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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference was not an “olive branch” to Europeans and transmitted a sense of “calm before the next tempest” in the trans-Atlantic relationship, Fabrice Pothier, the CEO of Rasmussen Global, has told Euronews’ flagship morning show Europe Today.
Pothier, a former Director of Policy Planning for NATO, said Rubio’s change in tone “is just a way to make the past few months a bit less painful,” but that Europeans are “not naive”.
The historical alliance between the US and Europe has been strained since President Donald Trump took office, with a recent US national security strategy accusing European institutions of “anti-democratic restrictions” and warning of “stark prospect of civilizational erasure” on the continent.
“The road ahead is still made of many differences,” Pothier explained, citing Russia’s war in Ukraine and President Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland as prime examples of areas where both sides fail to see eye to eye.
On Greenland, Pothier said there is “a mismatch” between the negotiated solution the Danish and Greenlandic governments are pursuing and Trump’s intentions.
“The US president takes a very emotional view; he just wants to own that piece of estate”, said Pothier. “He is thinking like a Manhattan real estate mogul.”
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