At the May 2026 European Political Community (EPC) summit in Yerevan, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stated that the international order will be “rebuilt out of Europe”, rather than the United States. While he stopped short of calling the European Union (EU) the “next superpower”, he framed Europe as the new centre of global leadership and the primary architect of a “new world order” following a perceived deterioration and shift in American influence.
To navigate this shift to a new global order, Carney proposes a “mini-lateralism” doctrine, urging the nations he deems to be middle powers like Canada and Australia to align with the EU to form a stabilizing bloc against great power militarism and aggression. Ultimately, this approach rejects modern isolationism and calls on nations to resist a “brutal” and transactional global environment.
Yet, the European Union’s relative decline in global economic influence coupled with its incessant quest for “strategic autonomy” make its foreign policy choices increasingly consequential for Canada and the world. Without significant reform, the EU faces a long-term trajectory of political erosion, weakened cohesion, and the possibility that some member states become unreliable partners due to internal instability.
These weaknesses are most visible in the EU’s management of relations with the United States and Russia. Both relationships highlight the limits of conventional deterrence and the growing need for competitive strategies based on strengthening state sovereignty through internal resilience. The fate of the EU — and whether it succeeds in becoming a geopolitical actor or not — carries important implications for Canada, which is eying a similar transformation
The EU’s debate over building sovereignty reflects a new reality: Cold War assumptions no longer hold in a multipolar world. While the EU claims it is developing “strategic sovereignty”, traditional deterrence — based on the Cold War’s binary military threats — is losing its efficacy. Instead, the EU must now confront continuous, multi-dimensional competition across economic, technological, and security sectors, where conventional military deterrence strategies fall short.
Traditional deterrence strategies, such as “punishment”, raise the costs of revisionist actions through retaliatory measures like economic sanctions, military strikes, and lawfare. Alternatively, deterrence by “denial” aims to block an adversary’s success using defence systems, cybersecurity, and border controls. Both approaches traditionally rely on three pillars: clear attribution, mutually understood thresholds, and credible escalation.
However, these conditions are increasingly absent in today’s grey-zone environment. Punishment risks broader escalation, while denial falls short when threats span multiple domains simultaneously. Consequently, while both strategies remain necessary, neither is sufficient—especially when alliances are fragile and escalation control is deeply uncertain.
For example, cyber and infrastructure threats create a particular dilemma for the EU. While the Union has strengthened its cyber resilience, critical infrastructure protection, and crisis-response mechanisms, many hostile activities still fall below the threshold that would clearly justify a collective defence response. This is especially problematic when attacks are cumulative, deniable, or designed to disrupt energy systems, transport networks, communications, financial services, or public administration without producing obvious kinetic destruction. As a result, the EU faces the challenge of responding to coercive activity that can still undermine security, economic stability, and public confidence while remaining deliberately ambiguous in legal and political terms.
In this context, deterrence by resilience has emerged as a more viable and durable strategic logic. Rather than attempting to prevent, block, or punish every hostile act, resilience focuses on limiting the effects of those actions by strengthening internal cohesion, institutional robustness, and adaptive capacity. Deterrence through resilience shifts the focus from punishing aggression to reducing an adversary’s gains from coercion.
Deterrence through resilience shifts the focus from punishing aggression to reducing an adversary’s gains from coercion.
Some individual EU member states exemplify this strategy in several ways across specific sectors. For example, Estonia’s post-2007 cyber reforms — following large-scale Russian cyberattacks — led to the creation of distributed data systems, redundancy in critical infrastructure, and a cyber reserve force, allowing the state to maintain functionality even under sustained digital pressure. Similarly, Finland’s comprehensive security model integrates civilian preparedness, supply stockpiles, and decentralized governance, enabling continuity during crises.
In grey zone conflicts — where hostile actions are ambiguous, incremental, and span cyber, economic, informational, political, and military domains — resilience is essential because it limits an attacker’s ability to create disruption, dependency, panic, or political division. A resilient state or alliance can absorb shocks, restore critical services quickly, expose hostile activity, maintain public trust, and continue functioning under pressure.
Still, proposals to strengthen deterrence through resilience must also be assessed against the failures of traditional deterrence mechanisms.
The limits of traditional deterrence are especially clear in the EU’s dependence on the United States. Europe’s reliance on U.S military systems is not abstract, but an operational reality. The Patriot air-defence system ties missile defence to U.S-controlled supply chains, interceptor production, maintenance, upgrades, and software support. Because Patriot is one of the few systems proven against advanced ballistic missiles, it remains central to Ukraine’s defence and NATO’s eastern flank. Recent shortages show that Europe cannot quickly replace U.S.-made interceptors, even though SAMP/T, IRIS-T SLM, and NASAMS cover parts of the air-defence spectrum.
