Speaking in Terceira, the Portuguese-American former congressman and presidential intelligence adviser pointed to the Azores, Lajes, new air connections, submarine cables and advanced technology as foundations for a stronger partnership, while former EU representative João Aguiar Machado warned that Europe’s confidence in Washington has been shaken
There are moments when the importance of the Azores seems almost disproportionate to their size. Nine islands scattered across the North Atlantic can appear peripheral when viewed from Lisbon, Brussels or Washington. Yet change the scale of the map—from national geography to Atlantic security, from traditional transportation to digital connectivity, from territorial defense to the technologies that will shape the next generation of strategic power—and the islands move steadily toward the center. That was one of the central messages emerging from the conference on “Transatlantic Relations: The Role of the Azores,” held in Angra do Heroísmo and organized by Azorean Member of the European Parliament Paulo do Nascimento Cabral.
For Devin Nunes, the Portuguese-American former Republican congressman and current chairman of the U.S. President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, the relationship connecting the United States, Portugal and the Azores is not entering a period of decline. Quite the opposite. “The relationship between Portugal and the United States and between the Azores and the United States has never been better,” Nunes told journalists on the sidelines of the conference.
Nunes, whose family roots are Azorean, pointed not simply to diplomacy but to tangible developments connecting the two sides of the Atlantic. Among them are the expansion of United Airlines flights to the Azores and the installation of submarine cables connecting Portugal and the United States through the archipelago. Some of those developments, he said, have been years in the making. “This all started more than a decade ago,” Nunes observed, arguing that work undertaken in the past is now beginning to have a significant impact on Portugal and the Azores.
His comments present a contemporary interpretation of a very old Azorean reality: the strategic value of location.
For centuries, the islands served ships crossing the Atlantic. In the twentieth century, aviation transformed that geography, and Lajes Air Base on Terceira became a key part of the strategic relationship between Portugal and the United States. Today, another geography is being layered upon the old one. Information travels beneath the ocean through submarine cables; commercial aviation connects the islands more directly with North America; drones and other advanced technologies are reshaping defense; and the sea itself has become increasingly important as nations reconsider maritime security and strategic autonomy.
Nunes acknowledged the continuing importance of Lajes in Atlantic defense and Portuguese-American cooperation, but his argument went considerably further. Portugal, he suggested, should think seriously about what it can produce—not simply what strategic facilities it can provide.
“Portugal is a small country, but in an important and strategic location,” he said. While emphasizing that decisions belong to Portugal itself, Nunes argued that a country of Portugal’s size faces obvious limitations if it attempts simultaneously to sustain every dimension of modern military capacity. Instead, he suggested that Portugal can capitalize on its entrepreneurial talent and technological expertise, developing products and capabilities that generate employment and innovation while strengthening the country’s ability to protect its own resources.
In particular, he emphasized naval capacity, drones, and advanced technology.
Nunes cited the Portuguese company Douro Azul, associated with entrepreneur Mário Ferreira, and drone technology company Tekever as examples of Portuguese entrepreneurship and technological capability. His larger point was that specialization can itself become strategic power. If Portugal develops strong naval and drone capabilities, he argued, the United States has greater opportunities to establish partnerships with a strategically located ally possessing advanced technological expertise.
It is an argument that asks Portugal—and, inevitably, the Azores—to reconsider what Atlantic strategic importance should mean in the twenty-first century. For much of modern history, the islands’ value to larger powers was associated primarily with geography: they were useful because of where they were. The emerging question is whether the next phase can also be defined by what Portugal and the Azores know, develop and produce.
That distinction could prove important. Geography cannot be relocated, but neither should strategic geography condemn a region to serving merely as territory used by others. Technology, research, maritime industries, digital infrastructure and highly skilled employment offer the possibility of translating location into longer-lasting economic and intellectual capacity.
Lajes, Memory and an Argument Vindicated
For Nunes, Lajes also carries a more personal political history. He recalled his opposition to the reduction of the American military presence at the base in 2015, during the Obama administration.
“Ten years ago we had real problems with the Obama administration, with what it was doing with this base,” Nunes said. “I warned in Congress that it was a bad decision. And now we know why this base and the Azores are so important.”
