EU announces plan to stockpile food, water and medicines over fears Putin will launch WW3 with European invasion within five years
Brussels' 'stockpiling strategy' comes as NATO warns that Russia - currently waging war on EU neighbour Ukraine - could be ready to attack the alliance within five years.
The 27-nation bloc has launched a broad readiness push to bolster its militaries and try to ensure it can defend itself by 2030.
'The goal is very simple to make sure that essential supplies that keep our societies running, especially the ones that save lives, are always available,' EU crisis management commissioner Hadja Lahbib said.
'The more we prepare, the less we panic.'
The EU says the new stockpiling plan is aimed at securing the continuity of key goods during a raft of crises 'such as major energy blackouts, natural disasters, conflicts or pandemics.'
It involves establishing a network between countries to better coordinate stocks, identifying gaps and bolstering 'EU-level stockpiles'.
The levels of crisis preparedness among EU citizens still vary markedly from country to country.
Member states, such as Finland, living under Moscow's shadow on the EU's eastern border, have long worked on having society ready for potential conflict.
'Of course, if you have a 1,000 kilometres border with Russia, you will feel threatened potentially by a war,' Lahbib said.
'But it is normal, that in Spain, they feel that wildfires are more likely to happen. There is no one size fits all.'
Lahbib insisted that whatever the cause of a crisis - be it conflict or natural disasters - the impact on citizens such as energy blackouts can be similar.
'People are without energy, and that's why we need to stockpile items everywhere in the European Union,' she said.
In March, as part of its efforts, the EU advised every household to have a three-day survival kit including water, food and flashlights ready in case of emergencies.
Advocating for the new strategy, the commission says that better integration will be facilitated by 'highly integrated value and supply chains' within the Single Market.
While needs may differ country to country, the EU must have a 'comprehensive, shared analysis among all relevant stakeholders, across sectors and borders, and to coordinate efforts to prepare and respond quickly and effectively.'
Beyond war, Europe is also looking to prepare for natural disasters, human-induced disasters and health emergencies (like industrial accidents and pandemics), and hybrid threats (like cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns).
The 'If Crisis or War Comes' guide advises Swedes on how best to help their country prepare
Britain, despite having more recent memory of armed conflicts than many of its allies on the continent, has fallen behind in civil planning.
In November, the chief of the UK defence staff said that Britain simply does not have 'some of the civil aspects or planning aspects' that other allies have 'as part of their traditions'.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin told the Berlin security conference that 'we are having those conversations to learn from our colleagues and see what might be appropriate for ourselves'.
Days prior, Sweden had announced that it would be sending out five million pamphlets to its population just north of 10 million, urging preparedness for the possibility of a lasting conflict.
Since Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, Stockholm has urged Swedes to prepare mentally and logistically for a possible conflict, citing the worsening security situation.
Sweden has been in the EU since 1995 and will have a head start on new plans to ready populations, but only joined NATO in 2024, breaking nearly 200 years of neutrality in response to the perceived Russian threat on its doorstep.
Britain, part of NATO but not the EU, is starting to take measures to better prepare the civilian population for the possibility of war.
Late in June, the government published its National Security Strategy 2025, looking at 'Security for the British People in a Dangerous World'.
'For the first time in many years, we have to actively prepare for the possibility of the UK homeland coming under direct threat, potentially in a wartime scenario,' the report acknowledged.
It promised a series of new measures including strengthening borders, enhancing critical national infrastructure and promoting economic ties with the EU and the US while rebuilding a defence industrial base and protecting other sovereign capabilities.
But it also stressed the importance of building domestic resilience to future threats that 'could cause massive disruption to our way of life'.
A new Resilience Strategy will aim to support civil society and the public sector to address risks and vulnerabilities, including launching 'public communications to inform citizens about preparedness for risks'.
The government is investing £1bn to prepare the UK for 'biological incidents, accidents and attacks'.