This creates a deterrence vulnerability, because denial depends not only on deploying systems but also on sustaining them in wartime. Limited interceptor stocks, slow replenishment, and U.S.-controlled upgrades make Europe’s response to Russian missile waves conditional on American political will and production priorities. Given how the Ukraine war is a grey-zone conflict, Russia has regularly exploited areas where European defence is tactically strong but logistically fragile, using missile threats, cyber-attacks, sabotage, and pressure on Ukraine to expose weaknesses in ammunition depth, air-defence coverage, and industrial resilience.
The Ukraine war exposed Europe’s over-reliance on Washington, as European states faced delays in acquiring interceptors because production and allocation remained under U.S control. Similar constraints apply to platforms such as the F-35 fighter jet, which depend on U.S. logistics networks and data systems, limiting independent operational use.
The war in Ukraine further demonstrates the operational limits of punishment and denial, while highlighting the consequences of structural dependence. European states committed over €100 billion in military and financial assistance to Kiev — yet a significant portion of advanced weaponry, such as HIMARS systems to air defence platforms, originated from the United States.
Meanwhile, European defence production has struggled to meet demand. The Union’s plan to deliver one million artillery shells to Ukraine by 2025 fell short due to limited industrial capacity and supply chain bottlenecks. This gap underscores a critical point: deterrence by denial cannot function effectively when the means of denial — industrial production, logistics, and supply — are insufficient or externally dependent. The result is a prolonged conflict in which Europe bears escalating costs without achieving decisive leverage, reinforcing the perception of strategic dependence.
This strategic problem is deepened by the EU’s failure to fully recognize the economic and political trade-offs of its severe dependence on the United States. As Europe prioritizes Ukraine, it faces pressure to compromise core principles of the European project, including economic openness, political pluralism, free speech, and national sovereignty. Fiscal diversion toward war support, rising energy costs, and inflation have intensified domestic pressures, while security and disinformation measures in some member states have raised concerns over media freedom and public dissent.
Energy security during the 2026 Iran war further illustrates the problems of systemic vulnerability. Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of global oil supply passes, triggered global price spikes above 30%. European states that had shifted from Russian pipeline gas to U.S. LNG faced sharply higher costs, with industrial gas prices in Germany and Italy remaining two to three times above pre-2022 levels. This produced direct economic consequences, including the German-headquartered BASF — the world’s largest chemical producer — scaling back European operations due to rising energy costs.
At the same time, LNG imports require long-term contracts tied to U.S. export capacity, limiting flexibility and exposing European economies to U.S domestic policy shifts, including export approvals and pricing structures. These dynamics reveal how energy dependence can be weaponized indirectly. Traditional deterrence offers little protection against such pressures because there is no discrete act to punish or block. By contrast, resilience would require concrete measures such as strategic reserves, diversified energy supply (including nuclear and renewables), and domestic production capacity — steps that reduce exposure to external shocks rather than attempting to prevent them.
Europe’s vulnerabilities and over-dependence on Washington are reinforced by legal instruments such as CAATSA, which pushed European firms to abandon energy and infrastructure projects involving sanctioned countries, even when those projects aligned with European economic interests. Nord Stream 2’s cancellation under U.S. pressure and sanctions threats shows how external regulatory power can override domestic decision-making. In such cases, punishment-based deterrence fails, because Europe cannot credibly retaliate against a partner it depends on, while denial is undermined by embedded technological and logistical dependencies.
What’s more, sanctions against Russia have produced mixed results. While they constrained parts of the Russian economy, they also triggered adaptation: Moscow redirected trade, deepened ties with non-Western partners, expanded alternative financial channels, and built sanctions-circumvention networks. Russian counter-measures, therefore, demonstrate the limits of punishment-based deterrence in protracted, grey-zone conflicts: sanctions imposed costs but did not quickly change Russian strategic behaviour.
Russia also shifted energy exports from Europe to new buyers like China and India. This has reduced the immediate coercive effect of Western pressure, even though Russia often sells at discounts and faces longer routes, opaque intermediaries, and higher transaction costs. The rise of Russia’s “shadow fleet” reflects this adaptation, using obscure ownership, flags of convenience, ship-to-ship transfers, location-data manipulation, and non-Western insurance to sustain oil exports after 2022 in the face of sanctions and price caps.
