ATHENS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday banded US President Donald Trump together with Russia\u2019s Vladmir Putin and China\u2019s Xi Jinping as world leaders who are \u201cdead against\u201d Europe.<\/p>\n
Macron\u2019s bromance with the mercurial US leader has cooled in recent months, and the White House has made no secret of its anger at Europe\u2019s refusal to take part in the war with Iran.<\/p>\n
During a visit to Athens, Macron, who will leave office next year after completing two terms, urged Europe to rise up and use its influence in the world \u2014 a consistent theme of his presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should not underestimate that this is a unique moment where a US president, a Russian president, a Chinese president are dead against the Europeans,\u201d Macron said in English during a discussion with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this is the right moment for us to wake up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Macron has long urged Europe to boost its own security rather than relying on the United States, and once again on Friday called for a strengthening of the European part of NATO.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is now a doubt on Article 5,\u201d he said, referring to NATO\u2019s founding principle of mutual defense under which members come to one another\u2019s aid if they are attacked.<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on his willingness to respect Article 5, and railed against NATO for failing to help the US in its war on Iran.<\/p>\n
This doubt is \u201cde facto weakening the strength of the alliance,\u201d Macron said.<\/p>\n
The Spanish and Italian prime ministers were forced to defend their countries\u2019 contributions to NATO on Friday after a Reuters news agency report quoted a US official saying the administration was now looking at ways to punish allies who sat out the war on Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ATHENS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday banded US President Donald Trump together with Russia\u2019s Vladmir Putin and China\u2019s Xi Jinping as world leaders who are \u201cdead against\u201d Europe. Macron\u2019s bromance with the mercurial US leader has cooled in recent months, and the White House has made no secret of its anger at Europe\u2019s refusal …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":96821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96806","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\/96806","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=96806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96823,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96806\/revisions\/96823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}