Marco Rubio was more civil than J. D. Vance had been, but the message to longtime allies was the same.
Just like last year, I watched the most important American speech at the Munich Security Conference in the overflow room, sitting on the floor, underneath the speakers. This is the best place both to hear the speech (otherwise the room is too noisy) and to watch the faces of people gathered around the screens. The prime ministers and presidents sit in the main hall, but plenty of other people attend the conference: security analysts, lieutenant colonels, drone engineers, deputy defense ministers, legislators, and hundreds of other people whose professional lives are dedicated to ending the war in Ukraine, bringing peace to Europe, and projecting security in the world.
Just like last year, this group was hoping to hear how the U.S. administration is planning to contribute to these projects. And, just like last year, audience members were disappointed.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Saturday’s key speaker, was more civil than Vice President J. D. Vance, who in 2025 attacked and insulted many of the European governments represented in the room. But Rubio’s speech had many of the same goals. He did not mention the war, or imply that America would help Europe win it. He did not express the belief that Russia can be defeated. He did not refer to the democratic values and the shared belief in freedom that once motivated the NATO alliance, and that still motivate its European members. Instead, he offered a vision of unity based on a misty idea of inherited “Western civilization”—Dante, Shakespeare, the Sistine Chapel, the Beatles—which would fight against the real enemies: not Russia, not China, but rather migration, the “climate cult,” and other forms of modern degeneracy.