In 2007, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech to the Munich security conference that stunned western diplomats by launching an unforeseen assault on the post-1989 international order. The United States, alleged Mr Putin, had perniciously manufactured a unipolar world “in which there is one master, one sovereign”. Seven years later, Russian forces illegally occupied Crimea, and Moscow-funded separatists seized swathes of territory in eastern Ukraine, in what turned out to be the precursor to full-blown invasion.
Nearly two decades later, the disturbing speech at the same venue by the US vice-president, JD Vance, may prove to be similarly significant as the geopolitics of the 21st century continue to shift. Mr Vance had been expected to concentrate last Friday’s remarks on Ukraine, after a week in which Donald Trump appeared to be unilaterally preparing to negotiate a ceasefire deal entirely on Mr Putin’s terms. Instead, he used his platform as a pulpit from which to berate the US’s European allies on issues such as multiculturalism, migration and the regulation of social media. Indefensibly, the Trump administration now actively cheerleads for far-right parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, whose leader, Alice Weidel, he chose to meet in Munich.
A month into Trump 2.0, Mr Vance and other senior outriders such as Elon Musk are full of ideological hubris and jubilant self-regard. But the vice-president’s use of Maga-style culture war rhetoric to attack European governments amounted to more than mere trolling. In deeply ominous fashion it also shredded the idea of a “west” that shares fundamental values.
In the post-cold war era, the transatlantic alliance was founded on a common commitment to international norms that this White House holds in sneering contempt. Mr Trump’s brutally transactional approach is infused with a Hobbesian cynicism – witness his determination to exploit Ukraine’s vulnerability to seize 50% of its rare earth minerals on favourable terms. Europe must swiftly learn to adapt to an isolationist US that sees it as an ideological adversary and economic competitor.
Conflicts and challenging trade-offs are inevitable. Mr Vance’s excoriation of “digital censorship” in Europe is a prelude to future attempts to see off the regulation of US tech companies via the EU Digital Services Act. On security and defence, climate action and the terms of transatlantic trade, European nations will need to find the unity to stand up to “America-first” bullying tactics, and begin to lay foundations for greater strategic and economic autonomy.
This week’s crisis meeting on Ukraine in Paris, convened at short notice by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, is a step in the right direction. Amid justified fears of a neo-imperial carve-up, it is imperative to ensure that Europe, along with Ukraine itself, plays a full part in any future negotiations with Mr Putin – all the more so given that the apparent US expectation that it would police the result.
Europe was slow to wake up to the implications of a newly rivalrous and multipolar world, in which transatlantic ties would no longer bind in the same way. The new reality will be characterised by Trumpian bluff, bluster and brinkmanship. Following Mr Vance’s visit to Munich, leaders can hardly say they have not been warned. The task now is to find ways to safeguard the European model from an increasingly sinister US administration that would love to see it fail.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
