On April 1, 2026, President Donald Trump delivered his harshest verdict yet on the Atlantic alliance. Asked by The Telegraph whether he would revisit membership after the Iran war, Trump replied, “I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.” He then told Reuters that he was “absolutely” considering a withdrawal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck the same chord on Fox News. “I think there’s no doubt, unfortunately, after this conflict is concluded, we are going to have to reexamine that...

U.S. President Donald Trump sat beside Finnish President Alexander Stubb in the Oval Office on October 9, 2025, and turned a meeting about icebreakers into a lecture about Spain. "You people are gonna have to start speaking to Spain," Trump said. "You have to call them and find why are they a laggard." He then added, "They have no excuse not to do this, but that's alright. Maybe you should throw 'em out of NATO frankly." Spain committed the unforgivable sin of saying no. At the June 2025 summit in the Hague, every other ally agreed to raise defense and security spending toward 5% of GDP by...

On January 22, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld stepped behind the podium at the Foreign Press Center in Washington and, with one answer to a Dutch public television reporter, redrew the map of Europe. The reporter wanted to know why so many Europeans trusted Saddam Hussein more than then-President George W. Bush. The defense secretary fired back with words the Pentagon transcript preserved in full: "Now, you're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east. And there are a lot of...

On January 3, 2026, American aircraft struck targets across Caracas while special operations teams seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flew both to New York on narcotics and weapons charges. President Donald Trump posted that the United States had "successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country." He told reporters Washington would "run" the country until a transition could be arranged. Delcy Rodríguez, sworn in days later...

Roughly 4,000 soldiers of the Army's 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, unpacked their gear in the second week of May. The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon had scrapped their rotation to Poland altogether, thinning American numbers in Europe by blocking arrivals instead of extracting anyone already on the ground. Three officials tied the cancellation to a presidential order signed at the start of May directing a cut of roughly 5,000 troops across the continent. Nobody warned Warsaw. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said the Polish officials he reached described themselves...

At the White House on August 19, President Donald Trump said he anticipates a face-to-face session with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before December. Pressed on whether it would happen, he answered "Yeah, I will be," and noted that the two men get along "very well." He added, "The fact that I get along with him is a good thing, not a bad thing." He then offered a figure no American official had ever stated publicly, asserting Pyongyang commands 57 "very powerful" nuclear weapons. The comments trailed the sharpest concession Washington has extended to the North since 2019. Three days...

A sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln sent a message home that his family passed to Stars and Stripes anonymously, fearing retaliation. "Our mental health and physical health is in danger. We need help." By the time that message surfaced, the Lincoln had been gone from San Diego since late November 2025, redirected from a routine Pacific cruise into a shooting war with Iran and kept at sea for nine months. Her roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines spent 208 consecutive days at sea—more than any carrier in the modern era—with only two brief port calls: Guam in December and Oman in June. One...

Cali, not Bogotá, hosted Colombia's August 7, 2026 presidential inauguration. Abelardo de la Espriella gave his first address as Colombia's president from a military garrison and set the terms of his next four years. "I reaffirm my intention to defeat without truce narcoterrorism—the criminal organizations that threaten Colombia's freedom," he said. He then sent the armed forces after criminal structures and closed his predecessor's negotiations, telling the country that "the option of dialogue is completely exhausted." That vocabulary was not new here. Ecuador's Daniel Noboa proclaimed an...