Over the past year, European leaders have been presented with three distinct, often conflicting, visions of how the Trump administration intends to reshape America’s alliances. While each perspective brought a different tone, their collective aim was to usher in a new era where Washington’s commitment to defending its partners would face redefinition and new limitations.
One such articulation came from Vice President J.D. Vance last year, who delivered a sharp critique of European democracy. He argued that the influx of immigrants and Europe’s own restrictions on far-right political groups posed a more significant threat to the continent than any aggression from Russia.
A more palatable, yet fundamentally similar, message was delivered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently. He painted an idealized picture of a shared cultural history between Europe and the United States, stressing that both faced a risk of “civilizational erasure” unless they secured their borders.
Adding to the nuanced discourse, Elbridge Colby, the under secretary of defense for policy and the most senior defense official at the conference, offered a pragmatic American national security viewpoint. He emphasized shared strategic interests over common values, advocating a focus on practical, “nuts and bolts” cooperation.
It’s perfectly understandable that Europeans emerged from the conference feeling somewhat bewildered.
The addresses by Vance and Rubio, potentially future presidential rivals or running mates in 2028, were carefully calibrated not just for their international audience, but equally for domestic consumption. Each phrase resonated with MAGA supporters at home, many of whom harbor skepticism about the extent of the Trump administration’s global interventions, be it in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, or even Greenland.
Yet, the primary listeners were NATO allies. Despite their commitment to significantly increase defense spending by 2035, European nations are keenly aware that a deepening rift with the United States would necessitate replicating America’s vast military capabilities and global reach. Such an endeavor would be astronomically expensive and could easily take a decade or two to achieve.
Vice President Vance’s speech last year was met with shocked silence and even gasps. In contrast, Secretary Rubio’s more tempered approach earned a standing ovation from attendees at the grand Bayerischer Hof hotel, a symbol of the very ‘old Europe’ he seemed to idealize. His remarks were even praised as reassuring by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
Wolfgang Ischinger, the security conference chairman, highlighted a key distinction: Vance spoke of NATO as “them,” while Rubio used “we.” Nevertheless, Ischinger still characterized Rubio’s speech as a distinctly “American view of the world.”
Many European officials and analysts reacted with immediate caution. Rubio’s defense of the alliance largely sidestepped direct threats from Russia and other adversaries, focusing instead on a shared white Christian heritage he claimed bound Europe and the United States.
While Rubio avoided mentioning the far-right parties praised by Vance, his words echoed the sentiment that national security strategy should fundamentally protect “one civilization: Western civilization.”
He declared, “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.”
He further asserted that the Trump administration had “no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” adding that, “We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”
Observers universally noted Rubio’s subsequent travel from Munich to Slovakia and Hungary, nations led by populist, far-right parties that are openly skeptical of the European Union and have fostered closer ties with Russia, particularly concerning the conflict in Ukraine.
Luuk van Middelaar, a Dutch historian and former EU official, described Rubio’s speech as “well-crafted, and therefore all the more dangerous for the Europeans.” He saw it as an offer for a new pact based on shared civilization, but strategically omitting the earlier Vance perspective, which implied alignment with MAGA-friendly allies within Europe.
In this sense, van Middelaar argued, “the Europeans are walking into a trap.” He felt Rubio “tried to embrace us in a shared story of history and peoples, kin and religion, while leaving out an awful lot of nonwhite Europeans — and Americans, too.”
A senior European official likened Rubio’s argument to a “poison pill.” He suggested that the call to defend “Western civilization” was presented as a condition for America’s protective umbrella, subtly implying that the United States and its Western allies were striving to preserve a predominantly white, Christian Europe. This, he contended, would severely complicate European leaders’ ability to engage with the broader world and even their own non-Christian citizens.
While some Europeans recognize that Vance and Rubio address both European and American audiences, Colby operates outside the political realm. As a conservative defense scholar, he finds himself tasked with clarifying a Trump national security strategy that appears to evolve on a weekly basis.
Colby advocated for “common sense and flexible realism,” dismissing discussions of shared values as mere “hosannas or shibboleths.” He openly stated, “From our part of the political spectrum, I’m not sure that’s true,” regarding inherent shared values.
Instead, Colby proposed, “let’s ground our partnership on something more enduring and durable and kind of real, like shared interests.” He acknowledged that “the values are obviously there, and the history is there,” but asserted that “you can’t base an alliance on sentiment alone,” and conceded that “maybe there are differences of values.”
This message resonated much better with European figures like German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who, in his opening remarks, pointedly declared, “The culture wars of the MAGA movement are not ours.”
Colby’s vision of a relationship based on shared interests, coupled with his explicit commitment to collective defense and the American nuclear guarantee, aligns far more closely with European desires.
He further stressed that Europe would eventually need to be capable of defending itself in any conventional conflict. He highlighted America’s central role in NATO as crucial for preventing conventional disputes from escalating into nuclear warfare.
Ultimately, Europe was left grappling with the question of which America it was truly allied with, observed Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist and fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
“Sometimes we say we can do without the Americans, and then sometimes we’re relieved that America seems to be back,” he noted.
He warned that Europeans who perceive Rubio’s stance as a return to the familiar American ally they’ve known since World War II “are fooling themselves.”
Krastev added, “And you could say Europeans want to be fooled, since they are dependent on the U.S. even more today than in 1989,” a reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall, emphasizing the heightened dependence given Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, which poses a direct challenge to European security.
According to Krastev, Europeans are less concerned about increased military spending as the United States shifts its focus toward China.
“What Europeans are most worried about is that this administration became highly ideological,” he stated. “What is new is the readiness of the U.S. to enter European domestic politics. And what’s interesting is not what Rubio said here but where he goes from here”—his visits to Slovakia and Hungary.