YEREVAN: European leaders and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gather in Armenia on Monday as they seek to navigate a fraught geopolitical environment under an unpredictable White House. US President Donald Trump will loom large over the meeting of the European Political Community (EPC). It takes place in Yerevan, a crossroads between Russia and the Middle East &mdash; the two main issues on the agenda. &quot;Leaders from across the continent, with Canada as a guest, will discuss how to cooperate to strengthen security and collective resilience,&quot; European Council President Antonio Costa wrote on social media as he arrived in the Armenian capital Sunday. The Iran war, which has rattled the global economy by sending energy prices soaring, has deepened a rift in transatlantic ties. Following a spat between Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had criticized Washington&#39;s handling of the conflict, the United States announced it would withdraw 5,000 US troops from Germany. That has added to the doubts surrounding the US commitment to defend its European allies as Russian President Vladimir Putin&#39;s war in Ukraine grinds into a fifth year. Ukraine&#39;s President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO chief Mark Rutte will be present in Yerevan, while Merz will be represented by France&#39;s Emmanuel Macron. They will be joined by Canada&#39;s Carney &mdash; the first-ever non-European leader to join the EPC talks, in a sign of the ever-closer ties between Ottawa and Europe, ushered in by Trump. The summit, &quot;in a nutshell, will be an opportunity to emphasize that Europe&#39;s security is a 360-degree challenge,&quot; said a senior EU official. Like Europe, Canada&#39;s economy has been hurt by Trump&#39;s tariffs &mdash; but Carney has remained defiant, emerging as something of a figurehead for countries looking to stand up to the Republican president. In a stirring speech earlier this year, he urged middle powers to join forces in the face of a new global reality defined by great power competition and a &quot;fading&quot; rules‑based order. &quot;The EPC was initially perceived as an anti-Putin club,&quot; said Sebastien Maillard, a special adviser at the Jacques Delors Institute, a think tank. &quot;With the invitation to Canada, this initiative &mdash; which was initially driven by geography &mdash; is now taking on an anti-Trump slant.&quot; Moving to diversify away from its southern neighbor, Ottawa has joined the EU&#39;s defense financing scheme &mdash; the first non-European country to do so &mdash; and sought to increase cooperation on trade. &quot;Canada has a way of looking at the world and looking at ways to solve the challenges we have currently that Europe shares to a great extent,&quot; said the EU official, speaking on condition of anonymity. &#39;Reorientation&#39;&nbsp;A biannual political forum, the EPC was established on the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron in 2022 in response to the invasion of Ukraine. It brings together the members of the European Union and, this time, 21 other countries, from Albania to Britain. EPC summits do not normally produce concrete decisions but offer the opportunity for leaders to exchange in groups and bilaterally. Most leaders arrived in the Armenian capital for an informal dinner on Sunday. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was expected to join the meeting on Monday, Madrid said, after a technical problem with his plane forced him to make an emergency landing in Turkey and spend the night in Ankara. The Yerevan gathering is the first of its kind in the Caucasus and comes as Armenia fosters closer ties with Europe while seeking to cautiously loosen itself from Russia&#39;s grasp. It will be followed on Tuesday by an EU-Armenia summit with the bloc&#39;s chief officials, Costa and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who described it as a &quot;major milestone&quot; in the country&#39;s rapprochement with Europe. Relations between Yerevan and its traditional ally Moscow have become strained in recent years, in part because Russian peacekeepers failed to intervene during military conflicts with neighboring Azerbaijan. Under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia has formally pursued a strategy of what he calls &quot;diversification,&quot; in which the landlocked country pursues ties with both Russia and the West. Costa says the bloc looks forward to &quot;deepening this relationship&quot; with the country of three million, which signed a comprehensive partnership agreement with the EU in 2017 and last year declared its intention to apply for membership. In April, the EU established a mission to help the former Soviet nation tackle foreign interference, with Russia suspected of a disinformation push ahead of the June elections. Putin has declared himself &quot;completely calm&quot; about Armenia&#39;s overtures to Europe &mdash; while also warning that belonging to both the EU and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union was &quot;simply impossible.&quot;

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US President Donald Trump will loom large over the meeting of the European Political Community; The Iran war, which has rattled the global economy by sending energy prices soaring, has deepened a rift in transatlantic ties.

