Hegseth Attacks NATO Allies, Announces Review of US and European Military Commitments

BRUSSELS (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lashed out at NATO allies on Thursday, announcing a six-month Pentagon review of American forces in Europe whose outcome will depend on how fast the Europeans take responsibility for their own security.

The threat of a review was yet another surprise for European allies and Canada as they learn to deal with an increasingly unpredictable ally. U.S. officials and senior military officers had promised to coordinate closely with the Europeans as America draws down.

Read the rest here.

Defense decoupling is no longer just a European fear — it’s Trump’s policy

When news broke that the Pentagon wouldn’t sell long-range Tomahawk missiles to Germany, it suggested Washington might fear Moscow would view such a capability in Europe’s hands as dangerous escalation.

The move came on the heels of similar signs of U.S. disengagement that had been going on for weeks, including the decision to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, halt the planned deployment of a U.S. battalion equipped with Tomahawk missiles, and make severe reductions in planned U.S. contributions of bombers, fighters, destroyers, submarines and other forces needed to bolster NATO defenses in a crisis or attack.

The Pentagon claims these steps are necessary to rebalance European and U.S. contributions to the continent’s defense, but the decision to halt the Tomahawk sale points to a far more disquieting reality: Not only is Washington no longer deploying deep precision strike systems to Europe, it’s also denying its European allies the capacity to arm themselves with these systems out of fear of Russia’s reaction.

In other words, the U.S. is now actively looking to decouple its security from Europe’s.

Read the rest here.

The Rise of Ukraine (and Decline of the US) as the Defender of Freedom

A remarkable thing has happened on the world’s battlefields. Ukraine — a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion — has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. It has become an indispensable security partner in the Western alliance, including in the war against Iran.

Now, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence. This is what happens when, as Phillips Payson O’Brien wrote in a piece for The Atlantic, “Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States.”

If that is true — and it looks as though it is — it may be worse news for the United States than it is for Ukraine.

Events on the ground and in world capitals are moving so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. First, the strategic situation in the Ukraine war seems to have changed. Last week, Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general and one of the most astute analysts of the war, wrote that Ukraine has largely stabilized the frontline in eastern Ukraine, deepened its coalition, isolated Russia diplomatically and developed an indigenous arms industry that makes it less dependent on external support.

It’s no longer accurate to think of Ukraine as a desperate underdog; it’s becoming an independent power. Even as it fights for its life against Russia, it’s reportedly reaching defense deals with the Gulf states and with the United States — and this time it’s Ukraine that’s providing military assistance.

In February 2025, President Trump mocked Zelensky in the Oval Office. “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump said. In April 2026, Ukraine has enough cards left that it’s sharing them.

This might be difficult for many readers to grasp — given our nation’s longstanding military supremacy — but the largest and most battle-hardened land force in the Western world may well be the Ukrainian Army. While the precise numbers are classified, the Atlantic Council estimated in 2025 that Ukraine had roughly a million men and women under arms, the vast majority of whom serve in the ground forces.

America’s total force is larger than Ukraine’s, but to put the size of Ukrainian land forces in perspective, the combined size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is around 620,000. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. forces have much less combat experience than Ukraine forces — especially when it comes to combat with a great power.

No one should minimize Ukraine’s manpower issues (more recent estimates place its total number of active troops well below the million-body peak) or the fact that it has no nuclear weapons and Russia has thousands. But its army is still vast, and its military is the only Western force that has fully adapted to modern drone warfare. Indeed, Ukraine is arguably the world’s leader in drone warfare.

Rapid change isn’t occurring just in Ukraine. Other developments across the Western alliance show that European nations are working with shocking speed to free themselves from dependence on America.

Read the rest here.

Sky News Report on Trump's Letter to Norway

Trump launches tariff attack over Greenland

Trump says he will hit Denmark and 7 other countries with new tariffs until there is a deal to purchase Greenland

Meanwhile: 

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...

