Heads of state, foreign ministers, military officers, intelligence officials, journalists, and more gathered over February 13-15 at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich for the 62nd annual meeting of the Munich Security Conference (MSC). Perhaps few Americans paid much attention to the MSC until last year’s meeting, where Vice President J.D. Vance delivered an address that unsettled his European audience. Vance’s speech was interpreted as a scolding of our European allies for reasons of censorship, suppression of dissent, and the undermining of democratic norms. Vance’s argument was that these internal problems, not external threats such as China and Russia, were the most serious to European civilization.
Two developments in the last twelve months, from the European perspective, have made matters worse. The first is the Greenland episode, which continues to have Europe’s leaders on edge. The second is the December publication of President Trump’s National Security Strategy. That document inter alia portrays Europe as standing before the possibility of “civilizational erasure” (IV.2.C.), based on how it has handled issues of immigration, social cohesion and national identity, economics and trade, and security.
These developments, then, set the stage for this year’s MSC, one of the more strategic convenings in its six-decade-plus history. And mirroring the present state of European-American relations was the conference-opening report titled “Under Destruction.” Benedikt Franke, the MSC’s CEO, in conversation with Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council and an MSC attendee, expressed deep concern that “there is insufficient awareness in certain political circles in the U.S. of just how much trust was destroyed” in recent months.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz opened the conference by addressing the mounting distrust between Europe and the U.S., calling for partnership based on shared interests and mutual respect. Despite the “deep rift” between the U.S. and Europe, Merz emphasized that “[o]n both sides of the Atlantic, we need to come to the conclusion that we are stronger together.” Merz went on to announce an end to Europe’s “vacation from world history.” A change of mindset is all the more imperative, he insisted, because of a simple fact: “The international order, which was based on rights and rules, no longer exists,” as evidenced by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Herewith “a new phase of open wars and conflicts has begun.” At bottom, Merz reminded his audience, autocracies may have followers, but democracies have partners and allies.
In her keynote address, Kaja Kallas, former Estonian prime minister and presently the EU’s foreign policy chief, challenged Europe to assume greater responsibility for its own security. Understandably, coming from one of the Baltic states, which have known Soviet oppression, Kallas believes that European nations must fully support Ukraine inasmuch as Russia threatens all of Europe, not just Ukraine. In her address, however, she rejected the observation made by the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy. “Contrary to what some may say,” she remarked, “woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilisational erasure.”
Perhaps the most surprising address at the conference was that of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. While Vance seemed to scold Europe last year in his Munich address, Rubio reaffirmed and emphasized America’s reverence for the ‘old continent.’ In assessing Rubio’s speech, Matthew Kroenig, Vice President and Senior Director at the Atlantic Council, stated that Rubio “did not repudiate anything in . . . Vance’s more pugnacious speech last year, but he presented the same themes in a more positive light.”
Well, no, this in fact was not the case. Vance’s address, as already noted, was condescending; it emphasized both what Europe is not doing and what it is doing wrong. Rubio, by contrast, stressed the continuity of Western civilization between Europe and America; the former was the first to sow the seeds of liberty, he acknowledged, and the latter desires to jointly revitalize that ongoing project, not separate herself from her very roots.
Where does all of this leave us as it concerns transatlantic relations? The Atlantic Council’s Frederick Kempe is surely correct when he observes that Europe needs Trump, if only because no one in recent history has done more to influence European thinking on defense, security, and economics. Kempe, moreover, is surely correct in pointing out that time is of the essence as it concerns Ukraine, which is entering its fifth year of war. Russia continues to commit war crimes, bombarding the civilian population in an effort to break Ukraine’s spirit. Where is the response of free nations to the evil that Russia is perpetrating?
One writer compares the current Ukrainian kholodomor (literally, “death by cold”) with the holodomor (“death by hunger”) that was induced by Stalin in the 1930s to kill millions of Ukrainians. Both atrocities can be seen to mirror the same genocidal logic: Ukraine’s presence is an existential threat to Russian imperialism. Vladimir Putin, it behooves us to recall, is on a sacred mission, and that is to reverse the “injustice” of the Soviet empire’s collapse. All the while, President Trump refuses to condemn Russian atrocities yet puts pressure on Ukraine to cede part of its territory in order to accomplish a peace “deal.”
Predictably, the latest round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in Geneva mediated by the U.S. ended on February 18 with no progress. Seemingly the only goal of the Trump administration is to facilitate a transaction. It does not occur to the President, or his envoys (both of whom are businessmen and not diplomats), that “peace” arrangements can be unjust, encouraging greater international calamity. What is critically important is not that the war ends but how it ends. And since Vladimir Putin is not—indeed never has been—interested in peace, he must be forced to peace. What is certain is that any “peace” agreement without U.S. backing and deterrent force guarantees that Moscow will not change. Putin will continue to pretend and seduce the American President. Notwithstanding Trump’s unpredictability and mercurial temperament, what has been utterly predictable is the President’s attitude toward Europe (as evidenced, for example, in his Davos speech in January), the fruits of which doubtless have the Kremlin continually lifting a toast.
Notwithstanding how well received his Munich address was, it is significant that Rubio addressed neither Russian aggression nor the question of U.S. support for Ukraine in his speech, which troubled some. (Nor did he mention Greenland, for that matter.) Also disappointing is the fact that Rubio did not meet with European leaders after the MSC. If this were not enough, immediately following the MSC on Monday, February 16, Rubio endorsed Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who is running for a fifth consecutive term in April and who is friendly with Vladimir Putin. This is hardly a wise decision if we really value NATO and European “partnership,” given Orbán’s frequent obstruction of NATO’s consensus on Russia and Ukraine.
In an opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal three days after the MSC concluded, former British prime minister Boris Johnson offered trenchant criticism and a necessary piece of advice for European leaders: if Europe’s leaders really want a change, then now is the time to act. Further: “There is a real war on our continent—as opposed to a nonexistent U.S. ‘threat to Greenland.’ It is a cruel and hideous war in which Vladimir Putin is increasingly torturing the Ukrainian population, bombing their electricity supply, so that women and children are freezing to death in temperatures of 15 below [Celsius].”
Johnson then asks: “Does Europe actually want this war to end? Then what are we doing about it?” He chides his fellow Europeans for the bottom line: their fear of “escalation.” His recommendations are specific, including the impoundment of Russia’s shadow fleet which funds Putin’s war; sending troops selectively and strategically to show Europe’s commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty; and finally, rectifying “the disgrace of last December” that was Europe’s failure to seize Russian frozen assets and give them to Ukraine’s war effort.
Yes, Johnson concedes, there is far more that the “boorish” and “sadly deluded” Trump administration could do to end the war, but the Brit’s thrust is to ask, “What about us?” This kind of brute honesty is surely welcome. It is the sort of honesty that we desperately need in Washington.