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Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Papering over strains, US and allies prep for Taiwan war
WASHINGTON, July 25 (Reuters) - As they kicked off the largest joint military exercises in Australia's history with a press conference in Sydney earlier this month, U.S. commanders gave a simple explanation for why 35,000 troops from 19 nations were simulating high-tech warfare. In the words of U.S. Lieutenant General Joel Vowell, deputy commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, exercise TALISMAN SABRE was intended to build the ability of the U.S. and its allies to respond to any crisis in the Pacific – and in doing so, act as a 'deterrent mechanism' to prevent a future conflict. Already, 2025 has witnessed a series of the largest and most sophisticated military drills held in the Pacific since the end of World War Two, a sign of growing nervousness over a rising China. But along with other U.S.-led activity around the region, the drills also have a much more focused goal. They are to persuade Beijing that if it goes ahead with what are now believed to be increasingly advanced plans for an invasion of Taiwan, it risks finding itself at war not just with the U.S. but a powerful and well-armed de facto alliance. Behind the scenes, however, sits clear diplomatic awkwardness, caused both by Pacific frustrations over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff salvoes and trade war as well as strategic uncertainty over the U.S. and its future global role. Unlike with its NATO allies in Europe or its main Pacific partners such as Australia, the U.S. has no binding treaty obligations to defend Taiwan if it is attacked. Nor do Australia, the Philippines and other major players in the region. This month, the Financial Times reported that U.S. officials were exerting mounting pressure on Australia and Japan to agree to intervene militarily if China moved against Taiwan. That raised eyebrows in both nations – as well as an unusually public refusal to make any such commitment. That should not have been surprising. Under terms of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, successive U.S. administrations have been committed to ensuring plans and military resources are in place to protect the island against whatever Chinese menace it faces. But that does not extend to a commitment to use that force in the event of an attack. Indeed, there is a clear division of views within the Trump administration and its supporters on the wisdom of such action, as well as over how much support Washington should offer to the government in Taipei. That means America's regional allies find themselves taking a similar position, frequently happy to work with the U.S. on contingency planning and deepening military cooperation – but unwilling to commit much further. 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Japan, New Zealand, Australia and South Korea are not NATO members, but often attend large alliance meetings to discuss global and Pacific security matters. 'It's hard to believe, a little bit ..., but thanks to President Trump, Asian allies should look to countries in Europe as a new-found example,' U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Shangri-La Security Dialogue in Singapore in May. Hegseth also warned that the Chinese threat to Taiwan was 'imminent' and that Beijing viewed its capture as a key step on the road to regional domination. Few in Japan, Australia or the Philippines would question that analysis. All have long concluded that a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would magnify the future threat to them, and have weighed behind closed doors what actions they might take. Since Trump took office in January, however, America's Asian allies have found themselves profoundly uncertain by the administration's cool treatment of Ukrainein the country's battle against Russian invasion. They are suddenly worried that they might similarly find themselves deprived of U.S. arms and forced towards a deal by a future U.S. government. Trump's tariffs and trade war rhetoric have only made such matters worse. Since taking office, Hegseth and his team have been forced to exert considerable effort reassuring Asian partners, meeting with Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Junior this week and reasserting a U.S. commitment to a mutual defense pact. Marcos also met with Trump, who agreed to ease U.S. tariffs on the Philippines from 20 to 19 percent. Japan also struck a trade deal with Washington this week, bringing its tariffs down to 15 percent. Senior U.S. officials have visited South Korea and Japan to discuss both using their enormous shipyards to support the U.S. military as well as discussing how U.S. forces based there might support a battle for Taiwan. That also appears to point to the broader Pentagon position: ignore the messy politics as much as possible, particularly when it comes to trade, in favor of building up real military capabilities including amongst allies, thereby maximizing potential options in the event of a future crisis. China considers democratic Taiwan as part of its own territory and calls its president a "separatist". Taiwan's government disputes China's claim. Taiwan itself has been conducting its own annual Han Kuang military drills in recent weeks, by far the largest and most realistic the island has ever held. Taiwanese media reported that the onlookers included the largest serving U.S. military delegation at any point in recent history, with U.S. troops visible in TV footage with their faces obscured digitally. According to the Washington Post, Taiwanese personnel were also invited to June's 'Kamandag' exercise that brought together U.S., Japanese and Filipino forces around the northern Philippines' Batanes island, among the closest points from which U.S. forces and any allies could strike at any Chinese warships attempting a blockade or invasion of Taiwan. At the Shangri-La conference in May, Hegseth echoed his Democratic predecessor Lloyd Austin in stressing that the U.S. believed European allies should focus on their own defense before sending forces repeatedly to Asia - but once again, that warning seemed to go unheeded. That appears at least partly a consequence of the recent signals and actions of the Trump administration. 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Reuters