...To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes...

...To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water..."

-US Constitution Article I sec. 8

Russia and China Are Sabotaging Undersea Power and Communication Cables

Russia’s connection to the rupture of an undersea cable between Finland and Estonia is raising a new bevy of fears over the sabotage of critical power lines.

The new incidents come as tensions between the West and Russia and China have risen over the war in Ukraine, and as the world braces for a shift in U.S. leadership as President-elect Trump prepares to take office. 

The Estlink-2 power cable between Finland and Estonia was allegedly cut on Christmas by a Cook Island-flagged ship called Eagle S. Western officials claim the ship is part of a vast Russian shadow fleet working to circumvent western sanctions. 

The incident adds to a larger problem related to the security of undersea infrastructure, as China has also been accused of three incidents since 2023 that have disrupted power lines in European waters.

Dozens of cables are ruptured each year, usually accidentally, and it’s unclear if the latest events were intentional. Still, European leaders are sounding the alarm. 

“Recent Baltic Sea sabotage attempts are not isolated incidents; they form a deliberate pattern aimed at damaging our digital and energy infrastructure,” said European Union foreign policy head Kaja Kallas in an interview with German newspaper Welt.

Read the rest here.

The liberal argument against NATO

Read it here.

I have had decidedly mixed views of NATO post Cold War and the author makes some solid points here. But it is also dangerous to think that history stopped in 1991 and that NATO is the bad guy in the world today. Both China and Russia represent serious threats to their neighbors and the broader international community. Contrary to shop worn clichés, history rarely repeats itself. But it does contain warnings. Allowing bullies to push people around indefinitely usually ends badly for everybody. 

Birthrate decline in the West is accelerating

During the past year, living in the shadow of Covid, I have been completing a book on the big global trends in population. This forced me to ask – what effect will the pandemic have on birth rates? There are countless factors to consider.

On the one hand, with more time at home and fewer distractions, we might expect there to be a baby boom. On the other, with couples under each other’s feet from dawn to dusk, sexual attraction may be waning. Delayed weddings, a lack of dating opportunities and a shortage of contraception in the developing world will all be taking their toll in various ways, too.

Then there is the fear factor. With the pandemic raging, women don’t necessarily want to get into a situation in which they will end up in a hospital, where the chance of picking up an infection is high. We now know that a woman of child-bearing age is unlikely to get seriously ill from Covid, and the chance of her passing on any infection to a foetus is probably zero – but that was not clear at the start of the pandemic and might have had the effect of putting some couples off procreation. Economic uncertainty and job insecurity compound the fear.

Overall, in more developed countries like Britain, the data shows that the net impact of these various factors has been a sharp drop in birth rates. Surveys of couples during the early days of the pandemic suggested that many were abandoning plans to start or grow a family, both in the short term and permanently. Meanwhile, early data suggests that the number of children born in the US this year will fall by at least half a million. In continental Europe, the picture is worse: in France, it looks like births are down 13 per cent, in Italy and Spain, 20 per cent.

If this were just a short-term dip, the overall economic impact would be limited. But it isn’t short term. Before anyone had heard of Covid, births were depressed across the developed world. Fertility rates in North America and Japan have been below replacement level for decades, and sinking. Even the better performers among the rich countries – the US, the UK, France and Scandinavia – were already set for steady population decline, mitigated only by ever higher levels of immigration. And small family syndrome is catching. The end of the One Child Policy has done little or nothing to increase childbearing in China; an increasingly educated and urban population, focused on material advancement and now long accustomed to small family size, has no interest in taking up the increased rations in family size now permitted to them by the Communist Party.

Read the rest here.

Traveling in Europe in the 1930s

A series of home movies shot while traveling in Europe. The nature and sequence of the footage suggests it was likely shot over more than one trip and visual evidence strongly points to the second half of the 1930s as the approximate time frame. (appx 1 hr with AI clean up and coloring added)

Turkey opens its border to Europe for 3.6 million migrants

Mobs rush Greek border. Greeks repel them with tear gas and force.

