U.S. Places NATO on Notice
Rubio’s testimony to Congress lays bare a deeper truth: NATO needs to be “reimagined” with Europe urged to show more chutzpah - as Trump openly scorns the alliance
World Briefing | Hot Take
When Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday that NATO needs to be “reimagined,” it landed like a bureaucratic phrase. It shouldn’t have. In today’s context, it reads more like a warning label.
(Rubio also gave a robust defense of Washington’s Venezuela policy. “We are making good and decent progress,” he said).
This testimony doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It comes after weeks of Donald Trump openly ridiculing NATO allies, questioning the alliance’s value, and floating the idea of forcibly acquiring Greenland - against the wishes of both its people and Denmark, a founding NATO member. Add the casual musings about Canada, and the picture sharpens: the United States is no longer behaving like the anchor of the rules-based order, but like a power unbound by it.
At our Africa-focused power panel Wednesday night in Hong Kong, one theme kept resurfacing: how do vulnerable states and institutions navigate a world where Washington now wields tariffs like a baton - and its diplomacy increasingly resembles tantrum management? From Africa to Europe, the problem isn’t just unpredictability; it’s hierarchy. The implicit message is clear: align, comply, or be sidelined.
And then there’s NATO itself.
Those of us who have spent the past four years watching close-up Russia’s war on Ukraine know this uncomfortable truth: NATO has already been stress-tested - and the exam results ain’t pretty. Russian missile and drone debris has fallen multiple times on NATO frontline states. “Ghost ships” and military vessels have mapped undersea cables with impunity. Submarine infrastructure has been probed. RAF pilots have reported military-grade lasers shone into their cockpits. The hybrid war is already here. All with hardly a whimper from NATO.
Which raises the question few in Brussels want to answer out loud: what exactly triggers Article 5 anymore?
If these acts don’t qualify as an attack on “one,” then the promise that an attack on one is an attack on all starts to look less like deterrence - and more like wishful thinking. NATO today risks being perceived not as a shield, but as a wimp: loud on values, cautious on consequences.
Rubio’s “reimagining” of NATO may be Washington preparing the ground for disengagement - or for something more transactional, more conditional, more unilateral. Either way, allies are right to be scratching their heads. Not about whether NATO needs reform (that ship has sailed) - but about whether it can survive an era in which its most powerful member no longer seems to believe in it.
And that, more than any single testimony, is the real crisis facing the alliance.
The likelihood of US strikes on Iran increased once again, as Washington deployed a carrier group to the Middle East. President Donald Trump threatened attacks after Tehran’s crackdown on anti-government protests, but seemed to back away. Now, though, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its escorts, along with land-based fighter-bombers, are in the region, and US forces are conducting military exercises; Trump said the “beautiful armada” should encourage Iran to “make a deal.” Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two key US regional allies, ruled out the use of their airspace or territory, making any attacks more complicated, although not impossible - Semafor
Slovakia’s prime minister told EU leaders at a summit last week that a meeting with Donald Trump left him shocked by the U.S. president’s state of mind, five European diplomats briefed on the conversation said. Robert Fico, one of the few EU leaders to frequently support Trump’s stance on Europe’s weaknesses, was concerned about the U.S. president’s “psychological state,” two of the diplomats said. Fico used the word “dangerous” to describe how the U.S. president came across during their face-to-face meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Jan. 17, according to two of the diplomats. The Slovak prime minister made his remarks in a separate informal huddle between some leaders and chief EU officials rather than during the formal roundtable talks, the diplomats said. While none of the diplomats who spoke to POLITICO were present, individual leaders briefed them separately on the content of the conversation shortly after it. The conversation between Fico and his European counterparts took place in Brussels on Jan. 22 on the sidelines of an emergency EU summit arranged to discuss transatlantic relations in the wake of Trump’s threats to seize Greenland. Leaders used that gathering to try to calm tensions after the U.S. president walked back his threat to slap tariffs on some European countries over the issue a day earlier. Fico’s comments are especially pertinent because he’s among Europe’s most pro-Trump politicians, touting his access to the U.S. president in a Facebook video after the Mar-a-Lago meeting and voicing support for Washington’s approach to the Russia-Ukraine war. A year ago, Fico spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference and told Americans “your president is doing Europe a great service.” - Politico
Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least three people and injured several others, Ukrainian officials said, just hours after a deadly attack on a passenger train in the Kharkiv region. In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, a drone strike on January 27 killed a 46-year-old man and injured five others. Russian forces launched another attack on Kyiv, hitting a 17-story residential building and damaging the roof, upper-floor windows, and nearby parked cars. Russian strikes on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa killed at least three people and injured almost 40 people. The overnight strikes followed a deadly Russian drone attack on a passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on January 27. Ukrainian authorities said at least five passengers were killed. Russian forces attacked with three Shahed drones, striking near the locomotive and a passenger car, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said, adding that 291 passengers, including children, were on board. Kuleba said 18 people were in the carriage hit by one of the Russian drones. Due to strikes on critical infrastructure in the Odesa region, people will this week have a daily power outage schedule that equates to more hours without power than with - RFE/RL, Telegram