His remarks reflect a conviction he expressed while serving in Congress: that changing strategic circumstances could once again demonstrate the importance of Lajes and the Azores within the broader Atlantic security structure.
He also emphasized another dimension of the relationship that cannot be located on a military map: Portuguese-American political influence in the United States. According to Nunes, Portuguese-American elected officials continue to exercise a “very strong” influence in the U.S. Congress.
That human dimension has always distinguished Portugal’s relationship with the United States. Governments negotiate agreements, militaries cooperate, and companies construct infrastructure, but Portuguese-American relations also rest upon generations of migration. In the case of the Azores, that connection is particularly profound. Families lived the Atlantic relationship long before it became the subject of international conferences.
Nunes himself embodies part of that story: an American political figure whose ancestry reaches back across the Atlantic to the islands now being discussed as strategically significant to the United States.
Another View From Europe: A Relationship That Remains Essential, but Trust Has Been Damaged
Yet the Angra conference also demonstrated that there is no single interpretation of the present transatlantic moment.
João Aguiar Machado, former representative of the European Union to the World Trade Organization, agreed that relations between Europe and the United States remain extraordinarily important. But his assessment of the broader political relationship was considerably more cautious.
According to Aguiar Machado, the Trump administration has produced a “breakdown in trust” within the transatlantic relationship, extending beyond trade disputes to concerns involving sovereignty. He cited Greenland as an example.
For the European Union, he said, the developments have produced “a very great shock.”
Although the United States remains a fundamental European partner, Aguiar Machado argued that Europe cannot allow itself to become entirely dependent upon that relationship. Instead, the EU must diversify its international relationships, develop other partnerships and strengthen its own capacity to defend its interests.
“We have to fight for our sovereignty,” he said, warning that doing so will require difficult political choices and substantial investments by European governments.
Placed beside one another, the remarks of Nunes and Aguiar Machado reveal something important about the present Atlantic moment.
One sees a Portuguese-American relationship strengthened by connectivity, technology, strategic geography and emerging economic opportunities. The other sees a broader European-American relationship that remains indispensable but has suffered a significant erosion of trust.
Those positions are not identical, and the conference did not require them to be. Their coexistence illustrates precisely why conversations about the future of the Atlantic matter.
Alliances are not static objects inherited permanently from history. They must continually negotiate new realities—changes of government, trade disputes, security threats, technological transformation, questions of sovereignty and changing national interests.
And within that evolving conversation sit the Azores.
The Islands Between America and Europe
For the archipelago, the essential question may be larger than whether relations between Washington and Lisbon are presently better or worse than at another moment. It is how the Azores can ensure that their undeniable strategic importance produces enduring benefits for the people who live there.
Lajes matters. Submarine cables matter. Air connections matter. Maritime security and technological innovation matter. But for the islands, the deeper challenge is transforming strategic relevance into opportunity: research, skilled employment, infrastructure, education, investment, technological capacity, and economic development that remain in the Azores long after an international conference has concluded or a geopolitical crisis has passed.
There is also something almost poetic about the transformation now underway. For centuries, the Azores helped connect continents because ships needed the Atlantic. Then aircraft made the islands strategically indispensable in another way. Generations of emigrants created human bridges between Portugal and America. Now digital information travels beneath Azorean waters while new technologies look simultaneously toward the deep ocean and the sky.
The instruments change. The geography remains.
And perhaps that was the most important truth underlying the different perspectives heard in Angra do Heroísmo. Nunes may see an American-Portuguese relationship stronger than ever. Aguiar Machado may see a European-American relationship in which trust has been damaged and dependence must be reconsidered. History will determine how durable either diagnosis proves to be.
But neither perspective diminishes the importance of the place from which both were expressed. Whenever Europe and America reconsider the distance between them, there remain nine islands in the middle of that conversation.
The Azores do not merely lie between two continents. Increasingly, they remind both continents how much still travels between them—and how much of the future of the Atlantic may depend upon what they choose to build together.
From a story published in Diário Insular, José Lourenço, director. Photo from DI.