MUNICH, Germany: British leader Keir Starmer will tell the Munich Security Conference that Europe is \u201ca sleeping giant\u201d and must rely less on the United States for its defense, his office said Friday.<\/p>\n
In a speech on Saturday at the summit, the UK prime minister will argue that the continent must shift from overdependence on the United States toward a more European NATO.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m talking about a vision of European security and greater European autonomy that does not herald US withdrawal but answers the call for more burden sharing in full and remakes the ties that have served us so well,\u201d Starmer is expected to say.<\/p>\n
The gathering comes as European leaders remain concerned that a United States led by President Donald Trump can no longer be relied upon to be the guarantor of their security.<\/p>\n
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has frequently criticized European countries for not sharing enough of the burden on common defense, and raised questions about the future of NATO.<\/p>\n
European members of the transatlantic military alliance are rushing to build up their defenses in the face of an increasingly belligerent Moscow, whose war in Ukraine is set to enter its fifth year this month.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I see it \u2014 Europe is a sleeping giant. Our economies dwarf Russia\u2019s, 10 times over,\u201d Starmer will tell allies, according to excerpts released ahead of his address.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have huge defense capabilities. Yet, too often, all of this has added up to less than the sum of its parts,\u201d he was to say, citing fragmented planning and procurement problems.<\/p>\n
Late last year, talks on Britain joining the bloc\u2019s new 150-billion-euro (\u00a3130 billion) rearmament fund broke down, reportedly because London baulked at the price for entry.<\/p>\n
Downing Street said Starmer would use his speech to call for closer UK-EU defense cooperation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no British security without Europe, and no European security without Britain. That is the lesson of history \u2014 and it is today\u2019s reality too,\u201d Starmer was to say.<\/p>\n
The UK government announced on Friday that Britain will spend more than \u00a3400 million this financial year on hypersonic and long-range weapons, including through joint projects with France, Germany and Italy.<\/p>\n
Starmer, whose center-left Labour party is being squeezed on opposite ends of the political spectrum by the anti-immigrant Reform UK group and the more leftwing Greens, was to say leaders \u201cmust level with the public\u201d about the defense costs they face.<\/p>\n
He was due to hit out at \u201cpeddlers of easy answers on the extreme left and the extreme right,\u201d according to the excerpts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe future they offer is one of division and then capitulation. The lamps would go out across Europe once again. But we will not let that happen,\u201d Starmer was expected to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MUNICH, Germany: British leader Keir Starmer will tell the Munich Security Conference that Europe is \u201ca sleeping giant\u201d and must rely less on the United States for its defense, his office said Friday. In a speech on Saturday at the summit, the UK prime minister will argue that the continent must shift from overdependence on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":93732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93733,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93717\/revisions\/93733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}