Pete Hegseth // Photo: PAP/EPA/OLIVIER HOSLET
“Europe should be the first to provide its conventional defense,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Saturday upon his arrival in France.
The U.S. defense chief flew to Europe to participate in events marking the 82nd anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944.
During the meeting, which was attended by French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin, Pete Hegseth called on “allies, including France, to take this reality seriously and demonstrate it with concrete steps.”
During a trip to Singapore in late May, the Pentagon chief had already rebuked the Europeans for ignoring calls to strengthen their own defenses for “too long.” Catherine Vautrin said then that France was in the process of “rearmament.
Hegseth’s current statements came against the backdrop of the announced U.S. reduction of the American contingent deployed in Europe, as well as on the eve of the NATO summit to be held in July in the Turkish capital Ankara.
Official commemorations of the landing began at 1 p.m. in Ouistreham, Normandy. French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu presented diplomas and green berets to the Marines, the heirs of 177 Frenchmen who were part of Kieffer’s Division.
