Trudy Rubin: At Munich Security Conference, Trump makes it clear: Europe and Ukraine are on their own

MUNICH, Germany — Last weekend will be remembered as the historic moment when the Trump administration broke America’s historic bonds with fellow democracies in Europe to pursue alliances with far-right extremist governments that admire Russia more than they do the United States.

The drama took place at the annual Munich Security Conference, which brings together top U.S. and European officials who traditionally share a belief in democracy and free societies. But to be at the three-day conference this year, which ended Sunday, was to bear witness to the brutal divorce between the White House and the European powers whose close ties had sustained an unprecedented era of peace in the West since World War II.

The gathering had been waiting anxiously for Vice President JD Vance to clarify the mixed signals coming from Washington after President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he had called Russian leader Vladimir Putin and would soon meet with him to decide the fate of Ukraine.

Instead, Vance’s words Friday led to dead silence and even gasps of dismay.

The conferees had assumed Vance would spell out what Trump wanted from the Europeans and clarify the competing statements coming from top U.S. officials about the president’s peace plans.

That was not an unwarranted expectation. Before the phone call — a gift to Putin that broke his global isolation — Trump had not contacted Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. Nor had he consulted with European leaders — even though he insists the Europeans must bear the entire future burden of providing security guarantees for Kyiv.

Yet Vance said almost nothing about Ukraine.

Instead, he told the stunned audience that the threat to Europe was “not Russia, not China” but “the threat from within” and a retreat from some of the continent’s “most fundamental values.” He went on for 20 minutes accusing them — untruthfully — of somehow stifling radical, often neo-Nazi, parties, and “censoring” social media content;, meaning moderating online posts for lies, dangerous conspiracy theories, and Russian or Chinese interference. This, of course, is the way that Twitter and Facebook used to operate before Elon Musk and Trump stepped in.

Conference attendees were flummoxed at the hypocrisy of such charges given Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as well as his escalating attacks on the mainstream media. “Jaw-dropping” was one of the more charitable descriptions I heard.

What especially angered many attendees was Vance’s charge that far-right parties were somehow shut out of the public discourse in Europe. Most blatant was Vance’s open interference in Germany’s upcoming election on Feb. 23 in favor of the extremist, far-right, pro-Putin Alternative for Germany party, known as the AfD.

Standing in Munich — where Adolf Hitler rose to power and where British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain attempted to appease the führer by giving away a piece of Czechoslovakia — Vance had the gall to lecture democratic Europeans on the need to be fairer to extremist parties. This at a time when democratic institutions are being battered by Trump in the U.S.

The reaction at the conference was anger and a feeling the United States no longer shared democratic values with Europe. Instead, America now preferred an alliance with countries that repressed those values or with European political parties that hoped to do so. But perhaps the deeper ire was born out of Vance’s misrepresentation of Europe.

“I don’t know what Europe the American vice president has portrayed in his speech, but it was not the continent I live on,” I was told by Anna Sauerbrey, foreign editor of Die Zeit, Germany’s largest weekly.

“The Alternative for Germany party is by no means shut out from public discourse; on the contrary. Their front-runner, Alice Weidel, is constantly interviewed on prime time, and I just interviewed her for Die Zeit a few weeks ago.” Moreover, party leader Weidel appeared with all other candidates in a preelection TV debate Sunday.

Yet Vance went on to denounce the “firewall” that the main German parties observe not to take part in any coalition with the AfD. Apparently, he was unaware that in parliamentary systems, the leader of the largest party who forms a government has the democratic right to choose any coalition parties he wants to form a government.

Some conference attendees told me Vance’s speech was not totally surprising, given that Elon Musk has called the right-wing party, “the only hope for Germany.” In a virtual appearance at an AfD rally in late January — two days before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz — Tesla’s billionaire owner told Germans they should get over their guilt for their past. Musk also did a long, flattering web interview with Weidel.

Yet what was most concerning to European conferees was the clear message from Vance and other U.S. officials that Trump was ready to shape a deal with Putin that could endanger all of Europe, over the heads of Europe’s leaders and without prior consultation with Ukraine.

For Europeans, unlike for Vance, their chief worry is a Russian aggressor that is already conducting hybrid warfare all over the continent, via sabotage, arson, cyberwarfare, election interference, cutting sea cables, and murdering dissidents on European soil.

If Trump produces a bad peace plan that dooms Ukraine, they have no doubt that Putin will resume fighting and undermine other European states by force or hybrid efforts.

The Russian war on Ukraine has finally, and far too late, scared nearly all European countries into recognition they must seriously up their military game, integrate their military efforts — and figure out how to pay for it. How to do all that was a critical subject of discussion and debate at the conference.

European leaders know that unless they have U.S. backing, they don’t have the military means — at least not yet — to offer serious security assurances to Ukraine that Putin won’t try to invade again after a ceasefire. Yet, despite some vague and sugarcoated language, U.S. officials here made quite clear that the Europeans will be on their own.

For the first time, the Europeans truly seem to recognize that the peace dividend is over, and they must gird for war. They don’t care if Trump takes some of the credit for pushing them to spend more, and they recognize that they must find the funding. But they need to coordinate with the United States to present a credible enough threat to persuade Putin that his imperial dreams won’t work.

However, judging by Vance’s speech, the White House is more interested in heating up a culture war in Europe than in saving Ukraine or in the stability on the continent. Trump’s rush to produce a quick end to the war in Ukraine seems devoid of recognition that appeasing Putin will only encourage him, China, Iran, and North Korea to push further.

Trump’s dealmaking seems aimed more at appearances, and a star turn with Putin, than achieving a long-lasting result.

I asked retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, a senior member of Trump’s Ukraine team, if a European representative is not going to be at the negotiating table, and why did Trump not consult Ukraine and the Europeans before calling Putin, so as to present the Russian leader with a unified Western approach.

“It’s just a process,” he snapped back. “You can’t be offended at a process.”

Perhaps. But at the Munich Security Conference, most democratic European leaders reached the conclusion that it isn’t a process that includes them.

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