Europe’s diplomatic and ontological insecurity is most evident in its relationship with Russia. Despite possessing superior economic and conventional military capacity, the EU still treats Russia as an existential threat while relying heavily on U.S. diplomatic and strategic direction. Limited and politically constrained engagement with Moscow leaves Europe dependent on Washington to define both escalation and negotiation frameworks.
In short, the American shadow deters Europe from developing and demonstrating independent leverage. This weakens Europe’s negotiating position, ultimately undermining both its deterrence credibility and strategic autonomy.
While both Canada and the EU are grappling with heavy dependencies on Washington, Canada’s new agenda under Carney and the EU’s professed pursuit of strategic autonomy reveal two different ways of managing that reality.
The Canadian strategy is an exercise in mitigating “engineered vulnerabilities” within an asymmetric partnership. In some ways Canada is uniquely susceptible to U.S. “grey zone” tactics: economic and political pressures that fall just short of conflict, which can hollow out Canadian autonomy from the inside.
Ottawa’s response underscores a “hedgehog strategy”: building internal resilience and deepening ties with the EU to make it harder for the U.S. to exert unilateral pressure. Conversely, the EU’s stated strategy focuses on reclaiming collective power to act independently of any single hegemon. While Brussels has paradoxically outsourced its most critical decisions to Washington and remains dependent on the U.S. for its security umbrella and financial infrastructure, its strategy reflects a desire to transform itself from a “market power” into a “geopolitical actor”.
Unlike Canada, which focuses on resisting a single hegemonic neighbor, the EU must balance its dependencies among the U.S, China, and Russia — a task complicated by significant variation in its member states’ national strategies. These range from France’s push for “European-first” defence independence and Germany’s industrial rearmament to the Scandinavian nations’ “total defence” model. Meanwhile, Southern states like Italy and Spain prioritize economic and maritime resilience. Ultimately, differing tolerance for U.S. dependence hinders a unified approach.
To make its deterrence more forward-looking and resilient against grey-zone threats, the EU must shift from reactive crisis response to permanent preparedness. Since 2022, it has advanced this goal through frameworks like the NIS2 Directive, the Critical Entities Resilience Directive, the Cyber Resilience Act, the Cyber Solidarity Act, the EU-NATO Task Force on Critical Infrastructure, and the European defence Industrial Strategy.
The next step is translating these frameworks into operational capacity. This requires EU-wide stress tests, cross-border cyber hubs, rapid-response teams, mandatory continuity plans for critical firms, strategic reserves, and long-term joint procurement contracts to expand European defence production.
The EU’s 2025 Preparedness Union Strategy has already made strides in this direction by adopting an all-hazards approach and strengthening civilian-military readiness. Complementing this, the Cyber Solidarity Act bolsters cross-border cyber coordination and information sharing. In the defence-industrial sphere, the European defence Industrial Strategy aims to reduce reliance on fragmented procurement and external suppliers by encouraging joint purchasing, investment in European production, and more secure supply chains.
Ultimately, effective EU statecraft depends on institutionalizing resilience before the next crisis hits. This requires identifying vulnerabilities early, coordinating public-private action, and integrating EU-NATO planning. By doing so, the EU can ensure that grey-zone pressure cannot paralyze European decision-making or divide its member states.
Today, Canada, the European Union, and numerous other traditional U.S. partners are grappling with Washington’s unilateralism and coercive diplomacy. In a multipolar world characterized by fraying alliances and eroding trust, structural resilience offers a viable path forward despite pervasive uncertainty and strategic constraints. In principle, the pursuit of resilience enhances state autonomy by reducing domestic vulnerabilities, mitigating the impact of external coercion, and enabling states to maintain core functions under sustained pressure.
Deterrence through resilience ultimately depends on effective statecraft and a whole-of-society approach to grey-zone conflict. States must synchronize efforts across government, industry, civil society, and alliance networks to identify vulnerabilities, build redundant infrastructure, secure critical supply chains, improve public communication, share intelligence, and deepen public-private trust. Absent this high-level coordination, resilience remains fragmented and reactive — leaving critical gaps between institutions, key sectors, and allies for adversaries to exploit.
Consequently, strategic autonomy should not be viewed as complete autarky or the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Rather, it is about ensuring the continuity of vital state operations under adverse conditions. Achieving this requires targeted, concrete investments: expanding domestic defence production; building energy redundancy via LNG terminals, renewables, and nuclear power; and streamlining institutional coordination to eliminate decision-making delays during a crisis. It also demands leadership capable of recognizing the long-term risks of dependence and acting before a crisis exposes them.
