Every year Americans do diplomatic junkets to Europe to eat thousand dollar meals and pretend to wag fingers at the Euros to step up…the euros pretend to commit more. Legacy media fawns and nothing comes from it. Rinse repeat.

Europe should be thanking Trump for the tough love.

When a big German Shepard dog hikes up his leg in the yard and drops a big turd,,,, the EU falls out on the grass..

The EU is ruining their own countries and have been since the EU was formed, they need to break the EU up and let them all work things out on their own, they would all be better off.

Yes, and now Starmer is insisting we can't use Diego Garcia to strike Iran, or our bases in the UK (for long range bombers). Europe writ large is a strategic rival, not an ally for the US, and has been for a while.

Rubio won't even talk with Kallas because she operates in fantasy land in her own head.

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But what Rubio did not say or more specifically, who he did not say it to was also noted. While he was in Europe, Rubio met with a great deal of leaders and representatives. But there was one person he did not meet with: Kaja Kallas, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. While not quite his opposite, as the EU does not have a true foreign minister/secretary of state equivalent, Kallas is the closest thing. So why did Rubio not want to speak with her?

Because fundamentally, she and the liberal internationalists deal in fantasy, whereas Rubio, the Trump administration, and the ascendant nationalist Right deal in national interest.

This is not a shot at Kallas' intelligence; it is, however, a shot at the things she has to say. Kallas' speech, coming after Rubio's, began with a cringe reference to Marvel movies ("Europeans assemble! And we are getting there, dusting off our capes, pulling on our boots, revving up our engines.") Coming about seven years after such a reference would have been in vogue, it was made the worse by the realisation that she was comparing her colleagues, and herself, to the Avengers (the irony that the Avengers are led by Captain America, and that the only foreigners on the team are a Russian and a Norwegian god who would not even represent an EU country was lost on her).

Kallas quickly pivoted to her favourite subject, Russia, with the somewhat incongruent statement that Russia "is no superpower", while going on to dedicate much of the speech to talking about what a massive threat Russia is to Europe. Her speech was full of contradictory statements, such as one agreement with Timothy Snyder a citation almost as cringe-inducing as Marvel that the EU must expand "to overcome Europe's own imperial history."

This is, fundamentally, the issue that Kallas faces, and the reason why Rubio had no interest in speaking with her: Kallas is a former Estonian prime minister, and she has continued to govern as a former Estonian prime minister. Estonia, a genuinely wonderful country, has spent its entire existence under threat from West and East; when it has been occupied, it preferred the West (as evidenced by memorials to SS soldiers outside Tallinn). As a result, Estonia's entire foreign policy is dedicated to pushing off Russia. This is eminently reasonable for Estonia; it is not for all of Europe.

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More at the link, great piece. Another one here, about the European E6 'super group' ostensibly assembling to challenge the US and China.

To the OP, I once thought Boris Johnson was a brilliant guy, but have been incredibly disappointed in many of his pivots over the past 10+ years. He's wrong as often as he's right on any given thing these days, imho.

The freakout talking points move so fast these days that I'd already forgotten about the US invasion of Greenland.

Since I haven't heard about it in a couple weeks, I assume we won.

The NATO Sec General, Mark Rutte, already clowned Europe a couple of weeks ago on this topic. He flat out told Europe there is no way in hell they can break from the US. They would have to increase their military spending to 10% to even come close to replacing us and no country over there can remotely afford to do that.

He ended his clowning with a "So, good luck with that!" Actually damn funny considering how much of a POS human he is in his own right.