While European leaders cautiously welcomed a softer tone from the US at the Munich Security Conference, American independence and the “Trumpian narrative” remained top of mind for Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference didn’t deviate from the themes of Donald Trump’s second term in office.
Europe, he said Saturday, had to speed up its defense spending and army building.
The US secretary of state warned, as the Trump administration has done before, that Europe risked “civilizational erasure.” And he espoused a general view that in a new world order, it was nations — not institutions — that would get an imperfect world on track.
But his tone was far softer than a year ago when US Vice President JD Vance shook the gathering of world political and defense leaders by lambasting Europe’s approach to free speech, immigration and security.
DW Chief International Correspondent Richard Walker said it appeared Rubio was trying to create “a Trumpian narrative of what the West actually is.”
“Rubio’s message was much warmer in its tone, it was really trying to pull on European heartstrings to try and create a sense of common purpose, to create, almost, a unified theory that links security to a different idea of … the West.
“A lot of people here do seem to be relieved that it wasn’t guns blazing like JD Vance, but when you listen closely to what Rubio was saying there was an awful lot of the kind of Trumpian view of nation that was going right through [the speech].”
The last year has seen fears mount that the US wants out of Europe, with Trump eyeing the Danish territory of Greenland and speaking more openly about a sphere of influence focused more intently on the Americas. But Rubio’s speech sought to keep an arm around Europe.
While still asserting a Trumpian view dismissing climate policy and immigration, Rubio cast the US as a “child of Europe.”
He bridged a year of divide by evoking a shared Christian heritage across the Atlantic, and of the European connections that built the US. Rubio also praised partners in Europe for helping broker peace opportunities for Ukraine, while remaining critical of the UN as a forum for effective diplomacy.
Rubio casts ‘civilization’ at heart of US alliance with Europe
But Rubio also maintained a consistent theme of the second Trump administration — echoed by other world leaders, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, on the first day of the MSC on Friday — that the global order had changed, and positioned the US as a muscular guardian of Western values and culture.
“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” said Rubio. “We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”
Civilization was an inescapable theme on Saturday morning in Munich, evoked by Rubio a dozen times in his speech and later touched on by his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, who used the label to describe both China and Europe as partner — not rival — civilizations.
While Wang struck a different chord in his address to delegates, calling for improved global governance with the United Nations, Rubio reiterated Trump’s nations-first view on foreign policy and dismissed the UN as an effective arbiter of international relations.
“Rubio thinks very much about the competition between the United States and China,” said Walker, adding that despite the softer tone, Rubio echoed Vance’s message that a show of national strength was “the way to get things done,” and not the “liberal, international” approach promoted by the EU.
“For the European Union, the underlying ideas and the rhetoric Rubio was using here is actually quite troubling because the whole point of the European Union is almost to move beyond the idea of nation, and not to try to express ideas such as that the West is, as Rubio said, the greatest civilization in human history.”
For his part, Rubio sought to keep Europe on the US side of the civilizational theme, describing a shared Western culture that was “unique, distinctive and irreplaceable.” He said it wasn’t “our goal nor our wish” to see the end of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
Cautious welcome of Rubio’s speech
Though a warmer narrative compared to remarks from other US officials, including Trump, since February 2025, Rubio was clearly singing from the administration’s hymn sheet.
He rebuked what he called a “climate cult” amid a US pivot away from the green transition and back toward fossil fuel interests, and said Europe should not fear technology at a time when the EU has sought to assert guardrails against American tech companies.
Those differences were acknowledged by European figures, as they welcomed the US tonal shift.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told DW in Munich that Rubio’s pitch was “a different category to the speech we heard last year [from Vance].”
But Wadephul also stressed the importance of German and European independence on defense, climate policy and trade.
“Climate change is there, and of course we have to give answers, we have, not to deny that climate change is existing, but I understood his speech in a way that we have to give flexible answers, not to be dogmatic,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say that we have 100% overlapping between our priorities and the priorities from the US side, but I would say this is really a common ground for a bright future between the United States and Europe.”
