What was it about Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech that made it so remarkable? He didn't really say anything new that we didn't already know, yet nearly all of Europe's major newspapers quoted him.

What was new was that a key U.S. ally articulated so clearly the situation we're in and many others clearly agreed with his assessment. The old order has collapsed and in its place has emerged a power-based world where it seems that the great powers and their leaders decide among themselves how things should work globally.

Of course, the second part of Carney's message was that this isn't some law of nature or an inevitable development. Medium-sized and smaller countries can still cooperate and help shape a new world order.

Carney was the first head of government to essentially say that the emperor has no clothes. Many leaders in the free world may think the same, but don't dare to say it out loud.

Canada's geographic position next to the United States means that, at the moment, the only real threat to its sovereignty is the U.S. If we look at Estonia and other countries bordering Russia, I don't think we'll hear similar statements from our leaders. And I don't think it would be wise, either. For us, Russia remains the only existential threat.

Have we really reached a point where the Canadian prime minister and Canadian society perceive a threat to their sovereignty from their neighbor, the United States?

It does sound unbelievable, but that's how it is. The U.S. has, in fact, threatened Canada as well, so from Canada's perspective, the threat is very real. As a result, they are looking for alternative partners — relationships they can strengthen in order to reduce their dependence on the U.S.

Last week, we saw a dramatic escalation, then seemingly a step back and finally some sort of resolution in the Greenland crisis. Did that crisis actually cause damage to transatlantic relations that won't be easily repaired?

It certainly left its mark. Trump really did move, we could say, to the edge of a cliff in transatlantic relations before stepping back a few paces. We don't know exactly what prompted him to pull back, but I believe the real risk of a trade war was a major factor. That's something Trump takes seriously. I think he realized that if things went so far that the U.S. implemented its own measures, Europe would respond with countermeasures and the entire situation would be very painful for the U.S. economy. That's why he backed off.

British historian Timothy Garton Ash says Europe now faces a double challenge: first, to see the world as it truly is and then to figure out what the hell to do about it. How far along are we, really, on both fronts?

I think defining the situation is definitely one important step and in that sense, Carney did a valuable service by articulating it so clearly. So, how do we move forward? This has given Europe yet another push to get its act together. In truth, we've known for quite some time — as the latest U.S. defense strategy also confirms — that Europe must take responsibility for its own conventional defense and that the U.S. role going forward will be very limited. European countries are working on this. I believe Germany, for example, takes it very seriously. But of course, Europe still has capability gaps and dependencies on the U.S. that can't easily be replaced with its own resources in the short term.

What possible strategic benefit could there be for the U.S. in humiliating its European allies? On the one hand, there's the threat of taking a piece of Europe in the form of Greenland. On the other, there was Donald Trump recently belittling all the allies who stood by the U.S. in Afghanistan, claiming they didn't really matter, that they stayed in the rear and weren't on the front lines. This despite the fact that hundreds of brave European soldiers lost their lives in some of the worst crisis zones in Afghanistan. From the American side, what's the actual goal of such behavior?

If we try to make sense of Trump's foreign policy in his second term, we see on one hand a worldview where major powers make deals among themselves and smaller nations are forced to accept and comply. It's a very old-school, imperialistic attitude toward smaller countries.

But beyond that, there's also a personal thirst for power and fame — one man's ambitions — that drives the U.S. to actions that can't be rationally explained. Like demanding the territory of Greenland or the leader of the most powerful country insisting on being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It's a mixture of chaotic personal whims and a vision that power and size alone determine global decision-making. The U.S. remains the world's most capable and militarily dominant country. But what Trump perhaps doesn't fully grasp is how much soft power the U.S. has lost in just a single year — soft power that has always complemented its military might. America's reputation and global influence have taken serious hits.

A recent study by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows how global attitudes toward the U.S. and Trump have become more negative over the past year. And the main beneficiary of all this is China. China now appears to be a stable, predictable actor — one that brings a sense of consistency to an otherwise chaotic global scene.

If you read the national defense strategy the U.S. released on Friday — a more practical follow-up to the broader national security strategy — it essentially states that Europe must manage on its own.

Can we really rule out the possibility that the U.S. will pull away from NATO, focus on the Western Hemisphere and its own interests and that what we've considered the core of NATO's deterrence — especially here on the eastern flank — will have to be replaced by something else that we currently don't have?

The U.S. may not leave NATO outright, nor does it need to. What has become very clear, however, is that the U.S. intends to leave Europe's conventional military defense in the hands of the Europeans themselves. We need to prepare for that. We still don't know exactly how quickly this U.S. withdrawal will take place, but the American strategy does state that Europe has the capability to manage on its own.

What this reflects, once again, is the worldview of Trump and those close to him: the idea that the U.S. doesn't need allies and doesn't need to concern itself with defending them. They believe the U.S. is strong enough to protect its own interests alone and that others should take care of themselves. The added value that decades of alliances have brought to the U.S. — the influence and global reach they've enabled — is now rapidly diminishing.

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