The UK and its European allies are scrambling to get serious about their own defences as Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin shape a new world order.
You can expect to hear multiple declarations from European leaders, including Sir Keir Starmer, about their respective plans to ramp up spending on defence and security at a major security conference in Munich over the next three days.
But the key indicator to track is evidence of the rhetoric becoming cold, hard fighting reality.
It is certainly what the United States will be looking for – a form of scrutiny that became clear at a separate meeting of defence ministers from the NATO alliance in Brussels on Thursday.
Elbridge Colby, the US under secretary of war policy – a deputy to Pete Hegseth who chose to miss the gathering in what some insiders saw as a signal of the US reducing the priority it places on its NATO membership, though others denied this was the case – delivered a striking speech to allies.
He said Europe must take the lead in defending itself, but – in words that will come as some relief to his counterparts – stressed that the US was not abandoning NATO.
“The world that shaped the habits, assumptions, and force posture of NATO during the so-called ‘unipolar moment’ following the Cold War no longer exists,” Mr Colby said.
“Power politics has returned, and military force is again being employed at a large scale.”
The Trump administration official said his message was about giving a reality check to his partners, about the need to turn a pledge made at a major NATO summit last year to increase total defence and security spending to 5% of GDP into viable military capability.
“For Europe, it means moving beyond inputs and intentions toward outputs and capabilities,” Mr Colby…
