US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading a large US delegation to the Munich Security Conference this week, where increasingly nervous European leaders are hoping for at least a brief respite from President Donald Trump's often inconsistent policies and threats, which have shaken transatlantic relations and the international order established after World War II.
A year after Vice President J.D. Vance shocked the assembled officials at the same venue with a verbal attack on many of America's closest allies in Europe, accusing them of endangering Western civilization with left-wing domestic agendas and failing to take responsibility for their own defense, Rubio, as reported by the Associated Press, plans to take a less confrontational but essentially similar approach on Saturday when he addresses the annual gathering of world leaders and national security officials.
The State Department's formal statement on Rubio's trip did not provide details about his two-day stay in Munich, after which he will visit Slovakia and Hungary. CNN notes that Rubio's visit to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, two Trump loyalists, is a kind of political message to the rest of Europe about Washington's priorities and alliances.
But officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the AP that the top U.S. diplomat in Munich intends to focus on areas of cooperation on shared global and regional issues, including the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as China.
If that turns out to be true, many in the audience might feel relieved after first facing Vance's direct rebuke last year, and then a series of Trump statements and moves in the months that followed, which were directed against virtually every country in Europe, Canada and longtime allies in the Indo-Pacific.
Trump's recent comments about taking control of Greenland from NATO member Denmark, as well as insults directed at individual leaders, have been particularly disturbing, leading many in Europe to question the value of the United States as an ally and partner.
That leaves Rubio with a difficult task if he wants to calm tensions, the AP points out.
Vance’s speech last year was “a truly shocking moment,” said Claudia Major, senior vice president of the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “It was seen as the first very clear statement of what the new Trump administration represents,” namely that “the Europeans are no longer partners.”
“There is great doubt whether the basis (of trust) is still there and whether we still share the same vision for the transatlantic relationship,” she said. “The longer this estrangement continues, the harder it will be to re-establish a strong relationship.”
The president of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, expressed a similar view.
“The transatlantic relationship is currently in a significant crisis of trust and credibility,” he said this week. Still, he expressed hope that Rubio and the dozens of US lawmakers expected to attend the gathering would offer a less gloomy and gloomy prognosis for the future.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whom Rubio will meet with today, has tried to take a middle course to deal with Trump's unpredictability and insistence on transactional relations.
He said Europe also needs to “learn the language of power politics” to assert itself — for example, by taking greater responsibility for its security, striving for greater “technological independence” and fostering economic growth. But he stressed that “as democracies, we are partners and allies, not subordinates” to the United States.
Some, like French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, appear to have almost completely given up on Trump and the U.S. Canada and France opened consulates in the Greenlandic capital of Nuuk last week, in a show of support for both Greenland and Denmark.
Macron warned this week that tensions between Europe and the United States could escalate after the recent “Greenland moment.” He described the Trump administration as “openly anti-European” and as one that seeks to “dismember” the European Union. “When there is a clear act of aggression, I think what we should do is not to cower or try to reach a compromise,” he said in an interview with several European newspapers. “I think we have been trying that strategy for months. It is not working.”
Macron pointed to a "double crisis: we have a Chinese tsunami on the trade front, and on the American side, instability by the minute."
Carney, who won applause from many for standing up to Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, has emerged as one of the leaders of a movement seeking ways for countries to unite and confront the United States. He has vowed to seek trade deals with non-U.S. countries, including China, to serve as bulwarks of commercial stability. The China deal has prompted fresh threats from Trump.
One European diplomat described the mood ahead of Munich to CNN as follows: "Cautious optimism that we have stood on our own two feet, but with a sense of trepidation about the task ahead."
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