The head of Europe’s biggest security forum said regional powers were “totally on the sidelines” of major discussions — but that it was their “own fault.”

A fter World War II, peace-loving Sweden began working on a nuclear bomb to stave off a feared Soviet invasion. But in the 1960s, the Scandinavian nation scrapped the program under pressure from the United States, whose nuclear arsenal has shielded Europe for about 80 years.

Politicians, diplomats, officials and royals have seen reputations tarnished, investigations launched and jobs lost after a trove of more than 3 million pages of Epstein-related documents released by the U.S. Justice Department revealed their ties to the American financier and convicted sex offender who died behind bars in 2019.

ANALYSIS: Europeans need to wean themselves off the US security system, and in Munich, Trump’s team will give them good reason to, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley

A wargame exercise demonstrated the limits of European decision-making at a time of U.S. pullback.

"We live in a new era in geopolitics," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Europe ahead of the Munich Security Conference.

The European Central Bank is leaving interest rates unchanged as the economy in the 21 countries that use the euro chugs past the disruption from U.S.

While the Epstein files have not directly led to any new investigations in the United States, several European nations are engulfed in scandal.

By John Irish and Sudip Kar-Gupta MUNICH, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Europe must turn its focus to long-term strategic thinking, including creating deep-strike capabilities and assessing how France's nuclear deterrent can fit into the bloc's future security architecture,