Details.

A walk through the 18th century via the paintings of Bernardo Bellotto

Address by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk on the Future of Christianity in Europe

I'm not going to excerpt this. It may be read in its entirety here.

The West Cannibalizes Itself

What civilization has ever sought to repudiate its own culture and traditions as we do today?

Some 13 European thinkers issued an intellectual protest late last year against the assault on the Western heritage that has been raging on the Continent and in Britain for years. They called their 11-page document “The Paris Statement” and gave it a title: “A Europe We Can Believe In.” The Europe they believe in, write the 13 signatories (well-known in Europe, less so in America), is under threat of destruction from the forces of globalization, multiculturalism, and the EU managerial class, as well as growing anti-Christian prejudice.

“These lands are our home,” says the Statement, “we have no other. Home is a place where things are familiar, and where we are recognized, however far we have wandered. This is the real Europe, our precious and irreplaceable civilization.” 

The Statement has received a smattering of attention in the European media—broadcast television in Poland and the Netherlands; major newspapers in Germany, France, Spain, and Poland; national weekly magazines in Poland and Hungary; and opinion web sites in the UK, Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain. But mostly it is an intellectual statement written for and consumed largely by other intellectuals.

And of course the assault on the Western heritage from within is a potent phenomenon in Europe, fostered by nearly the entire elite structure of the civilization. Thus it isn’t clear what a few highly accomplished intellectuals, however eloquent or anguished, can do to stem the erosion of the civilizational identity. But we are witnessing the emergence of some powerful political currents within the general European population, manifest in increasingly populist voting patterns in France, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. Hence the Paris Statement could become a significant intellectual underpinning for Europeans who are increasingly concerned about the direction of things in their homeland. 

The threat to Europe, says the Statement, comes from “a false understanding” of what Europe is and represents. This “false Europe” is the product of people who are “orphans by choice,” glorifying their vision “as the forerunner of a universal community that is neither universal nor a community.” Believing that history is on their side, these patrons of the false Europe have become “haughty and disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the post-national, post-cultural world they are constructing.” The false Europe, says the statement, is “utopian and tyrannical.”

The true Europe, on the other hand, encompasses a number of fundamental elements—a body of law that applies to all yet is limited in its demands; a shared understanding of political and cultural traditions and a fealty to those traditions; an appreciation of the nation state as “the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty”; a shared regard for the role of the Classical tradition in shaping the Western mind; and an understanding of Christianity as the religious bulwark of the civilization.

Now, write the signatories, “all this is slipping away. As the patrons of the false Europe construct their faux Christendom of universal human rights, we are losing our home.”

Read the rest here.

'Christianity as default is gone': the rise of a non-Christian Europe

So says The Guardian with a certain amount of barely concealed glee. But what they are willfully ignoring is the rise of Islam. Whatever future may be in store for Europe, it is not going to be liberal secularism.

How Europe Built Its Own Funeral Pyre, Then Leapt In

Mass immigration, guilt and a continent on the brink of ‘societal catastrophe.’

The single most significant issue of our time is not North Korea’s drive to develop long-range nuclear missiles. It is not the threat posed to Europe by the Russian land power or the threat posed to America’s Asian dominance by Chinese sea power. It is not Iran’s growing Mideast influence, nor the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in U.S. elections and possible “collusion” by the Trump campaign.

No, the defining issue of our day is mass immigration into the nations of Western heritage. This growing inflow threatens to remake those nations and overwhelm their cultural identity. This is the issue that played the largest role in getting Donald Trump elected. It drove Britain’s Brexit vote. It is roiling the European continent, mounting tensions inside the EU and driving a wedge between the elites of those nations and their general populations.

