The Trump administration may have given America’s European allies mixed messages in recent weeks, but Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech in Germany on Friday provided them with crystal clarity in a week when tensions between the United States and its longstanding friends burst into the open.
With a blistering attack on Europe’s culture, commitment to democracy, migration policies and the “danger from within,” Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference — which was supposed to focus on the war in Ukraine — tore up Washington’s decadeslong alliances.
“Across Europe, free speech I fear is in retreat,” he said, before echoing the concerns of President Donald Trump and accusing leaders of letting in “millions of unvetted immigrants.”
Vance’s silence on the almost three-year-long war also sent a clear message to Kyiv, according to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending,” he told the conference in Munich. “From now on, things will be different, and Europe needs to adjust to that.”
Vance’s dismissal of Ukraine spoke to the broader view that the U.S. no longer considers European involvement in negotiations with Russia as vital to peace talks.
The Kremlin framed a recent phone call between Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump as a shift toward peace talks between Russia and the United States. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to travel to Saudi Arabia to initiate peace negotiations, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Rubio, who met Sunday with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is planning to leave the region on Tuesday, according to the State Department.
Zelenskyy, still excluded from discussions in Saudi Arabia as of late Saturday, has been left sidelined and European leaders shared the Ukrainian president’s unease.
After years of disunity and dithering, the leaders of the EU and U.K. are worried they no longer have a seat at the table in negotiations that may reshape their ally’s borders, and are set to gather this week in Paris for a summit on the war, in response to concerns the U.S. is moving ahead without them.
“Europe urgently needs its own plan of action concerning Ukraine, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Saturday. “Or else other global players will decide about our future. Not necessarily in line with our own interests.”
Still, Ukraine is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the faltering rapport between Europe and the U.S. over policy and ideology. At the heart of Vance’s speech was a direct attack on European democracy and culture.
“The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China. It’s not any external actor,” he said at the Munich Security Conference. “What I worry about is the threat from within — the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”
Vance’s comments and his criticism of European leaders for shunning far-right parties, were taken as an endorsement of the far-right parties in ascendance in Europe, especially in the context of his later meeting with Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The AfD is poised to play kingmaker in any coalition emerging from elections next week in Germany, where there has long been a taboo against allying with the party that has won the support of key Trump advisor Elon Musk.
The normally mild-mannered German Chancellor Olaf Scholz accused Vance of interfering in Germany’s elections. “That is not appropriate, especially not among friends and allies. We firmly reject that,” he told the conference.
That Germany’s conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz felt the need to public state that he expected the U.S. to respect the results of the upcoming elections was perhaps even more striking.
Even so, Europe’s leaders had few reasons to be surprised despite Vance’s ferocious attack, according to Keir Giles, a senior fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank.
Giles told NBC News that Europe has ignored decades of signals that U.S. patience has been “wearing thin” with Europe’s reliance on American defense and that Vance’s rhetoric on immigration and his outreach to the far right would resonate with European voters.
“This is not invented out of thin air,” he said. “There’s a reason populist parties across the continent tap into a deep vein of frustration with Europe’s elites.”
Both Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth this week echoed President Donald Trump’s longstanding view that Europe should contribute more towards its own defense.
In the latest consequence of that policy, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was preparing to raise his country’s defense spending ahead of a visit to meet Trump, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported.
Despite Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s warning in Munich that challenges from “Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea demand a united front,” Trumpist foreign policy — involving stopping almost all funding for USAID and seeking to shake off Kyiv — may create an opportunity for America’s rivals, analysts say.
China’s foreign ministry responded on Saturday events in Munich, saying it wants to “strengthen solidarity” and “practice multilateralism” with Germany and the European Union in what can only be read as thinly veiled comment on the Trump administration’s capriciousness.
Europe’s leaders can expect more of the same, Chatham House’s Keir Giles explained.
“It would be astonishing if not just China, but other adversaries of Europe were not to take advantage of the split and the gaps this presents,” he said.
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