DEAUVILLE, France - More than 50 years after the beaches of Normandy were stormed in the name of global security, they're being invaded for a similar cause this week.
But this time, the actual fighting is taking place far away. The leaders of the G8 are just using the scenic French coast as a place to talk about it.
On Thursday and Friday the leaders of Britain, the United States, Germany, Russia, Italy, Japan, Canada and France are convening for their annual discussion of world affairs.
Two of the six working sessions or meals will be devoted to the uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, the remaining will touch on issues such as climate change, nuclear safety and the Internet.
"Over the past several years, we have witnessed the need for the international architecture to be flexible and adaptive in order to deal with crises," Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote in a recent G8 publication by the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
"In 2011, we must continue to seek credible solutions to global problems -- with innovation, creativity and concrete results."
As host of this year's G8 and G20 summits, France has branded the meetings with the theme of "new world, new ideas."
The former half is certainly true.
When world leaders last met outside Toronto last summer, the uprisings that have thrown the Middle East and North Africa into turmoil were barely a bubble. The West had its eye on getting out of the conflict in Afghanistan; the thought they'd be back in one in Libya was unimaginable. G8 member nation Japan also hadn't yet been rocked by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe that killed thousands.
But the scope of new ideas produced by the summit for dealing with the new world order remains to be seen.
The leaders will greet counterparts from Tunisia, Egypt and the head of the Arab League to hash out what some are calling a new Marshall Plan for these countries, similar to the massive U.S. aid to Europe after the Second World War that helped the continent rebuild and stave off communism.
While perhaps more massive in scope, any agreement is likely to follow the precedents set by the last two summits of the G8 by pinpointing a specific global issue and attempting to raise money for the cause.
In 2009, it was food security while in 2010, it was the Canadian-led Muskoka Initiative on maternal and child health.
A senior Canadian government official, speaking on background ahead of the meetings, said the government has been asked to raise the issue of human rights and religious freedoms in the discussions on how the G8 can help with the transformation happening in the Arab world.
"We will provide assistance but they have to commit to a certain number of things. One thing is elections, freedom of religion, freedom of religious practice," said the official.
"But an element we also need to remind people of -- these countries will come to the table with their own identification of their own needs. They need to own that transformation. There is no room for G8 to go in and impose a certain number of conditions."
But discussions are also likely to be strained by tensions over NATO's plan for Libya. There appears to be no exit strategy, and efforts to oust entrenched leader Moammar Gadhafi remain elusive.
Harper may take the opportunity to pull aside the other G8 leaders involved in the NATO effort to discuss next steps.
How much sway Canada has in the debate about the Middle East is unclear.
Some critics of Canada's foreign policy suggest its public and staunch support of the state of Israel rules out any role as an arbiter in the troubled region.
While the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been dwarfed by the other fights in the region lately, it's jumped back into the international spotlight after U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's disagreement over the last few days about the starting point for peace treaty negotiations.
But foreign affairs officials say Canada has done enough good work in the region overall that it does have a role to play in soothing current tensions.
"Canada's robust foreign policy brings a strong rather than timid voice to the table for both democratic and economic reform in those countries," said Dimitri Soudas, the chief spokesman for the prime minister.
"You need to voice clearly and strongly what your views are rather than being timid about it. and that's what Canada's foreign policy is all about - leading the pack rather than following the pack."
In Deauville, the first working lunch will focus on the global economy. Harper is expected to speak about the challenges posed by instability in Europe's finances.
The prime minister comes into the meetings still fresh from his majority victory on May 2 and will be accompanied by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird making his debut on the world stage.
For Harper, the meetings are also about following up on the groundwork he laid in hosting the G8 last summer.
The centrepiece of that meeting, the Muskoka Initiative, was a five-year, $5-billion pledge from G8 nations to improve maternal, newborn and child health.
Canada promised $1.1 billion and officials said about half of that has already been allocated.
