In the space of just a year, European leaders have heard three descriptions of how the Donald Trump administration is reinventing America's relationship with its allies. Each has a slightly different tone, but all aim to propel them into a new era in which Washington's commitment to their defense is given new limits.
The first was put forward last year by Vice President J.D. Vance, in a scathing condemnation of the European model of democracy, arguing that waves of immigrants and Europe's own restrictions on far-right parties pose a greater threat to the continent than Russian aggression.
The second was a much more digestible version of a similar message delivered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday. He spoke of the hazy and sometimes idealized cultural history shared by Europe and the United States, saying that both face “civilizational erasure” unless they find a way to control their borders.
Then, at the same conference, the highest-ranking Pentagon official attending the gathering, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, delivered a classic American security message about shared interests, not values, recommending that both sides focus on “concrete, operational matters.”
If Europeans were left a little confused after all this, that's understandable.
Vance and Rubio could easily become rivals for the presidential nomination in 2028 — or partners on the same ticket. So the way they described America’s role and purpose in relation to its allies was equally intended for an audience at home. They know that their every word will be carefully weighed among MAGA supporters, who are suspicious of the extent to which the Trump administration has engaged around the world, whether in Venezuela or Iran, Syria or Greenland.
But their immediate audience was their NATO allies. While Europeans have pledged to significantly increase defense spending by 2035, they are also aware that if the gap with the United States widens, they would have to replace America’s vast power and global reach, a project that would cost them much more and could take 10 to 20 years.
Vance’s speech last year was met with stunned silence and even sighs. Rubio’s more subdued version of the message, on Saturday morning, was met with a standing ovation in the ballroom of the Bayerischer Hof hotel, the posh remnant of old Europe that Rubio seemed to idealize. His words were hailed as encouraging by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Security conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger noted that Vance referred to NATO as “them,” while Rubio described the alliance as “us.” However, he added that Rubio's speech represented “a distinctly American worldview.”
For many European officials and analysts, the initial reaction quickly gave way to caution. Rubio's argument for the importance of the alliance barely touched on the threats coming from Russia and other adversaries, and sounded much more like a defense of the white Christian heritage that he said connects Europe and the United States.
Although Rubio did not mention the far-right parties that Vance praised, he seemed to give voice to the argument that the purpose of the national security strategy is to protect “one civilization: Western civilization.”
“We are bound by the deepest bonds that peoples can share,” he said, “forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, origin, and the sacrifices our ancestors made together for the common civilization we inherit.”
He asserted that the Trump administration “has no intention of being a polite and orderly guardian of the managed decline of the West,” adding: “We do not want separation, but the revitalization of an old friendship and the restoration of the greatest civilization in the history of mankind.”
It also caught everyone's eye that Rubio traveled from Munich to Slovakia and Hungary, countries governed by populist far-right parties, skeptical of the European Union and which have moved closer to Russia, especially when it comes to the war in Ukraine.
Luke van Middelar, a Dutch historian and former EU official, assessed that Rubio's speech was "cleverly worded, and precisely because of that, more dangerous for Europeans, because it offers a new pact based on a shared civilization, but leaves out the part Vance gave a year ago, which implies America's alignment with MAGA allies in Europe."
He therefore argued that “Europeans are somehow falling into a trap.” Rubio, he said, “tried to embrace us through a shared story of history and peoples, kinship and religion, while leaving out a large number of non-white Europeans – as well as Americans.”
One senior European official described Rubio’s argument as a poison pill. His defense of “Western civilization,” he said, was offered as a kind of bargain for the American security umbrella, with the tacit suggestion that the United States and its Western allies were fighting to preserve a whiter, more Christian Europe. That, he said, would make it much harder for European leaders to deal with the rest of the world, let alone with their own non-Christian citizens.
While some Europeans understand that both Vance and Rubio are addressing two audiences - one in Europe, the other in the US - Colby is not a politician. He is a conservative defense expert who has found himself in the role of interpreter of Trump's security strategy, which seems to change from week to week.
He spoke of “common sense and flexible realism.” “From our part of the political spectrum, I'm not sure that's true,” he said.
Instead, “let’s base the partnership on something more permanent, more enduring and more real, like shared interests,” Kolby said. “The values are obviously there, and the history is there,” he added. But “an alliance cannot be based on feelings alone,” and “there may be differences in values.”
That message resonated much better among Europeans, such as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said in his opening address to the conference: “The culture wars of the MAGA movement are not ours.”
Colby's vision of a relationship based on shared interests is much closer to where Europeans want to be, with his open commitment to collective defense and the American nuclear guarantee.
Colby insisted that Europe would eventually have to defend itself in any conventional war, noting that the American presence at the very core of NATO was crucial to ensuring that a conventional conflict did not escalate into a nuclear one.
After all that was said, Europe was left wondering which America it was actually aligning itself with, said Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist and fellow at the Institute for Humanities, a research institution in Vienna. “Sometimes we say we can do without the Americans, and then sometimes we are relieved when America seems to be coming back,” he said.
Europeans who see in Rubio the return of the American ally they have known since the end of World War II are "deceiving themselves," he said.
"One could say that Europeans want to be fooled, because today they depend on the US even more than in 1989," when the Berlin Wall was breached, given Russia's four-year war in Ukraine, which directly questions European security.
Europeans are less concerned about pressure to increase military spending as the U.S. deals with China, Krastev said.
"What worries Europeans the most is that this administration has become extremely ideological," he said. "What is new is the US's willingness to meddle in the internal politics of European countries. And what's interesting is not what Rubio said here, but where he goes from here" - to Slovakia and Hungary.
Translation: NB
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