A mural of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed in August while riding a train home from work in North Carolina, mysteriously appeared on a building in Chicago and may appear across the U.S. Elon Musk and other supporters of Donald Trump, who has blamed Democrat policies for her death, have led an effort to paint murals depicting her nationwide, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. In Chicago, near the corner of Western and Montrose avenues, a large mural of Iryna has conspicuously appeared on the side of a brick building where a taqueria is situated. It depicts her in a blue shirt, from her shoulders up, along with her name and “2002-2025” written in white. No artist signed the mural. Video of the attack went viral on social media, and politicians from both sides quickly condemned the killing. Republicans, including Trump and his supporters, blamed Democrats for Zarutska’s death because the man charged in the stabbing had been in and out of jail several times over the last decade. The man charged in the killing, Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, had previously served nearly six years in prison for robbery, and had been arrested 14 times in North Carolina dating back more than a decade ago. Trump and other MAGA Republicans have used the case as a political symbol to call for more forcible punishments against people convicted of violent crimes — whether suffering from mental illness or not. Vice President JD Vance said Democrats’ “soft-on-crime” policies were responsible for Zarutska’s death. “She came from a war-torn country, sought shelter in the United States, and because of soft-on-crime policies she was murdered here and not in the war-torn country she came from. Isn’t that a disgrace?” Vance said, speaking to a crowd in September in North Carolina. The painting in Chicago is the only mural seen in its vicinity in the North Center neighborhood, which isn’t necessarily known for its street art, like other parts of the city.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa for talks at the Kremlin on Wednesday as Russia seeks to maintain control of its military bases in the Middle Eastern country. Moscow was a key backer of Sharaa’s predecessor, Bashar al-Assad, throughout Syria’s 14-year civil war. Assad’s ouster by Sharaa’s rebel forces dealt a major blow to Russia’s regional influence and cast doubt on the future of its military bases in Syria. Since then, Putin has moved to build ties with Sharaa, though Russia’s decision to grant asylum to Assad and his wife in Moscow has remained a major obstacle to improving relations. In his second meeting with Putin since coming to power, Sharaa said Russia had played a “historic role not only in Syria’s unity and stability, but in that of the entire region.” Neither leader publicly addressed Russia’s military presence in Syria, though Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that he had “no doubt” the issue would be discussed. Russia has two remaining military bases in Syria — the Hmeimim airbase and Tartus naval base on the Mediterranean coast. They are Russia’s only military bases outside the former Soviet Union - AFP
Washington’s withdrawal from dozens of UN-affiliated bodies is already sending ripples through Nairobi, with growing concerns over how the disruptions in US funding could overhaul the UN’s largest hub in the Global South and hurt the Kenyan capital’s economy. The US began withdrawing from 66 international organizations earlier this month, including 31 UN entities. The most directly affected Nairobi-based UN agency is UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme), which is explicitly included in the US withdrawal list and is headquartered in the city’s upscale Gigiri suburb. However, no full withdrawal has taken place so far and no relocations out of Nairobi are reported or planned, with concerns instead focusing on the city’s local economy. Between $250 million and $350 million in annual US-linked funding of Nairobi-based UN operations is at potential risk, according to estimates by local analysts, Kenya’s The Standard newspaper reported. “Certainly, the loss of such major financial support will have negative impacts on people’s jobs and welfare,” said Maria Nzomo, a former Kenyan ambassador to the UN in Geneva. Nairobi’s UN presence has supported a workforce comprising thousands of international and Kenyan staff as well as a wider ecosystem of contractors, consultants, civil-society organizations, and diplomatic missions - Semafor
Furious that Donald Trump’s Minneapolis fiasco was upstaging her film, Melania Trump forced her husband to overhaul his deportation campaign, author Michael Wolff claims. “This was supposed to be the Melania week,” Wolff told his co-host Joanna Coles on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast. But on Saturday, as the 55-year-old first lady prepared to host a screening of her documentary, Melania, federal immigration agents killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti. According to Wolff, a “truly pissed-off” Melania bristled as outrage over Trump’s deportation operation swallowed the spotlight meant for her $75 million film ahead of its premiere at the Kennedy Center on Thursday. That ultimately pushed Trump, 79, to shove several of his own aides and Cabinet members who led the Minnesota crackdown to the sidelines, Wolff said. “You cannot alienate the first lady to the extent that she makes it an issue with the president,” he told Coles. “Almost everyone within the White House acknowledges that this is a tripwire.” Wolff, who wrote his 2018 bestseller Fire and Fury based on his behind-the-scenes observations in the White House, remarked that Trump is “not moved by normal political considerations, but he is moved by a pissed-off wife.” “What he does not want is a p---ed-off and uncontrolled Melania,” he said. By the time the president showed up to Melania’s tacky, billionaire-studded watch party, he had begun to “wobble” on his deportation operation. “The shooting of Alex Pretti is Saturday morning. Saturday evening is the screening of Melania, the movie. So during this period, the president, Donald Trump, begins to shift in his view of this,” Wolff said - The Daily Beast
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