The central lesson is clear: states that rely primarily on external guarantees for punishment or denial risk losing their capacity to act independently. Conversely, those that invest in economic, institutional, and social resilience are far better positioned to absorb shocks, sustain policy choices, and maintain sovereignty in an increasingly competitive, multi-nodal international system.
The Western powers have failed to effectively manage the increasing threat of proliferation in the Middle East. While the international community is concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, Saudi Arabia has moved forward with developing its own nuclear program, and independent studies show that Israel has longed possessed dozens of nuclear warheads. The former is a member of the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), while the latter has refused to sign the international agreement.
On Middle East policy, the Biden campaign had staunchly criticized the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal and it has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier since assuming office in January 2021. However, serious obstacles remain for responsible actors in expanding non-proliferation efforts toward a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
This panel will discuss how Western powers and multilateral institutions, such as the IAEA, can play a more effective role in managing non-proliferation efforts in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Peggy Mason: Canada’s former Ambassador to the UN for Disarmament
– Mark Fitzpatrick: Associate Fellow & Former Executive Director, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
– Ali Vaez: Iran Project Director, International Crisis Group
– Negar Mortazavi: Journalist and Political Analyst, Host of Iran Podcast
– David Albright: Founder and President of the Institute for Science and International Security
Closing (5:45 PM – 6:00 PM ET)
What is the current economic landscape in the Middle East? While global foreign direct investment is expected to fall drastically in the post-COVID era, the World Bank reported a 5% contraction in the economic output of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries in 2020 due to the pandemic. While oil prices are expected to rebound with normalization in demand, political instability, regional and geopolitical tensions, domestic corruption, and a volatile regulatory and legal environment all threaten economic recovery in the Middle East. What is the prospect for economic growth and development in the region post-pandemic, and how could MENA nations promote sustainable growth and regional trade moving forward?
At the same time, Middle Eastern diaspora communities have become financially successful and can help promote trade between North America and the region. In this respect, the diaspora can become vital intermediaries for advancing U.S. and Canada’s business interests abroad. Promoting business diplomacy can both benefit the MENA region and be an effective and positive way to advance engagement and achieve foreign policy goals of the North Atlantic.
This panel will investigate the trade and investment opportunities in the Middle East, discuss how facilitating economic engagement with the region can benefit Canadian and American national interests, and explore relevant policy prescriptions.
Panelists:
– Hon. Sergio Marchi: Canada’s Former Minister of International Trade
– Scott Jolliffe: Chairperson, Canada Arab Business Council
– Esfandyar Batmanghelidj: Founder and Publisher of Bourse & Bazaar
– Nizar Ghanem: Director of Research and Co-founder at Triangle
– Nicki Siamaki: Researcher at Control Risks
The Middle East continues to grapple with violence and instability, particularly in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Fueled by government incompetence and foreign interventions, terrorist insurgencies have imposed severe humanitarian and economic costs on the region. Meanwhile, regional actors have engaged in an unprecedented pursuit of arms accumulation. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have imported billions of both Western and Russian-made weapons and funded militant groups across the region, intending to contain their regional adversaries, particularly Iran. Tehran has also provided sophisticated weaponry to various militia groups across the region to strengthen its geopolitical position against Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel.
On the other hand, with international terrorist networks and intense regional rivalry in the Middle East, it is impractical to discuss peace and security without addressing terrorism and the arms race in the region. This panel will primarily discuss the implications of the ongoing arms race in the region and the role of Western powers and multilateral organizations in facilitating trust-building security arrangements among regional stakeholders to limit the proliferation of arms across the Middle East.
Panelists:
Luciano Zaccara: Assistant Professor, Qatar University
Dania Thafer: Executive Director, Gulf International Forum
Kayhan Barzegar: Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Science and Research Branch of Azad University
Barbara Slavin: Director of Iran Initiative, Atlantic Council
Sanam Shantyaei: Senior Journalist at France24 & host of Middle East Matters
The emerging regional order in West Asia will have wide-ranging implications for global security. The Biden administration has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier, an initiative staunchly opposed by Israel, while also taking a harder line on Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen. Meanwhile, key regional actors, including Qatar, Iraq, and Oman, have engaged in backchannel efforts to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia to the negotiating table. From a broader geopolitical perspective, with the need to secure its energy imports, China is also expected to increase its footprint in the region and influence the mentioned challenges.
