Anders Fogh Rasmussen

We must confront a difficult truth.
A new autocratic curtain is rising once again.

On the 80th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s “Sinews of Peace” speech - which he warned of an Iron Curtain descending over Europe - I had the honour to be in Cambridge to address Churchill College.

I outlined that tyranny has returned as a governing model.

Our adversaries already align.
From Russia to China.

So it is high time Democracies align too.

We need a global order based on values – a freedom-based world order.

Back in Tokyo — and it has been exactly a year.

Japan is a democracy, a cornerstone of global alliances, and a nation that shares values Europe holds dear. But it also shares something increasingly urgent: the same security challenges that are reshaping our world.
The turmoil in global energy markets this week — with the Strait of Hormuz closed and oil prices surging — is a reminder that the vulnerabilities Europe and Japan face are not so different. Distance does not insulate democracies from the same storms.

This week I had the privilege of meeting with leading companies in Japan, business innovators and the country’s media — conversations that left me more convinced than ever of just how natural a partnership Japan and Europe represent.

Japan is a democracy, a cornerstone of global alliances, and a nation that shares values Europe holds dear. But it also shares something increasingly urgent: the same security challenges that are reshaping our world.

I leave Tokyo energised. The conversations here matter — for Europe, for Japan, and for the broader community of nations committed to a stable and rules-based world.

Met with the U.S. Ambassador Howery in Copenhagen.

We discussed the latest global security issues, from the transatlantic relationship to Ukraine.