Indeed, the central battlefront in the immigration wars is Europe, which accepted a trickle of immigrants in the immediate postwar era due to labor shortages. But over the years the trickle became a stream, then a growing river, and finally a torrent—to the extent that ethnic Britons are now a minority in their own capital city, refugee flows into Germany went from 48,589 in 2010 to 1.5 million in 2015, and Italy, a key entry point, received at one point an average of 6,500 new arrivals a day.

Throughout all this, the European elites celebrated the change and imposed a kind of thought enforcement regime against those who raised questions. The in-migration was initially hailed as an economic boon; then as a necessary corrective to an aging population; then as a means of spicing up society through “diversity”; and finally as a fait accompli, an unstoppable wave wrought by the world’s gathering globalization. Besides, argued the elites, the new arrivals would all become assimilated into the European culture eventually, so what’s the problem? Meanwhile, public opinion surveys over decades showed that large majorities of Europeans harbored powerful misgivings about these changes.

As British journalist and author Douglas Murray writes, “Promised throughout their lifetimes that the changes were temporary, that the changes were not real, or that the changes did not signify anything, Europeans discovered that in the lifespan of people now alive they would become minorities in their own countries.”

Murray, associate editor of the Spectator in London, is the author of a compact volume exploring this phenomenon. It is called The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, and it was published six months ago by Bloomsbury. The tone is measured but unflinching. The picture he paints of the European future is bleak.

Read the rest here.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech at the International Consultation on Christian Persecution

Your Holiness, Your Excellencies and Eminences, Esteemed Church and Secular Leaders,

Welcome to Budapest. Today I do not wish to talk about the persecution of Christians in Europe. The persecution of Christians in Europe operates with sophisticated and refined methods of an intellectual nature. It is undoubtedly unfair, it is discriminatory, sometimes it is even painful; but although it has negative impacts, it is tolerable. It cannot be compared to the brutal physical persecution which our Christian brothers and sisters have to endure in Africa and the Middle East. Today I’d like to say a few words about this form of persecution of Christians. We have gathered here from all over the world in order to find responses to a crisis that for too long has been concealed. We have come from different countries, yet there’s something that links us – the leaders of Christian communities and Christian politicians. We call this the responsibility of the watchman. In the Book of Ezekiel we read that if a watchman sees the enemy approaching and does not sound the alarm, the Lord will hold that watchman accountable for the deaths of those killed as a result of his inaction.

