a climate cult” that has impoverished the continent by forcing it to adopt catastrophic energy policies. Like Vance, he also criticised Europe’s immigration policies and its dogmatic commitment to global free trade, which he said has fuelled deindustrialisation and hollowed out supply chains. He even lamented the transfer of sovereignty to international organisations — a swipe not just at the UN and international legal bodies, but at the EU itself.

Europeans hated Vance’s speech. Yet they loved Rubio’s. The difference was tone. Unlike Vance, Rubio sugar-coated the message. “For us Americans,” he said, “home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.” Europeans just love it when Americans show respect for their cultural heritage. It flatters their sense of pride — and superiority.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, NATO, USA

The Phantom Stealth Fighter That Exposes Europe’s Deep Divisions Over Defense

Duplicated efforts, fragmented industry and soured collaborations are among reasons region isn’t getting more bang for its defense buck

It was billed as the answer to high-tech U.S. stealth fighters. Instead, an ambitious pan-European project has become a case study into some of what has gone wrong with the region’s defense push.

The French, German and Spanish Future Combat Air System project was meant to build a next-generation aircraft to catch up with the latest U.S., Chinese and Russian models. Now the venture has devolved into bickering between defense companies Airbus and Dassault Aviation—and between Berlin and Paris—over who gets to lead its development, with all sides now questioning its future.

This is who Carney wants us to hook up with, maybe he’ll make Canada a conduit for ChiCom IP theft.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, WTF?

Munich and the Fate of the West

Marco Rubio’s warning against civilizational suicide.

If you live long enough, you can trace the river of history apart from the smaller tributaries and streams. You’ve watched it rise or fall according to the acts of men. You’ve seen great leaders bend it where it wasn’t going, and bad leaders redirect it into the shoals. And you can tell what will lead to greatness and what will end in disaster. Which is how I know Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech last Saturday at the Munich Security Conference was not only the finest of this century, but the most potentially consequential.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEU, Europe, European Union, NATO, USA

Why Europe’s elites have embraced sneering anti-Americanism

In recent months, anti-Americanism has emerged yet again as a respectable prejudice in Europe. It is widely promoted through the mainstream media and enthusiastically endorsed by the continent’s cultural elites. There are now even numerous campaigns to boycott American goods – most respondents to a survey in France said they would support a boycott of US brands like Tesla, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. As a piece in Euractiv put it, anti-Americanism is ‘in vogue across Europe’.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, Trump Derangement Syndrome

Rubio to Munich: Mass Migration Threatens Survival of European People

The “delusion” of globalism and the decision to allow mass migration into the West threaten the future of Europe and its peoples, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told attendees at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union, NATO, USA

America warned Europe it needed to defend itself. Only half of the Continent listened

Donald Trump had only just regained the White House when his acolytes dealt Europe two verbal sucker punches in the solar plexus.

Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, declared that “stark strategic realities” meant that America would no longer be “primarily focused on the security of Europe”. Then JD Vance, the vice-president, marked St Valentine’s Day 2025 by telling the Munich Security Conference that Europe’s greatest peril came not from Russia, but “from within”, and that there was “nothing more urgent” than curbing mass immigration.

In the 12 months since those speeches, European governments have been forced to confront the stark reality that they must shoulder prime responsibility for defending the Continent, with all the extra costs and risks that implies, because America can no longer be relied upon to give reflexive support to Nato.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, NATO, USA

Europe: The New Nations of Immigrants?

When non-Americans think about the United States and immigration, they are inevitably reminded of the title of John F. Kennedy’s 1958 book A Nation of Immigrants. Indeed, the history of America is closely intertwined with migration, which has fundamentally and repeatedly reshaped the demographic and political make-up of the country. Equally intertwined is the debate over migration, which continues to dominate public discussion in the United States—as evidenced by President Trump’s re-election on the cornerstone issue of illegal immigration.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCamp Of The Saints, Europe

The Northwest Passage Will Be Decided by Capability, Not Law

Recent attention has focused on Greenland as a focal point of Arctic strategy, a reminder that geography once treated as peripheral now sits squarely within the logic of continental defense. A similar shift is unfolding elsewhere in the Arctic, though with far less public notice. The Northwest Passage—the network of sea routes threading Canada’s Arctic Archipelago between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans—has moved from a seasonal curiosity to a corridor of growing strategic consequence. As activity increases, questions long treated as theoretical, including the legal status of those waters, are being pushed toward practical resolution.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Arctic Sovereignty", "China - Communist Slave State", Canada, Europe, Russia, USA

Rubio warns Europe of new era in geopolitics before big Munich speech

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spoken of a defining moment and a “new era” as he travels to Europe for a major speech to the Munich Security Conference.

Rubio will lead the US delegation at the first major global event since President Donald Trump threatened Danish sovereignty with a pledge to annex Greenland.

French President Emmanuel Macron has insisted Europe must prepare for independence from the US, while Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte has stressed that transatlantic bonds are as close and important as ever.

Related…

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, NATO, USA

Welcome to the ‘EUSSR’: Unpopular European Regimes Grasping for Power Crack Down on Dissent

Governing elites in Europe, in what increasingly appears to be the EUSSR (European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) race to the bottom, have been growing ever more unpopular. Disapproval ratings are skyrocketing. In France, 77% of the public disapprove of President Emmanuel Macron. In Britain, 68% disapprove of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In Germany, 64% disapprove of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and in Spain, 61% have had it up to here with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Surveillance Society", EU, Europe

Trump’s world order hangs over Europe on eve of key defence conference

It is one year since US Vice-President JD Vance delivered a bombshell speech at the Munich Security Conference, castigating Europe for its policies on migration and free speech, and claiming the greatest threat the continent faces comes from within.

The audience were visibly stunned. Since then, the Trump White House has tipped the world order upside down.

Allies and foes alike have been slapped with punitive tariffs, there was the extraordinarily brazen raid on Venezuela, Washington’s uneven pursuit of peace in Ukraine on terms favourable to Moscow and a bizarre demand that Canada should become the “51st state” of the US.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA

Europe’s ‘painful’ realisation it must be bolder with US set out in security report

Europe has come to the painful realisation that it needs to be more assertive and more militarily independent from an authoritarian US administration that no longer shares a commitment to liberal democratic norms and values, a report prepared by the Munich Security Conference asserts.

The report sets the scene for an all-out ideological confrontation with the Trump White House at the high-level annual meeting of security policy specialists, which starts on Friday.

In a now infamous speech to last year’s MSC, the US vice-president, JD Vance, claimed European elites were suppressing free speech and “opening the floodgates” to mass migration. The address marked the moment Europe realised the Trump administration would no longer be a reliable trading and security partner.

Whatever is in the water at the Guardian calls for quarantine.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA

Europe No Longer Believes Russia Will Wait Until 2029

For years, officials in Brussels and across Europe operated on a shared assumption: that Russia would not be in a position to directly challenge NATO before 2029. That date became a strategic comfort zone—time to rearm, coordinate, and reassure domestic publics. That certainty is now eroding rapidly.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a growing number of European political and military leaders now believe Moscow could test NATO—and the European Union—much sooner than previously expected. Such a move would not necessarily take the form of a full-scale invasion, but a limited, rapid, and carefully calibrated incursion designed to exploit Europe’s hesitation and internal divisions.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, Russia