Some of Europe’s biggest Nato members are moving to strengthen their professional armies through voluntary national service schemes.
Large conscripted armies were a feature of Nato states during the Cold War but they dwindled in size after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ongoing war there have kindled fears of a possible future Russian attack on Nato.
Europe faces “civilisational erasure” if it does not cut migration, according to a National Security Strategy released by the White House that signals an unprecedented level of intervention.
The continent will be “unrecognisable in 20 years or less” if present trends continue, the 29-page document warns, adding that several nations could be “majority non-European”.
The strategy document, which laid out the Trump administration’s priorities across the globe, warns that Europe’s migration policies are “creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition”.
Major problem https://t.co/oQGNPXUQj1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 5, 2025
In 1992, global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions stood at 22.3 billion metric tons. By 2024, they had reached a record high of 37.4 billion tons— an increase of nearly 68%.
Europe, by comparison, emitted 4 billion tons in 1992. By 2023, this figure had fallen to around 2.5 billion tons, a reduction of approximately 40% — on a global scale, a derisory amount.
From Birmingham to Berlin, Madrid to Malmö, people have given up on safety — and on those who were meant to guarantee it.
Twenty years ago, Europe still felt whole. Streets were still. Nights were calm. Many slept without worry. You could wander Marseille’s streets without a thought or lose yourself in Venice’s narrow lanes without a trace of fear. Today, that sense of sanity feels like an artifact from an ancient time. The latest World Safety Index report confirms what most already sense. Europe is no longer secure. France and Italy — once the crown jewels of the continent — now rank below Rwanda and Bangladesh for public safety.
Twenty European Union member states—including Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Hungary—have jointly urged the European Commission to take concrete steps to enable both voluntary and forced returns of Afghan nationals without legal residence status.
The initiative was announced on Saturday by Belgium’s Minister for Asylum and Migration, Anneleen Van Bossuyt, who warned that the inability to deport rejected or criminal Afghan asylum seekers “undermines public trust” and “compromises security.”
His return is shaking Europe awake from decades of elitist policies and woke ideology.
Europe today is the spoiled brat of the West. The sulky teenager who rebels against everything he’s supposed to obey, who governs from daydreams divorced from reality, and who’s forever trying to dodge responsibility. Europe reminds me of myself at 15, when I used to hide in my room playing video games just to avoid going out to buy bread. My life was pure misery: Dad always found me. Then I fell in love with the new baker. I still remember those blue eyes. My parents were astonished that I suddenly wanted to buy bread six times a day. She was drop-dead gorgeous. But that’s another story.
Vladimir Putin’s hybrid war is pushing Europe towards a deadly new “Pearl Harbour moment”, a former Lithuanian foreign minister has warned.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, who stepped down as the Baltic country’s most senior diplomat in November, said Nato was “doing nothing” in the face of brinkmanship by Russia, allowing Putin to drag the West closer to all-out conflict.
His warning follows a series of Russian provocations, including MiG-31 fighter jets breaching Estonian airspace and a drone barrage over Poland. As fighting continues in Ukraine, swarms of drones have caused mayhem at airports and spied on infrastructure as part of the Kremlin’s “shadow war”.
As liberals scoff, the Right is rising
The edifices of the age of globalisation are toppling one by one. The institutions of our multilateral world are fading. The cult of diversity, equity and inclusion is going into reverse. The liberal media has lost its monopoly on setting agendas as people turn to alternative news sources. After the murder of Charlie Kirk, things will only get worse.
Europe must return to the Catholic Faith, abandon its postliberal progressivism, and once again embrace its Catholic identity.
Over the course of his life, English author and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh insisted that the Catholic Faith is fundamental to the identity of Europe. A seasoned travel writer, war correspondent, and World War II veteran, Waugh had traveled across much of Europe and seen the damage done by various anti-Christian philosophies, ideologies, and movements. In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, he wrote, “The history of Europe is the history of the Church; the two are inseparable.”
The day they appeared he could hardly believe his eyes. Small boat after small boat bearing in from the Turkish side. “I have so many memories that are coming back to me now,” says Paris Louamis, 50, a hotelier on the Greek island of Lesbos. “There were people from Syria, Afghanistan, many countries.”
This was August 2015 and Europe was witnessing the greatest movement in population since the end of the Second World War. More than a million people would arrive in the EU over the next few months driven by violence in Syria, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere.
I witnessed the arrivals on Lesbos and met Paris Laoumis as he was busy helping exhausted asylum seekers near his hotel. “I am proud of what we did back then,” he tells me. Along with international volunteers he provided food and clothing to those arriving.
With rare exceptions such as Hungary and Poland the elites across Europe should be tried for what amounted to a sinister act of treason.
The European Commission’s unelected president, Ursula von der Leyen, has come up with a nifty new idea in the European Union’s quest to snuff out democracy on the continent: The “European Democracy Shield.”
Instead of fixing a surging migrant crisis and stagnant economy, the UK and EU are even trying to censor American critics of their policies
Earlier this month, we led a delegation to Brussels and London to see how aggressive European speech regulations affect American free speech rights in the digital town square. What we saw shocked us.
Last Congress, the House Judiciary Committee examined how the Biden administration pressured social media companies to limit free speech in America. We successfully fought back against that overreach. But today, the most serious risk to free speech comes from across the Atlantic.
Generation Z is often maligned as a ‘homebody generation.’ Battered by the rising cost of living and stunted by the COVID-19 pandemic, today’s youth would seemingly rather sit at home, scrolling and focussing on ‘self-care’ than socialising with friends. They prefer matcha lattes and Pilates to wild nights out.
The impact of this is being felt across Western Europe. In France, 70% of nightclubs have shut down since the 1980s. In Amsterdam and Barcelona, venues are calling last orders much earlier than they used to. And in formerly lively Berlin, you’re now just as likely to get chucked out at 10 p.m. as 4 a.m. The UK, too, has lost around 400 clubs—more than a third—in the last five years alone. In London specifically, a city once world-renowned for its vibrant nightlife and music scene, just 6% of venues open past 2 a.m.
Donald Trump has issued a warning to the EU from Scotland: “On immigration, you better get your act together.” He added, “You’re not going to have Europe anymore.” The U.S. president has told European leaders to their faces what almost everyone already acknowledges in private. The Great Replacement was not a conspiracy theory. It is a sad reality. And perhaps Trump’s words are a good opportunity to go back to the beginning and, frankly, answer the big question that concerns all Europeans: When did we lose Europe?
Donald Trump is visiting Europe. Upon arriving there, when asked about migration, he had a blunt response, which is that unlimited immigration is killing Europe. The elites were outraged, but I suspect that the common man in Europe had the same response that the dissidents did in 1983, when Ronald Reagan bucked the sophisticated elites and accurately called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