Dear Guests,

A great many times over the course of our history we Hungarians have had to fight to remain Christian and Hungarian. For centuries we fought on our homeland’s southern borders, defending the whole of Christian Europe, while in the twentieth century we were the victims of the communist dictatorship’s persecution of Christians. Here, in this room, there are some people older than me who have experienced first-hand what it means to live as a devout Christian under a despotic regime. For us, therefore, it is today a cruel, absurd joke of fate for us to be once again living our lives as members of a community under siege. For wherever we may live around the world – whether we’re Roman Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians or Copts – we are members of a common body, and of a single, diverse and large community. Our mission is to preserve and protect this community. This responsibility requires us, first of all, to liberate public discourse about the current state of affairs from the shackles of political correctness and human rights incantations which conflate everything with everything else. We are duty-bound to use straightforward language in describing the events that are taking place around us, and to identify the dangers that threaten us. The truth always begins with the statement of facts. Today it is a fact that Christianity is the world’s most persecuted religion. It is a fact that 215 million Christians in 108 countries around the world are suffering some form of persecution. It is a fact that four out of every five people oppressed due to their religion are Christians. It is a fact that in Iraq in 2015 a Christian was killed every five minutes because of their religious belief. It is a fact that we see little coverage of these events in the international press, and it is also a fact that one needs a magnifying glass to find political statements condemning the persecution of Christians. But the world’s attention needs to be drawn to the crimes that have been committed against Christians in recent years. The world should understand that in fact today’s persecutions of Christians foreshadow global processes. The world should understand that the forced expulsion of Christian communities and the tragedies of families and children living in some parts of the Middle East and Africa have a wider significance: in fact they threaten our European values. The world should understand that what is at stake today is nothing less than the future of the European way of life, and of our identity.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We must call the threats we’re facing by their proper names. The greatest danger we face today is the indifferent, apathetic silence of a Europe which denies its Christian roots. However unbelievable it may seem today, the fate of Christians in the Middle East should bring home to Europe that what is happening over there may also happen to us. Europe, however, is forcefully pursuing an immigration policy which results in letting extremists, dangerous extremists, into the territory of the European Union. A group of Europe’s intellectual and political leaders wishes to create a mixed society in Europe which, within just a few generations, will utterly transform the cultural and ethnic composition of our continent – and consequently its Christian identity.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We Hungarians are a Central European people; there aren’t many of us, and we do not have a great many relatives. Our influence, territory, population and army are similarly not significant. We know our place in the ranking of the world’s nations. We are a medium-sized European state, and there are countries much bigger than us which should, as a matter of course, bear a great deal more responsibility than we do. Now, however, we Hungarians are taking a proactive role. There are good reasons for this. I can see – and I know through having met them personally – how many well-intentioned truly Christian politicians there are in Europe. They are not strong enough, however: they work in coalition governments; they are at the mercy of media industries with attitudes very different from theirs; and they have insufficient political strength to act according to their convictions. While Hungary is only a medium-sized European state, it is in a different situation. This is a stable country: the political formation now in office won two-thirds majorities in two consecutive elections; the country has an economic support base which is not enormous, but is stable; and the public’s general attitude is robust. This means that we are in a position to speak up for persecuted Christians. In other words, in such a stable situation, there could be no excuse for Hungarians not taking action and not honouring the obligation rooted in their Christian faith. This is how fate and God have compelled Hungary to take the initiative, regardless of its size. We are proud that for more than a thousand years we have belonged to the great family of Christian peoples. This, too, imposes an obligation on us.

Dear Guests,

For us, Europe is a Christian continent, and this is how we want to keep it. Even though we may not be able to keep all of it Christian, at least we can do so for the segment that God has entrusted to the Hungarian people. Taking this as our starting-point, we have decided to do all we can to help our Christian brothers and sisters outside Europe who are forced to live under persecution. What is interesting about this decision is not the fact that we are seeking to help, but the way we are seeking to help. The solution we settled on has been to take the help we are providing directly to the churches of persecuted Christians. We are not using the channels established earlier, which seek to assist the persecuted as best they can within the framework of international aid. Our view is that the best way to help is to channel resources directly to the churches of persecuted communities. In our view this is how to produce the best results, this is how resources can be used to the full, and this is how there can be a guarantee that such resources are indeed channelled to those who need them. And as we are Christians, we help Christian churches and channel these resources to them. I could also say that we are doing the very opposite of what is customary in Europe today: we declare that trouble should not be brought here, but assistance must be taken to where it is needed.

