Politico EU

Elbridge Colby spent the last several years in Washington making a name for himself as an experienced, restraint-minded foreign policy leader eager to focus the U.S. military away from Europe and toward the Indo-Pacific.

But since joining the second Trump administration as the Pentagon’s top policy chief, Colby has made a series of rapid-fire moves that have blindsided parts of the White House and frustrated several of America’s foreign allies, according to seven people familiar with the situation. All were granted anonymity to speak freely about Trump administration dynamics.

Flanked by a team of handpicked policy experts and staff from Capitol Hill, Colby has gotten out ahead of the administration on several major foreign policy decisions.

He prompted last week’s decision, first reported by POLITICO, to halt shipments of some air defense missiles to Ukraine, which caught many Trump allies and lawmakers off guard. This week, President Donald Trump said he would reverse the decision..

President Donald Trump is ready to sign a punishing Russia sanctions bill that GOP hawks have pushed for months. But only if it changes to give him more control.

A senior administration official granted anonymity to discuss the president’s view said that “conceptually there’s an openness” to the bill from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), but the person suggested that the legislation needs to preserve what the White House sees as the president’s sole authority to oversee U.S. foreign policy.

The current draft of the bill allows the president to waive a 500 percent tariff on countries that buy Russian oil and uranium for up to 180 days, and Graham said Tuesday he has agreed to revise the bill to allow for a second waiver, subject to congressional oversight.

The administration’s desired changes would solidify the president’s waiver authority, ensuring that Congress has no power to question Trump should he decide to end the sanctions.

“The current version would subject the president’s for..

As the Trump administration identified pro-Palestinian academics to target for deportation, it relied heavily on an anonymously-run pro-Israel website that has been criticized for doxxing, according to newly unsealed court documents and testimony at an ongoing trial.

To support President Donald Trump’s deportation drive, the Department of Homeland Security assembled a “tiger team” of intelligence analysts who built dossiers on about 100 foreign students and scholars engaged in pro-Palestinian activity, the records show.

More than 75 of those people were identified by the shadowy website Canary Mission, according to deposition testimony unveiled this week in a case challenging the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian scholars.

The federal judge currently overseeing a trial in the case unsealed the deposition transcripts, which contain hundreds of pages of sworn testimony by administration officials about the campus deportation effort. Some of the details in the transcr..

The European Union and Israel have reached a deal to expand humanitarian aid entering Gaza, the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas announced Thursday.

“This deal means more crossings open, aid and food trucks entering Gaza, repair of vital infrastructure and protection of aid workers. We count on Israel to implement every measure agreed,” Kallas said.

The measures will be implemented in the coming days, making sure that aid is delivered directly to the local population and that there is no aid diverted to militant group Hamas, Commission spokesperson Anouar El Anouni said at a media briefing.

The measures Israel and the EU agreed upon include an increase of daily trucks for food, fuel and other items entering Gaza, the opening of several other crossing points in both the northern and southern areas, the reopening of the Jordanian and Egyptian aid routes, as well as the distribution of food supplies through bakeries and public kitchens throughout the Gaza Strip.

Israel blocked all food d..

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column.

In the next few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with America’s main allies for the first time since returning to office. On Sunday, he flew to Canada for the annual G7 meeting, and later this month, he’ll go to the Netherlands for the annual NATO Summit.

At both meetings, America’s allies will try to placate him on issues ranging from trade and security to the preservation of these forums as a means of coordination and cooperation in the face of critical challenges. And while Trump regularly sought to blow up such meetings in his first term, allies are growing confident they’ve done enough to avoid mishaps this time around.

Even if these meetings proceed without incident, however, they’d be wrong to assume all is right and well in their relations with the U.S. The gl..

Five days after his election victory in February, Friedrich Merz’s world collapses. That’s how he will describe it later.

That Friday evening, he steps off the stage at a large conference center in Hamburg’s port, where cruise ships usually moor. He has just been hailed as “the future federal chancellor,” and more than a thousand party supporters have cheered on their chairman at a rally of the local chapter of the Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s main center-right party. At around 8:15 p.m., he shakes a few hands in farewell, then drops into the backseat of his official car for the three-hour drive home. It is February 28, 2025.

Merz checks his phone and notices a message from his spokesperson. He should watch a video, preferably immediately. Merz pulls out his iPad, opens the link, and recognizes a room familiar to anyone who follows politics. Two armchairs upholstered in gold damask sit in front of a fireplace with no fire burning. In front of the fireplace is a table made of..

U.S. President Donald Trump was triumphant Saturday night during his Oval Office address but within the administration the mood was less sanguine as officials braced for a potential Iran counterattack.

The decision to send American B-2 bombers to attack Iran, the most significant military action of Trump’s presidency, threatens to inject the United States into another Middle East conflict, the kind that Trump and Vice President JD Vance have long promised to avoid.

“We don’t know how much this is going to get us into something protracted,” said an administration official, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberation. “Right now the message is we want to get rid of the nuclear capacity and focus on negotiations.”

Trump over the last few days had become increasingly convinced that he had a rare opportunity to take out Tehran’s nuclear capability with minimal risk to U.S. personnel, according to a senior White House official.

Plans for the attack, which Trump..

Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Friday that NATO “as it is, no longer has a reason to exist,” and that the EU does not count on the global stage.

Crosetto made the remarks on the sidelines of a conference in Padua, according to Italian news agency ANSA.

“Before, U.S. and Europe used to be the center of the world — now, there is everything else with which a relationship must be built,” he said, adding: “We often talk as if we were still living 30 years ago, but everything has changed.”

Crosetto’s comments come ahead of the NATO leaders’ summit in The Hague next week, where the alliance is likely to agree on a higher spending target of 5 percent of GDP to placate U.S. President Donald Trump.

Among the leaders attending is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. At a meeting in Rome earlier this month with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, her office “reaffirmed support for Ukraine and the Atlantic Alliance’s role as an essential pillar for collective defence.”

But accor..

As Republicans battle over direct military engagement with Iran, prominent conservatives and allies of the president have emerged as forceful voices against intervening, lashing out at a host of political players — except for President Donald Trump.

Warring factions within the Republican Party have sought to pull Trump in opposing directions on how to deal with Iran. Isolationists are seeking to hold Trump to his repeated campaign promises to not involve the U.S. in another major Middle East war, while interventionists like Sen. Lindsey Graham have urged the president to go tougher on Iran — an approach that appears to be winning Trump’s favor.

Even as Republicans have spoken up against engaging in a conflict with Iran, criticizing everyone from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Graham for their role in the unfolding conflict, few dared to directly attack the president over his approach.

“Take screenshots of every single right winger who is shit talking Trump right now,” ..

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday warned that President Donald Trump may “take further action” to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and urged people who don’t support such action to trust the president.

Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment,” Vance wrote in a post on X. “That decision ultimately belongs to the president.”

Iran has increased its uranium enrichment to near weapons-grade levels, according to a report from a United Nations nuclear watchdog. The country has been the subject of Israeli bombardment in recent days over its refusal to give up its nuclear capabilities.

The Trump administration has attempted to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran in recent months but talks halted after Israel struck Tehran last week.

“Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday. “What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again!..