In this evolving landscape, Western powers will be compelled to redefine their strategic priorities and adjust their policies with the new realities in the region. In this panel, we will discuss how the West, including the United States and its allies, can utilize multilateral diplomacy with its adversaries to prevent military escalation in the region. Most importantly, the panel will discuss if a multilateral security dialogue in the Persian Gulf region, proposed by some regional actors, can help reduce tensions among regional foes and produce sustainable peace and development for the region.
Panelists:
– Abdullah Baabood: Academic Researcher and Former Director of the Centre for Gulf Studies, Qatar University
– Trita Parsi: Executive Vice-President, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
– Ebtesam Al-Ketbi: President, Emirates Policy Centre
– Jon Allen: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Israel
– Elizabeth Hagedorn: Washington correspondent for Al-Monitor
Military interventions, political and economic instabilities, and civil unrest in the Middle East have led to a global refugee crisis with an increasing wave of refugees and asylum seekers to Europe and Canada. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has, in myriad ways, exacerbated and contributed to the ongoing security threats and destabilization of the region.
While these challenges pose serious risks to Canadian security, Ottawa will also have the opportunity to limit such risks and prevent a spillover effect vis-à-vis effective humanitarian initiatives in the region. In this panel, we will primarily investigate Canada’s Middle East Strategy’s degree of success in providing humanitarian aid to the region. Secondly, the panel will discuss what programs and initiatives Canada can introduce to further build on the renewed strategy. and more specifically, how Canada can utilize its policy instruments to more effectively deal with the increasing influx of refugees from the Middle East.
Panelists:
Erica Di Ruggiero: Director of Centre for Global Health, University of Toronto
Reyhana Patel: Head of Communications & Government Relations, Islamic Relief Canada
Amir Barmaki: Former Head of UN OCHA in Iran
Catherine Gribbin: Senior Legal Advisor for International and Humanitarian Law, Canadian Red Cross
In 2016, Canada launched an ambitious five-year “Middle East Engagement Strategy” (2016-2021), committing to investing CA$3.5 billion over five years to help establish the necessary conditions for security and stability, alleviate human suffering and enable stabilization programs in the region. In the latest development, during the meeting of the Global Coalition against ISIS, Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau announced more than $43.6 million in Peace and Stabilization Operations Program funding for 11 projects in Syria and Iraq.
With Canada’s Middle East Engagement Strategy expiring this year, it is time to examine and evaluate this massive investment in the Middle East region in the past five years. More importantly, the panel will discuss a principled and strategic roadmap for the future of Canada’s short-term and long-term engagement in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Ferry de Kerckhove: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Egypt
– Dennis Horak: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
– Chris Kilford: Former Canadian Defence Attaché in Turkey, member of the national board of the Canadian International Council (CIC)
– David Dewitt: University Professor Emeritus, York University
While the United States continues to pull back from certain regional conflicts, reflected by the Biden administration’s decision to halt American backing for Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen and the expected withdrawal from Afghanistan, US troops continue to be stationed across the region. Meanwhile, Russia and China have significantly maintained and even expanded their regional activities. On one hand, the Kremlin has maintained its military presence in Syria, and on the other hand, China has signed an unprecedented 25-year strategic agreement with Iran.
As the global power structure continues to shift, it is essential to analyze the future of the US regional presence under the Biden administration, explore the emerging global rivalry with Russia and China, and at last, investigate the implications of such competition for peace and security in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Dmitri Trenin: Director of Carnegie Moscow Center
– Joost R. Hiltermann: Director of MENA Programme, International Crisis Group
– Roxane Farmanfarmaian: Affiliated Lecturer in International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa, University of Cambridge
– Andrew A. Michta: Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at Marshall Center
– Kelley Vlahos: Senior Advisor, Quincy Institute
The security architecture of the Middle East has undergone rapid transformations in an exceptionally short period. Notable developments include the United States gradual withdrawal from the region, rapprochement between Israel and some GCC states through the Abraham Accords and the rise of Chinese and Russian regional engagement.
With these new trends in the Middle East, it is timely to investigate the security implications of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy. In this respect, we will discuss the Biden team’s new approach vis-à-vis Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The panel will also discuss the role of other major powers, including China and Russia in shaping this new security environment in the region, and how the Biden administration will respond to these powers’ increasing regional presence.
Panelists:
– Sanam Vakil: Deputy Director of MENA Programme at Chatham House
– Denise Natali: Acting Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies & Director of the Center for Strategic Research, National Defense University
– Hassan Ahmadian: Professor of the Middle East and North Africa Studies, University of Tehran
– Abdulaziz Sagar: Chairman, Gulf Research Center
– Andrew Parasiliti: President, Al-Monitor
