Falkland islanders should go back to England, Argentina’s vice-president said after Buenos Aires renewed its claim to the British overseas territory.
Argentina’s claim to what it calls the Malvinas was boosted when Donald Trump threatened to review the official US position on the islands after the UK did not join his war on Iran.
Javier Milei, Argentina’s president and a close ally of Mr Trump, said last week that the “the Malvinas were, are and will always be Argentine”.
Germany has unveiled its first military strategy since the Second World War, and it’s certainly ambitious. By 2039, Berlin wants to command the strongest army in Europe, with a total of 460,000 combat-ready troops. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius argues that this is a historic turning point, and he’s right. But the national effort he’s asking for requires a change in the national attitude toward war, which may be much harder to achieve.
The war in Iran has revealed plenty about America’s ability to inflict damage on its enemies, Tehran’s capacity to resist pressure and Washington’s broader tendency to get itself stuck in the Middle East – a region several US presidents planned to extricate from. The conflict has been paused since 7 April due to a ceasefire that Trump extended earlier in the week. But it is nonetheless revealing a gradual systemic shift in the so-called international order that has been bubbling beneath the surface for years.
The movable object is none other than the transatlantic alliance which, through Nato, has bound the United States and most of Europe into a single security construct. That perennial institution, which security elites on both sides of the Atlantic have for decades held up as the pinnacle of what an alliance should be, is beginning to lose its lustre. This is thanks to the weight of diverging geopolitical priorities, divisions within Europe itself and President Trump’s propensity to treat European states as the equivalent of a lazy 25 year old who refuses to leave the house and get a job.
Sovereignty of the Falkland Islands “rests with the UK”, Downing Street has said, following a report the US could review its position on Britain’s claim to the territory.
An internal Pentagon email reported by Reuters suggested the US was considering options to punish Nato allies it believed failed to support its war on Iran.
The options discussed also included seeking Spain’s suspension from Nato over its opposition to war.
Asked about the report, a No 10 spokesman said: “The Falkland Islands have hugely voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining a UK overseas territory, and we’ve always stood behind the islanders’ right to self-determination and the fact that sovereignty rests with the UK.”
A month ago, it was obvious that our frenemies in NATO was trying to play President Trump for a fool by blocking USA bases in their countries from carrying out Operation Epic Fury, which would keep the Islamic regime in Iran from building nuclear weaponry.
I wrote about this in March, calling that newsletter The Little Orange Rooster.
Unlike the characters in The Little Red Hen, these animals were not simply lazy—they were saboteurs supporting a regime that killed 40,000 protesters in two nights. Do not for a moment believe Starmer, Macron, Merz and the rest of the cowards would not open fire on their own people, too.
The mess we are in is getting deeper. Not only is there no prompt resolution in sight for the Iran crisis, plunging the planet into economic uncertainty of unprecedented nature, but the repercussions threaten to dismantle some of the very groundworks of the world order as we know it. In the midst of a storm which appears to be turning into a biblical deluge, our anchors – starting with NATO – are drifting away.
NATO won the Cold War—but clinging to it now drains U.S. power from the Indo-Pacific, where the real contest for the future is unfolding.
It has been nearly 80 years since the guns fell silent in World War II. In that long arc of peace, the United States helped rebuild a shattered Europe, deter Soviet expansion, and anchor what we now call the transatlantic alliance. Those were noble achievements. They mattered. They still echo in the prosperity and stability of the Western world today.
But history is not a life sentence. And gratitude, while virtuous, is not a strategy.
A fallback plan to ensure Europe can defend itself using NATO’s existing military structures if the U.S. departs is gaining traction after getting buy-in from Germany, a long-term opponent of a go-it-alone approach.
The officials working on the plans, which some officials are referring to as “European NATO,” are seeking to get more Europeans into the alliance’s command-and-control roles and supplement U.S. military assets with their own.
The plans—advancing informally through side discussions and over dinner meetings in and around the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—aren’t intended to rival the current alliance, participants said. European officials are aiming to preserve deterrence against Russia, operational continuity and nuclear credibility even if Washington withdraws forces from Europe or refuses to come to its defense, as President Trump has threatened.
A key government adviser will accuse the UK’s leaders of “corrosive complacency” towards defence and warn the country’s security is “in peril”.
Lord George Robertson, the former Nato secretary general who wrote the government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR), will use a speech later on Tuesday to accuse “non-military experts in the Treasury” of “vandalism”.
The government has promised to publish a 10-year defence investment plan to fund the SDR’s vision but it has been repeatedly delayed.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 and has grown to 32 nations.
Not surprisingly, the United States of America is the largest contributor to the organization, supplying 16 percent of the overall NATO budget and having the largest expenditure on national defense, totaling $980 billion, which is 62 percent of the overall defense spending of all member nations.
Oh boy …
British General Admits That It Can’t Deploy a Division Abroad
How pathetic is the British Army?
How about this: it cannot actually deploy a heavy (armored) division to Europe if required.
Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Greece have all ruled out sending naval forces to support the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, exposing a growing rift inside NATO at the very moment global energy routes are under threat. Within hours of Washington’s request, European governments had distanced themselves from the operation and insisted that NATO has neither the mandate nor the interest to enter a war with Iran.
The refusal has triggered another dispute inside the Atlantic alliance. President Donald Trump has linked European participation in Hormuz to the future of NATO, warning that the United States cannot continue guaranteeing Europe’s security if Europeans refuse to support American operations abroad.
Donald Trump has demanded that Nato allies send warships to the Strait of Hormuz in a matter of days, as he criticised the alliance for its inaction on Iran.
The fragile ceasefire between the US and the Islamic Republic appeared to hold on Thursday, while Israel said it would engage in peace negotiations with Lebanon after waves of air strikes killed hundreds of people.
After a meeting with Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary-general, Mr Trump issued a deadline to European capitals to pledge military support for reopening the key trade route within days.
The US president said Nato had been “very disappointing” and only acted when pressure was applied.
The ultimatum risks driving another wedge between the Trump administration and Nato’s European members, who refused to directly take part in the president’s war on Iran.
A grumpy veto president is exactly what Trump haters should most fear.
The 1949 NATO treaty was ratified by the Senate. The agreement is that an attack on one member is an attack on all of them. NATO members are required to participate in mutual defense efforts.
Since U.S. NATO membership arises from a Senate ratified treaty, the Senate would have to approve withdrawal from NATO; however, there are enough Senate Democrats and RINO Republicans to block NATO exit.
Donald Trump has again attacked Nato for not supporting the US in the Iran war, following a private meeting with its Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House.
In a post shared to Truth Social after the meeting, the US President said: “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN.”
Meanwhile, Rutte has described his meeting to CNN with Trump as “very frank” and “very open”, despite clear disagreements.
From Air Canada to the CBC to Petro-Canada, this country has a long history of costly government adventures in private enterprise that provide little-to-no-benefit to consumers. But NDP Leader Avi Lewis’s proposal for a network of state-run supermarkets and Toronto city council’s recent vote to green-light a pilot project for four municipal grocery stores shows that Canada is a place where bad ideas never die.
