Europe is “dreaming” if it believes it can defend itself without US backing, Nato’s secretary-general has warned, pushing back against calls in some EU capitals to prepare for a future without Washington’s protection.

The comments come after Donald Trump threatened to use military force to seize Greenland from Nato ally Denmark and to impose tariffs on other allies who opposed him — remarks that unsettled European governments and reignited debate over the continent’s reliance on the US. Although the US president rescinded the threats last week, they prompted renewed calls for Europe to accelerate efforts to strengthen its own defence capabilities.

Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary-general who last week persuaded Trump to withdraw his threats, dismissed those arguments on Monday. Rutte told EU lawmakers that building a fully independent European defence would be prohibitively expensive and would benefit only the bloc’s adversaries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“If anyone thinks here . . . that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming,” he said in remarks to the European parliament. “You can’t.”

“I think there will be a lot of duplication and I wish you luck if you want to do it, because you have to find the men and women in uniform . . . on top of what is happening already,” he said. “It will make things more complicated. I think Putin will love it. So think again.”

Independence from the US security umbrella that has shielded Europe since the second world war was once a niche idea, promoted largely by France.

But the notion of “strategic autonomy” has moved steadily into the EU mainstream in recent years, as Donald Trump’s erratic approach to Nato allies — reinforced by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine — has sharpened debate over how Europe can strengthen its own defence capabilities.

Last year Nato allies agreed to lift their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, responding to Trump’s demand that Europe shoulder a larger share of the burden for its own defence.

Even so, experts warn that fully replacing the US role in Europe — particularly in areas such as advanced weaponry and critical capabilities on which European forces have relied for decades — would be vastly more expensive.

“If you really want to go it alone, forget that you can ever get there with 5 per cent [defence spending]. It will be 10 per cent,” Rutte said on Monday. “You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros.”

Europe is “dreaming” if it believes it can defend itself without US backing, Nato’s secretary-general has warned, pushing back against calls in some EU capitals to prepare for a future without Washington’s protection.

The comments come after Donald Trump threatened to use military force to seize Greenland from Nato ally Denmark and to impose tariffs on other allies who opposed him — remarks that unsettled European governments and reignited debate over the continent’s reliance on the US. Although the US president rescinded the threats last week, they prompted renewed calls for Europe to accelerate efforts to strengthen its own defence capabilities.

Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary-general who last week persuaded Trump to withdraw his threats, dismissed those arguments on Monday. Rutte told EU lawmakers that building a fully independent European defence would be prohibitively expensive and would benefit only the bloc’s adversaries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“If anyone thinks here . . . that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming,” he said in remarks to the European parliament. “You can’t.”

“I think there will be a lot of duplication and I wish you luck if you want to do it, because you have to find the men and women in uniform . . . on top of what is happening already,” he said. “It will make things more complicated. I think Putin will love it. So think again.”

Independence from the US security umbrella that has shielded Europe since the second world war was once a niche idea, promoted largely by France.

But the notion of “strategic autonomy” has moved steadily into the EU mainstream in recent years, as Donald Trump’s erratic approach to Nato allies — reinforced by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine — has sharpened debate over how Europe can strengthen its own defence capabilities.

Last year Nato allies agreed to lift their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, responding to Trump’s demand that Europe shoulder a larger share of the burden for its own defence.

Even so, experts warn that fully replacing the US role in Europe — particularly in areas such as advanced weaponry and critical capabilities on which European forces have relied for decades — would be vastly more expensive.

“If you really want to go it alone, forget that you can ever get there with 5 per cent [defence spending]. It will be 10 per cent,” Rutte said on Monday. “You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros.”

Yeah, with genius geopolitical ideas like this, perhaps let’s stick to singing for now 😅

Too many people think because something finally “works”, it’s good. Once your AI has written code that seems to work, that’s supposed to be when the human starts their work.

Holy shit, preach!

Once you give a shit ton of prompts and the feature finally starts working, the code is most likely complete ass, probably filled with a ton of useless leftovers from previous iterations, redundant and unoptimized code. That’s when you start reading/understanding the code and polishing it, not when you ship it lol

Not op, but holy shit, it actually does! Wish I knew that before, ty!

Although the idea is nice, both are needed.

It’s important to have open-source alternatives, but you’re not going to serve websites at the Amazon or Youtube scale by self-hosting OSS. Hyperscaler and their datacentres are also needed.

Being a foreigner in the US sounds like a great deal right now! lmao

There’s no need to farm if few humans there are can sustain themselves via farming

That is wisdom right there

Yeah, I understand it was signed in 2023, but damn, hopefully they can cancel that shit

Good to know!

I also found out about the warranty later on, if anyone stumble in here, it’s 3 years in Spain and 2 years for the rest of Europe.

Damn, I like their prices, and the product seems good! Might actually consider when upgrading soon…

I just wonder about warranty / repairs.

Eutelsat merged with OneWeb in 2022, which has satellites orbiting in LEO at 1,200 km.

So I suppose they also have access to that.

Man, that “before bed — bedtime” spike and downturn pisses me off so much.

This!

It’s merely a buffer flush, in case it’s empty, the program handling the input can choose how to interpret, cat decides to do it as an EOF.

Reason why it also works as exit.

I mean, no shit. Of course the fully fledged PC version is better than the mobile counterpart lol, I’d say that’s a given for any browser.

Holy shit, very unexpected!

Yeah, they bought a lot of European chocolate brands, like Milka, Côte d’Or, Toblerone, Cadbury, Green & Black’s, Freia and Marabou.

At least until Qwant and Ecosia finish their European Index, slated to start rolling out this year.

I think the biggest are the Proton and Infomaniak kSuite ecosystems. Both have free tiers afaik.

Can’t wait for it to release on PSVR2!