3 hours ago
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Exclusive: CEO of Russia-backed Indian refiner Nayara resigns after EU sanctions, sources say
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The Herald Scotland
6 hours ago
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Trump Turnberry must host the Open – and Swinney must drive it
Hope that you'll benefit from cheap energy when the government drills, baby, drills rather than building wind turbines. Hope that when your daughter tries out for the track team she won't have to compete against someone who was born a boy. But first and foremost hope that the factory down the road will reopen and that you will get a job there rather than the job going to the foreigner who arrived yesterday. This is America First, the midwife of global economic uncertainty, including in Scotland, a nation with major export interests in the US and therefore with much to lose from a punitive tariff regime. Read more by Andy Maciver America First is also the midwife of global security uncertainty. President Trump's desire to retrench from global military engagement is, in essence, leaving various geopolitical fields of play to bad actors. President Putin wants to recover Russia's historical position as the biggest global player in eastern Europe and western Asia, and America's on-off willingness to let that happen is destabilising Nato, Europe and particularly those western countries which border Russia, in ways the President struggles to understand. Hardly for the first time, though, it is Gaza which is at the centre of most people's moral consciousness, and which is central to the protests against President Trump's Scottish trip, and his meeting with First Minister John Swinney. This conflict is tens, or hundreds, or by some interpretations thousands of years old, and therefore expecting a President with little foreign policy experience or interest to solve it is fanciful. However, it is his unwillingness, or at least inability, to persuade Mr Netanyahu of both the moral indecency and the strategic hopelessness of the scale of his retaliation in Gaza which is of most concern. This is not where we would wish to be. However it is where we are. Being the leader of a country is, and must be, different from being the leader of a party. It is impure. It requires compromise and diplomacy. And it requires you to do business with people you don't agree with. If we draw a line in the sand here, because of President Trump's adjacency to Prime Minister Netanyahu, what are the implications? What if the populist formula which elected Trump generates leaders we don't like in France or Germany, as it has already done in Italy. Should Mr Swinney also refuse to meet them because they are adjacent to President Trump? What if Nigel Farage is Prime Minister of the UK in 2029. Should Mr Swinney refuse to meet him? And if adjacency is the problem, the list of offenders is endless. Churchill and Stalin. Blair and Gaddafi. Xi Jinping and pretty much every global leader. No, this is the wrong place to draw the line. John Swinney is right to meet the President during this visit. More than that; to reject the opportunity would have been a dereliction of his duty as Scotland's leader. He should be welcoming the half-Scottish Donald John Trump with open arms, ready to deal. I use the word "deal" deliberately. President Trump likes to see himself as a man with considerable dealmaking prowess, but engagements with Presidents Putin and Netanyahu, amongst others, tell us that his dealmaking abilities appear to be considerably less proficient than he would wish us to believe. Why shouldn't we expect that Mr Swinney can outmanoeuvre President Trump over the next few days and put Scotland in a stronger position? Of course it is true that Mr Swinney will, to some degree, be deferential. Of course it is true that he will have to pander to the President. Of course it may even be true that he will have to tarnish himself, just a little bit, in order to get the most out of the interaction. But this – all of this – is a price worth paying if he can help put President Trump in a position where he is more sympathetic to giving Scotland and the UK a better deal, primarily on tariffs. Scotland is home to the UK's largest food and drink exports – Scottish salmon and Scotch whisky – both of which are heavily invested in the US import market. This matters hugely to Scotland's economy and to the jobs which depend on these industries. Moreover, salmon and Scotch are part of a Scottish soft power which is highly influential in the US. A soft power which includes the stereotypical tartan and bagpipes, and which crucially also includes golf. Mr Swinney needs to exploit President Trump's weak point. The locations of his visit offer the clue about what that is – golf. And so there is one deal, perhaps above all others, which Mr Swinney, in alliance with Sir Keir Starmer and by leaning heavily on the R&A, should seek to do, and that is to offer Trump Turnberry golf's Open Championship. Stewart Cink on his way to victory the last time the Open was played at Turnberry, in 2009 (Image: PA) Having just left Royal Portrush, The Open goes to Royal Birkdale next year before returning to St Andrew's in 2027. There is no announced venue for 2028, the last Open of the Trump Presidency. It should go to Turnberry. This would be a win-win. The suitability of the majestic Ailsa course at Turnberry is not in question, including by the R&A. Turnberry's problem, in this era of larger crowds, is poor transport infrastructure and insufficient accommodation options. Mr Swinney should be looking at this as an opportunity to work with the UK Government, and international investors, to leverage investment in road and rail connections, which would benefit Scotland well beyond the staging of the golf tournament. Leaning on the R&A to award Turnberry the Open in 2028 would be a tiny price to pay for a better deal on a range of other issues. It is a deal Mr Swinney should actively try to make. Welcome to Scotland, Mr President. Come back in 2028 for your Open. Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast
