If a wrecking ball shakes from inside your house, it will certainly be difficult to deal with the damage.
As the European security establishment convenes in Germany this weekend, the organizers of the Munich Security Conference have already announced the (creative) destruction of global norms ushered in by US President Donald Trump as the era of “disruptors.”
Although this is presented as an opportunity, the truth is that it is unclear how constructive this meeting will be. The dust from the previous year’s Munich massacre by top U.S. officials has not settled, but is being hidden in a broader cloud, and the pillars of Pax Americana, the peace in the West since World War II, are beginning to crumble on a fragile foundation.
This time last year, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s arrogant remarks about European liberal democracies shocked audiences, falsely accusing him of violating free speech and rolling back democracy.
This contrarian view is now policy, enshrined in black and white in both the White House and the Pentagon’s national security and defense strategies. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Marcos is not leaving any room for shock this time, and is instead telling leaders to be on their toes.
“Frankly, the old world in which I grew up is gone and we are living in a new era in geopolitics. We will all need to reconsider what that looks like and what our role will be,” he told reporters on the eve of his arrival in Munich.
In preparation for his arrival in Germany, Mr. Rubio also visited two prime ministers who dote on Mr. Trump: Slovakia’s Roberto Fico and Hungary’s embattled Viktor Orbán. Does America understand that? America seems to be asking.
Europe will be like that. It would be tempting to forget President Trump’s week-long rollercoaster attack on Denmark’s sovereignty, which forced Europe’s NATO allies to send troops to Greenland in a show of continental unity. But there are two lessons Europe has learned from the flash crisis that may offer some solace in the typically boring three-day Munich conference.
First, Trump often says exciting things, not because of shrewd or detailed policies, but simply to see how far he can go. Midnight Truth social posts could mark the peak of a months-long military plan to dethrone Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Or it could resolve the huge crisis that President Trump himself has created, force NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte out of office, and switch Greenland from threats of invasion to negotiations. Vance recently said those talks continue, but their resonance has been partially lost in the white noise of increased U.S. pressure on Iran and the global fallout from the release of more files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are too many extraordinary situations, and no singular crisis can resonate long enough, much less resonate.
The second lesson is that President Trump seems to hate being disliked when he comes into conflict with allies. Rutte’s exit ramp was eagerly occupied and the threat of an invasion of Greenland quickly disappeared. President Trump even nearly apologized to British troops after suggesting that NATO troops who fought alongside the US in Afghanistan fought “a little further back, a little further from the front lines.” Britain lost 457 soldiers in the conflict. Populists want to remain popular. The “King” likes to flatter his courtiers. Europe’s challenge is to make enough changes to ensure its own security now that the old world order has collapsed, but not so irrevocably that it cannot be undone to welcome Trump’s more stable successor. One European diplomat described the atmosphere ahead of Munich as follows: “While there is a sense of dread about the task ahead, we are cautiously confident that we have found our footing.”
There are nine months left until the U.S. midterm elections could derail the president and fire the starting gun for Mr. Vance’s potential bid to succeed Mr. Trump. From that point on, in the two years leading up to the 2028 presidential election, a combination of calm and flattering allies globally could be helpful to those seeking to follow Mr. Trump. While watching President Trump’s foreign policy weekly may give us a sense of the times, his time in office is limited.
So far, practical changes have been reassuringly few. The US military may withdraw from NATO supply chains to Ukraine, which continues to fight Russian aggression, and require Europe to pay significant costs. While this White House has attempted to negotiate with Russia, it has distanced itself from openly calling Russia a threat, perhaps out of broad sympathy or diplomatic expediency.
However, we have yet to see a complete withdrawal of US troops from Europe. Or an end to U.S. intelligence sharing with Kiev. Or a fundamental change in Washington’s nuclear doctrine. Instead, Europe’s powers have half-committed to spending 5% of GDP on defense by 2035, a move that most European officials appear to think is long overdue. Shouldn’t the threat from Russia, which can barely control its much smaller neighbor Ukraine, be so great that the wealthy continent of 500 million people has to rely on US defense? What good is decades of increased European integration if these countries do not seek autonomy over their own security?
Europe’s tactics, with their dangerous, unpredictable but essential key allies, look more and more like Kiev’s tactics by the month. Europe hopes to stay out of President Trump’s immediate crosshairs while avoiding an outburst of anger from the American president, but it must maintain red lines that must not be crossed while always appearing grateful for American support. It is Volodymyr Zelensky’s survival mode, there is no room for flourishing.
But for now Europe has few alternatives, and in this maelstrom where everything seems to be under threat but little is actually being done, continuing to exist more or less as is may seem victory enough.
The broader threat of the wrecking ball also extends from within the NATO alliance, with concerns about the erosion of public order and the rise of far-right populism.
National Rally, British Reform and the AfD all pose serious challenges to the stable centrist leadership of France, Britain and Germany, respectively.
But European far-right allies close to President Trump have demonstrated the limits of New Americanism by expressing their disgust during the Greenland debacle. Far from promoting President Trump’s most violent tendencies, Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a moderate whisperer deployed at a moment of EU crisis. The Munich Security Report, published earlier this month, released a number of polls showing that Europeans do not foresee a bright future and want urgent change. But the debt bondage caused by COVID-19, the Russian threat, and the world order redefined by the Trump administration will remain the same no matter how far to the right Europe’s G7 economies shift in the coming years. There are limits to how far Europe can move to the right.
Europe is at a moment when it must take control of its own future. Say anything against a group of people in the world’s richest and freest democracies and you’ll get a deafening outcry. The calm glamor of Munich is a fitting place to remind European voters of the importance of decency, stability, and the value of creatively finding ways to move forward even in the dust of destruction.
