Rubio’s Euro speech

A year after JD Vance shocked Europe at the Munich Security Conference with his speech about liberty and freedom and in effect accused Europe for authoritarianism and censorship and election interferences, it was Secretary of State Marco Rubio turn to give the speech this year. Last year, the Europeans were not mentally prepared for being scolded and were very negative towards Vance, best primarily on their own arrogance, post-colonial thinking and the notion that they know best. This year, they have lived with the Trump administration for a year and were mentally prepared. Rubia gave an address in the same lane as Vance, laying out the deep ties entwining the United States with Europe, while firmly laying down America’s worries about how the Old World is abandoning our shared heritage. Rubia seems to reach out to Europe and try to make them realize that they have lost their senses and should be open to work closer with the U.S.

Rubio won applause with his reassurance that the Americans home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe. He traced the divisions within the alliance to the dangerous delusion that with the fall of communism every nation would now be a liberal democracy and that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood. There is no such thing as a citizen of the world as the world is still based on citizens belonging to a nation. Therefore, it is important that the West preserves the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.

Rubio challenged the European allies to wake up and join in defending a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny, and emphasized that the connections were not just economically, not just militarily, but also spiritually and culturally. Then Rubio listed off all the ways the West has instead chosen decline, from deindustrialization to allowing mass migrations that are transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West.

In the speech that celebrated the glories of Western civilization and the tremendous victories of the trans-Atlantic alliance, he finished by looking forward and working closer together. No single speech can heal divisions that grew up over decades, but Rubio delivered a rebuttal to the complacent European conceit that America is the one rejecting the fundamentals of the alliance.

Rubio drew a standing ovation from the assembled European heads of state, intelligence chiefs, and military leaders for a speech that was no less forceful or frank than VP JD Vance’s address that jarred the same forum last year, but was delivered with a mellifluous voice and calm humility that disarmed even the most arch Euro-socialist. He was playing good cop to Vance’s bad cop, a strategy that paid off with the collective sigh of relief that conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger expressed afterward, as he motioned to the audience to sit and praised Rubio’s message of reassurance.

The great part of Rubio’s speech was that he mapped out precisely how and why the West had lost our way with unfettered trade and mass migration. At the same time, same counties, like China, protected their economies and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut the Western firms, shuttering plants, resulting in large parts of the societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of working- and middle-class jobs overseas and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals. Europe has been and is weak based on bureaucracy, over-regulation, mass immigration and the notion that they are better than others, based on deeply rooted colonialism and they have relied on the U.S. for too long. The U.S. is offering a close relationship with a stronger and more resilient Europe, but they will have to change their mindset and focus on saving Europe before it is too late.