Dear Friends,

Our approach is that the right thing to do is to act virtuously, rather than just talk about doing so. In this way we avoid doing good things simply in order to burnish our reputation: we avoid doing good things out of calculation, as good deeds must come from the heart, and for the glory of God. Yet now it is my duty to talk about the facts of good deeds. My justification, the reason I am telling you all this, is to prove to us all that politics in Europe is not necessarily helpless in the face of the persecution of Christians. The reason I am talking about some good deeds is that they may serve as an example for others, and may induce others to also perform good deeds. So please consider everything that I say now in this light. In 2016 we set up the Deputy State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians, which – in cooperation with churches, non-governmental organisations, the UN, The Hague and the European Parliament – liaises with and provides help for persecuted Christian communities. We listen to local Christian leaders and to what they believe is most important, and then do what we have to. From them I have learnt that the most important thing we can do is provide assistance for them to return home to resettle in their native lands. We Hungarians want Syrian, Iraqi and Nigerian Christians to be able to return as soon as possible to the lands where their ancestors lived for hundreds of years. This is what we call Hungarian solidarity – or, using the words you see behind me: “Hungary helps”. This is why we decided to help rebuild their homes and churches; and thanks to Hungarian Interchurch Aid, in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon we also build community centres. We have launched a special scholarship programme for young people raised in Christian families suffering persecution, and I am pleased to welcome some of those young people here today. I am sure that after their studies in Hungary, when they return to their communities, they will be active, core members of those communities. And we are also working in cooperation with the Pázmány Péter Catholic University on the establishment of a Hungarian-founded university. The Hungarian government has provided aid of 580 million forints for the rebuilding of damaged homes in the Iraqi town of Tesqopa, as a result to which we hope that hundreds of Iraqi Christian families who now live as internal refugees may be able to return to their homes. We likewise support the activities of the Syriac Catholic Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church. I should also mention something which perhaps does not sound particularly special to a foreigner, but, believe me, here in Hungary is unprecedented, and I can’t even remember the last time something like it happened: all parties in the Hungarian National Assembly united to support adoption of a resolution which condemns the persecution of Christians, supports the Government in providing help, condemns the activities of the organisation called Islamic State, and calls upon the International Criminal Court to launch proceedings in response to the persecution, oppression and murder of Christians.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

When we support the return of persecuted Christians to their homelands, the Hungarian people is fulfilling a mission. In addition to what the Esteemed Bishop has outlined, our Fundamental Law constitutionally declares that we Hungarians recognise the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood. And if we recognise this for ourselves, then we also recognise it for other nations; in other words, we want Christian communities returning to Syria, Iraq and Nigeria to become forces for the preservation of their own countries, just as for us Hungarians Christianity is a force for preservation. From here I also urge Europe’s politicians to cast aside politically correct modes of speech and cast aside human rights-induced caution. And I ask them and urge them to do everything within their power for persecuted Christians.

Soli Deo gloria!

Source.

Axios!

Reuters: Slovakia bans Islam from official recognition as a religion

Wow. I checked and today is not April 1st on any calendar that I could find. It appears that at least in Eastern Europe, the multiculturalism Kool-Aid is losing its appeal.

‘Western laws now clash with moral nature of man’ – Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill

Patriarch Kirill lays it on the line.

HT: Blog reader JL

Patriarch Kyril: American, European de-Christianization is ‘apocalyptic’

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church received a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on May 24 and lamented the secularization of Europe and the United States.

“We are deeply worried to see what is going on in the Christian world,” said Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who referred to the “ongoing de-Christianization of the European and American civilization” as “an apocalyptic scene: sin is affirmed by law.”

“As you know, we underwent a period of state atheism,” he said in reference to over seven decades of Soviet Communist rule. “However, the moral paradigm remained Christian in its major aspects. This is what saved us: our literature and fine arts were permeated with Christian ideas, hence the morality of our people remained Christian.”

Patriarch Kirill added that today the Russian Orthodox Church “has universities of her own, as well as over 40 seminaries, a thousand monasteries, Orthodox TV channels, journals, newspapers.”

From here.

German women report string of sexual assaults by 'Arab and North African men'

 Police in Germany are investigating an alarming series of sexual assaults on women trying to celebrate the New Year by large groups of single men “of Arab or North African appearance”.

Authorities in the city of Cologne are to hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday after police described a group of some 1,000 men who took over the area around the main station on New Year’s Eve.

Women were robbed, groped, and had their underwear torn from their bodies, while couples had fireworks thrown at them.

Police have received 90 criminal complaints, around a quarter of them for sexual assault, including one case of rape.

Police in Hamburg say there was a series of similar incidents in the city’s Reeperbahn red-light area. Witnesses described groups of five to 15 men of who “hunted” women in the streets.

In Cologne, the attacks took place around the main station, opposite the cathedral, a traditional gathering spot to see in the New Year. 

Read the rest here.