Europe, Canada leaders hold Yerevan talks in Trump's shadow

MUNICH: European leaders, worried about threats from a nuclear-armed <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/nato-chief-in-kyiv-on-surprise-visit-hours-after-russian-attack" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">Russia</a> and doubts about the future of US security commitments, are increasingly debating whether to bolster nuclear arsenals on the continent. While the United States and Russia have thousands of nuclear warheads each, in Europe only France and Britain have atomic weapons, with the combined total in the hundreds. US President Donald Trump&#39;s comments about NATO and his transactional approach to foreign relations have European allies questioning whether they can risk relying on US protection. &quot;Europeans can no longer outsource their thinking about nuclear deterrence to the United States,&quot; an expert group warned in a report published for the <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/field-marshal-asim-munir-meets-us-state-secretary-on-munich-security-conference-sidelines" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">Munich Security Conference</a>. It called on Europe to &quot;urgently confront a new nuclear reality&quot; in the face of &quot;Russia&#39;s nuclear-backed revisionism&quot;. Speaking at the MSC, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was already holding &quot;confidential talks with the French president about European nuclear deterrence&quot;. Britain&#39;s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK&#39;s nuclear deterrent already protected fellow NATO members but stressed he was &quot;enhancing our nuclear cooperation with France&quot;. Starmer said &quot;any adversary must know that in a crisis they could be confronted by our combined strength&quot; alongside France. US &#39;ultimate guarantor&#39; NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte insisted that &quot;nobody&quot; was considering fully replacing the American nuclear umbrella, which has <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/keep-dreaming-nato-chief-says-europe-cant-defend-itself-without-us" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">shielded Europ</a>e&#39;s NATO countries for decades. &quot;I think every discussion in Europe making sure that collectively the nuclear deterrence is even stronger, fine,&quot; Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, told journalists. &quot;But nobody is arguing in Europe to do this as a sort of replacement of the nuclear umbrella of the United States. &quot;Everybody realizes that is the ultimate guarantor &ndash; and all these other discussions are in addition.&quot; US Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby said that Trump &quot;has made clear the US extended nuclear deterrent continues to apply here&quot; in Europe. He said there is US &quot;receptivity to a greater European contribution to ... the NATO deterrent&quot; &ndash; but that conversations need to be &quot;very sober&quot; and &quot;deliberate&quot; because of concerns about nuclear proliferation and instability. No good options Discussion of nuclear armament has long been viewed as taboo in many other European countries &ndash; but Russian aggression and worries about US commitment have forced the issue into mainstream European politics. Many European officials are convinced that Moscow&#39;s territorial ambitions will not be confined to Ukraine, and that other European countries &ndash; including even NATO members &ndash; could face some sort of attack. The MSC report laid out five nuclear options for Europe, while cautioning that none were good. There was &quot;no low-cost or risk-free way out of Europe&#39;s nuclear predicament&quot;, they warned. &quot;The era in which Europe could afford strategic complacency has ended,&quot; wrote the authors, calling on European policymakers &quot;to confront the role of nuclear weapons in the defense of the continent directly and without delay &ndash; and to invest the resources needed to do so competently&quot;. It listed five options: Continue to rely on American deterrence; strengthen the role of <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/uk-says-conducted-joint-strike-with-france-on-is-site-near-palmyra" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">British and French</a> nuclear weapons in a European deterrent; jointly develop European nuclear weapons as a deterrent; increase the number of European countries with their own nuclear arsenals; or expand European conventional military power to present a more intimidating non-nuclear deterrent. Sticking with the status quo, and relying on America&#39;s unmatched military might, remained &quot;the most credible and feasible option&quot; in the short term, they argued. &#39;We need action&#39; Very few currently believe Europeans can assume full responsibility for deterrence in the short term. &quot;If there&#39;s going to be some kind of bigger European investments in France or the UK&#39;s nuclear deterrence, that&#39;s only a good thing,&quot; Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen recently told AFP. But he quickly added: &quot;If you&#39;re talking about to compensate <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/meta-partners-with-us-nuclear-companies-to-power-ai-data-centers" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">US nuclear</a> deterrence, that&#39;s not realistic at this point.&quot; Experts nevertheless welcomed the increasingly serious political debate on an issue that has long worried military planners. &quot;That&#39;s very positive, but now we need action,&quot; Heloise Fayet of the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), a contributor to the MSC report, told AFP. The report noted that both France and Britain would face a range of challenges in growing their arsenals and extending nuclear protection across Europe &ndash; from hefty costs to tricky questions about who holds final authority to launch the warheads. French President Emmanuel Macron, who has previously raised the possibility of extending France&#39;s nuclear umbrella across Europe, is scheduled to deliver a major speech on French nuclear doctrine at the end of February. Macron said in Munich he was considering a doctrine that could include &quot;special cooperation, joint exercises, and shared security interests with certain key countries&quot;.

Polish PM Donald Tusk, Bavarian State Premier Markus Soeder, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Munich Security Conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger give a press statement at the Munich Residence palace, prior to the traditional dinner on the oc

European leaders at the Munich Security Conference debated strengthening the continent’s nuclear deterrence amid concerns over Russia’s aggression and uncertainty about long-term US security commitments to NATO allies.

Articles tagged with "US Europe relations"

Europe, Canada leaders hold Yerevan talks in Trump's shadow

European debate over nuclear weapons gains pace at Munich Security Conference