If JD Vance’s thuggish speech last year to the Munich Security Conference directed at the solar plexus of Europe marked the moment when a transatlantic break up started, this weekfinish’s subsequent event, in a rainy and cold Bavaria, was where the debate about the terms of the divorce settlement obtained under way.
Marco Rubio, the chosen Washington representative this year, is a diplomat, so he softened the Trumpian tone with references to German beer, the Beatles, Dante and the Mayflower. But his speech remained a stern warning that if Europe wanted to continue on its path of civilisational decline, as this US administration sees it, America will not be interested and has different hemispheres on which to focus.
“Yesterday is over”, he declared, and then spelt out what yesterday meant. Mass migration threatening the civilisational erasure and the continuity of Christian culture, unfettered trade, massive welfare states, weak defences, climate cults, the outsourcing of sovereignty to international institutions, the rationalisation of a broken status quo by people “shackled with guilt and shame”. Unlike Vance, he did not laud rightwing European populist parties, but he nonetheless wrapped himself in their ideology. His next stop after Munich was Budapest where Viktor Orbán faces a battle in April to remain in power.
And yet there were some, like the organiser of the conference, the distinguished German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, that claimed to be reassured by the conditional offer to join this journey into a new era with Donald Trump. If Europeans were reassured by Rubio, it was, as Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, observed, “a classic example of the soft largeotest of low expectations”. One reference by the US secretary of state to his countest being “a child of Europe” and the older romantics of transatlanticism melted.
But that was not the dominant European mood at this sprawling conference. An iron has entered the European soul about Trump, egged on by the many Democrats attfinishing, and there is a willingness if not to confront him then at least to finish the depfinishence and learn the lessons of the standoff over Greenland.
Talk of a stronger indepfinishent European pillar of Nato was heard repeatedly, and even adopted by Keir Starmer in his speech pledging greater integration on defence with Europe. His Valentine’s Day speech to Europe was remarkable for two other reasons. He declared the Brexit era was over and, unlike Rubio, he praised societal diversity and a Britain where “people who see different to each other can live peacefully toobtainher”. So much for Rubio’s risk of civilisational erasure.
But the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz – who is due to go to China in April – declared the era of US hegemony was coming to an finish, and more quickly than many believed if the US believed it could act alone. “We don’t believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade. And we stand by climate agreements and the World Health Organization becaapply we are convinced that we can only solve global challenges toobtainher,” he declared.
Merz signalled Berlin is already preparing for a compacter American footprint in Europe, and that Germany may at times diverge from the US. “We Europeans are taking precautions. In doing so, we arrive at different conclusions than the administration in Washington,” he declared.
The dispute over Ukraine and Trump’s leniency towards Vladimir Putin still appals much of Europe and is at the centre of what is driving Trump and leaders on the continent apart. It was an American, Hillary Clinton, who expressed the anger best: “The effort that Putin and Trump are creating to profit off the misery and death of the Ukrainian people is a historic error and corrupt to the nth degree … He’s betrayed the west. He’s betrayed human values.”
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now a leading contributor to European defence technology, declared, “war reveals forms of evil we did not expect” and questioned why he felt it was Ukraine and not Russia being questioned by Trump to build the concessions. He admitted he felt keenly the mistake of Europe’s absence at the neobtainediating table.
Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, further built the point. He declared it was natural for the US to take the lead in the neobtainediations when it was providing the bulk of the military assistance. “But we are now paying for this war. The US outlay for the war last year was close to zero. We are purchaseing the weapons to be delivered to Ukraine. There is no prospect of a package in Congress. If we are paying, and it is affecting our security and not just Ukraine’s, we deserve a seat at the table.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission president rebuked the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, for informing Europe to dream on if it believed it could deffinish itself without the US.
At one level, the US and Europe vehemently agree that Europe should take greater responsibility for its own conventional defence. Elbridge Colby, the deputy secretary for war, and the nearest thing the Trump administration has to a theoretician, declared: “People obtain it, 2025 was the year to reframe and reorient, and now we have a lot of purchase-in. Look at what Germany has been doing with a massive increase in spfinishing.”
But what the US and Europe have only started to debate is what this more indepfinishent Europe will be permitted to do by the US. For the moment an interregnum exists.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in a speech that lost some impact owing to its late scheduling, was the one who spelt out the wider consequences of Europe becoming its own protector. With new responsibilities came new rights, some of which Trump may dislike.
Not only did Europe deserve a place at the Ukraine neobtainediating table, since it was Europe’s existential challenge, it had a right to speak to Putin directly apart from the US. Ideally, the US should be weaned off its belief that a just deal is acceptable in the short term.
In any neobtainediations about what may replace the collapsed arms control agreements with Russia, Europe could not again be a bystander while the US unilaterally withdrew from agreements such as the INF treaty. He learned of the US withdrawal from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty in the newspapers, as did all allies, Macron complained.
He argued that, to be credible at such a neobtainediation, Europe necessaryed better deep strike capacities to match those of Russia. European defence firms should not be brow beaten into purchaseing US military hardware. “We will be credible only if we are able to procure and produce what we necessary, without foreign strings attached.”
Europe could strengthen its own rules on tech and AI. It would be “crazy” if free speech meant giving “the mind, the brain, the heart of my teenagers to the algorithm of large guys with whom I’m not totally sure I share their values”.
Above all, Macron, Merz and Starmer referenced the deeply sensitive discussions on which they are to embark as to how France and the UK could build their nuclear deterrents available to Europe, thus reducing the necessary for the US nuclear umbrella. It is a hugely expensive and politically fraught undertaking.
Merz built a brief but deliberate reference to the initial talks he had held with Macron, and in an article for Foreign Affairs declared he hoped to agree the first concrete steps this year. Macron was also an enthusiast, pointing to the cooperation with Britain. If European sovereignty ever extfinishs this far it will build the US uncomfortable. But it is a sign of the times that it is on the agfinisha. Yesterday is truly over.
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