Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference. By Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State.
But the euphoria of [the downfall of the Berlin Wall] led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, “the end of history;” that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.
This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history. And it has cost us dearly. In this delusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade, even as some nations protected their economies and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut ours — shuttering our plants, resulting in large parts of our 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.
We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions while many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves. This, even as other countries have invested in the most rapid military buildup in all of human history and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests. To appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else –- not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.
And in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.
We made these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.
Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe. …
We are part of one civilization — Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir. …
We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours, because we know – (applause) – because we know that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own.
National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series of technical questions — how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it, these are important questions. They are. But they are not the fundamental one. The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are 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. …
Deindustrialization was not inevitable. It was a conscious policy choice … It was foolish. It was a foolish but voluntary transformation of our economy that left us dependent on others for our needs and dangerously vulnerable to crisis.
Mass migration is not, was not, isn’t some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West. …
Controlling who and how many people enter our countries, this is not an expression of xenophobia. It is not hate. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty. And the failure to do so is not just an abdication of one of our most basic duties owed to our people. It is an urgent threat to the fabric of our societies and the survival of our civilization itself.
And finally, we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations. We do not need to abandon the system of international cooperation we authored, and we don’t need to dismantle the global institutions of the old order that together we built. But these must be reformed. These must be rebuilt.
For example, the United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world. But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role.
- It could not solve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce.
- It had not solved the war in Ukraine. It took American leadership and partnership with many of the countries here today just to bring the two sides to the table in search of a still-elusive peace.
- It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran. That required 14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers.
- And it was unable to address the threat to our security from a narcoterrorist dictator in Venezuela. Instead, it took American Special Forces to bring this fugitive to justice.
We do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it, for we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.
Standing ovation from the Europeans. By Wolfgang Munchau at UnHerd.
What a difference a year makes. At this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was given a standing ovation for a speech that echoed what Vice President JD Vance had said so scandalously 12 months earlier.
Rubio accused Europeans of trying “to appease a climate cult” that has impoverished the continent by forcing it to adopt catastrophic energy policies. Like Vance, he also criticised Europe’s immigration policies and its dogmatic commitment to global free trade, which he said has fuelled deindustrialisation and hollowed out supply chains. He even lamented the transfer of sovereignty to international organisations — a swipe not just at the UN and international legal bodies, but at the EU itself.
Europeans hated Vance’s speech. Yet they loved Rubio’s. The difference was tone. Unlike Vance, Rubio sugar-coated the message. “For us Americans,” he said, “home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.” Europeans just love it when Americans show respect for their cultural heritage. It flatters their sense of pride — and superiority.
Europe is deluded, though. And when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen popped up to say she felt very much reassured, it reminded me of that old quip about diplomacy, often, probably wrongly, attributed to Winston Churchill: “Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.” …
Instead of accepting this new reality, Europe is convinced there will be a return to the status quo ante: President Donald Trump is deemed an aberration; once he is gone, transatlantic relations will return to normal. Only half of this is true. Trump is no doubt an aberration. And he will be gone in three years. But his security doctrine will endure. …
The Americans have just sent the Europeans to hell. And the Europeans are asking for directions.
David Archibald:
A very good speech indeed. Rubio displaces Michael Anton as the chief narrative builder of the regime — whose last effort failed to mention Taiwan.
Hear also what Elon Musk says: “Nobody dies to defend a ‘multicultural economic zone!’ For a country to survive, there has to be a common culture.”
hat-tip David Archibald