My Take | Trump threatens Greenland but Nato chief says China is the real threat
EU and Nato ‘leaders’ can continue to act slavishly before the Americans. They are just making themselves irrelevant and despised
The way Lord Ismay, the first Nato chief, summarised the purpose of the Western military alliance – “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down” – became one of the great political aphorisms of the 20th century.
Mark Rutte, the current Nato secretary general, is still following it. Perhaps he has yet to receive a memo telling him it’s now a very different century with vastly changed circumstances. Today, the Russians are in, the Americans are out, and the Germans are, well, rearming themselves. So where is the place of Nato? Is there even one?
Sidestepping Washington’s threat to take Greenland from Denmark, a Nato member, Rutte said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that member states must collectively protect the Arctic from China and Russia. “We have to protect the Arctic against Russian and Chinese influence ... We are working on that, making sure that collectively, we will defend the Arctic region,” he said.
Canada’s armed forces have, for the first time in 100 years, drawn up war plans to defend the country against an invasion from the south. It seems rather futile, militarily speaking, but is still a significant political gesture.
Such actions by Western nations are not just about “strategic autonomy” of which French President Emmanuel Macron often speaks, but actual defence against the United States.