Live Updates: Rubio Emphasizes Shared History With Europe at Munich Security Conference

Current time inMunich12:12 p.m. Feb. 14 PinnedHere’s the latest.Europe and America “belong together,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday on the second day of the Munich-security-conference" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="16334" data-entity-type="event">Munich Security Conference, in a speech that echoed the Trump administration’s talking points on the threat of Western decline but that also underlined the deep friendship between the two continents.“We want Europe to be strong,” Mr. Rubio said, adding that the two world wars of the 20th century were a reminder that “our destiny is and always will be intertwined with yours.”“Because we know that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own,” Mr. Rubio said, later describing America and Europe as connected not only economically, militarily, but also “spiritually” and “culturally.”As Vice President JD Vance did last year at the same conference, Mr. Rubio issued dire warnings about the threats of mass migration and “civilizational erasure,” and about the decline of the international rules-based order — what he called “an overused term.” He depicted post-World War II institutions like the United Nations as in need of deep reform.“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West‘s managed decline,” he said.Unlike Mr. Vance, who scolded Europeans for sidelining far-right parties and accused them of limiting free speech, Mr. Rubio struck a diplomatic tone, emphasizing centuries of shared history between Europe and the United States, from the colonization of America to the struggle against Communism during the Cold War.Now, the United States wants to work with Europeans, not against them, Mr. Rubio said in his speech, which was met with bouts of applause and laughter, contrasting with the stony silence Mr. Vance faced last year.“Under President Trump, the United States will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration,” Mr. Rubio said. “While we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.”At the end of the speech, which was met with a brief standing ovation, Wolfgang Ischinger, the chairman of the conference, mentioned a collective “sigh of relief” from the crowd — a sign that Mr. Rubio had largely delivered on the friendly address that European leaders were hoping for.Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, spoke shortly after Mr. Rubio on Saturday and laid out a vision for what an independent and powerful European Union might look like.“The European way of life — our democracies, the democratic foundations, and the trust of our citizens — is being challenged in new ways, on everything from territories to tariffs to tech regulations,” she said in a barely concealed reference to tensions over Europe’s digital regulations and Mr. Trump’s threats to take over Greenland.“Europe must become more independent — there is no other choice,” Ms. von der Leyen said, adding that “some may say the word ‘independence’ runs counter to our trans-Atlantic bond. But the opposite is true.”Here’s what else to know:Ukraine: Mr. Rubio skipped a meeting of European leaders with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on the sidelines of the conference on Friday. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russian officials are set to resume next week in Geneva. Talks thus far have made little progress. “We don’t know if the Russians are serious about ending the war,” Mr. Rubio said after his speech. “We’re going to continue to test it.”Greenland: The prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland are set to address the conference on Saturday evening, a day after they met with Mr. Rubio in Munich. The Trump administration is trying to negotiate an expanded U.S. presence in Greenland or a greater official American control of the territory, which is an autonomous part of Denmark, and which Mr. Trump has repeatedly said the United States should own.Nuclear weapons: American and European officials stressed this week that the United States remains committed to its decades-long posture of providing a nuclear shield for its NATO allies in Europe. But Europe is making a backup plan, just in case. Mr. Merz said Friday that Germany had begun talks with France, a nuclear power, on establishing a nuclear deterrent for Europe that would not depend on America.Zelensky noted that Ukraine has endured 1,451 days of war since Russia’s full-scale invasion, “longer than anyone predicted.” He showed a map visualizing one of Russia’s recent attacks on Ukraine, including 24 ballistic missiles and 200 drones. “Just one night,” he said.ImageCredit...Liesa Johannssen/ReutersZelensky thanked Europe and mentioned the leaders by their first names, a sign of how close they are.For a panel discussing long-term support for Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky wore a dark suit instead of the more casual military-like clothing he has worn in past years. The audience greeted him with a standing ovation, a reminder of Europe’s support for Ukraine’s leader even as President Trump has treated himmore coolly.Europe’s Reaction to Rubio: Relief, Up to a PointImageMarco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, with Wolfgang Ischinger, the conference chairman, at the Munich-security-conference" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="16334" data-entity-type="event">Munich Security Conference, on Saturday.Credit...Pool photo by Alex BrandonSecretary of State Marco Rubio called for a stronger Europe in a sweeping speech at the Munich-security-conference" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="16334" data-entity-type="event">Munich Security Conference, emphasizing America’s European heritage even as he slammed “mass migration” and echoed U.S. officials’ past warnings of “civilizational erasure.”His remarks were received with relief by European leaders. They had watched the speech nervously, afraid that Mr. Rubio might reprise Vice President JD Vance’s scorching takedown of the continent’s governance at last year’s conference.“I was very much reassured by the speech of the secretary of state,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.But while Mr. Rubio’s tone was more flattering and less caustic than Mr. Vance’s was last year, the content of his remarks was enough to sustain unease, and to underscore that the trans-Atlantic relationship was still in the midst of fundamental change, a year into President Trump’s second term.Gabrielius Landsbergis, a former Lithuanian foreign affairs minister, said Mr. Rubio had painted over cracks that Mr. Vance created last year. But while he was more polite, Mr. Landsbergis said, the message was not fundamentally different.“It is now clear that this is all about interests, not common values,” Mr. Landsbergis wrote in a statement. “And do we actually have common interests?”As Mr. Rubio spoke, audience members huddled outside the conference hall seemed to visibly relax, chatting calmly after a period of apprehensive silence.Carl Bildt, a co-chairman of the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on social media that Mr. Rubio had “avoided the worst of JD Vance.”Still, he said, the speech “presented a view of the world and the challenges ahead” that was very different from the European perspective.A panel discussion shortly after Mr. Rubio’s remarks demonstrated how drastically the Trump administration had changed America’s relationship with its partners on the continent. European leaders on the panel said they needed to be less dependent on the United States, to work more closely together, and to firmly protect their own belief systems.“In today’s fractured world, Europe must become more independent — there is no other choice,” Ms. von der Leyen said. She later said the European Union would deepen ties with its “closest partners, like the U.K., Norway, Iceland or Canada.”That message of teaming up was echoed by Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, in his remarks at the conference.He said that “as Europe, we must stand on our own two feet,” emphasizing that Britain must build stronger links to the European Union, which its people voted to leave in 2016.Mr. Starmer added that Britain would show that “people who look different to each other can live peacefully together — that this isn’t against the tenor of our times,” he said. “Rather, it’s what makes us strong.”The British leader also emphasized that Europe should not take too much comfort from Mr. Rubio’s remarks.“We shouldn’t get in the warm bath of complacency,” he said. “That would be a mistake, and it would be a particular mistake for Europe.”President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is about to give remarks on the state of his country as part of a panel discussion.Rubio stresses shared history and defense goals to Europeans but also warns of ‘civilizational erasure.’ImageSecretary of State Marco Rubio speaking at the Munich-security-conference" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="16334" data-entity-type="event">Munich Security Conference.Credit...Johannes Simon/Getty ImagesWhen Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on Saturday of the United States being descended from Europe, he drew applause from the mainly European audience here at the Munich-security-conference" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="16334" data-entity-type="event">Munich Security Conference.“For us Americans, home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe,” he said. He stressed that countries on both sides of the Atlantic were “heirs to the same great and noble civilization,” and mentioned the cultural gifts that Europe had bestowed on the world — from ancient universities to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. That line got laughs.But his speech also conveyed the message that any ruptures between the United States and Europe were because of the Trump administration’s view that Europe had strayed too far from that shared culture and vision.He voiced far-right ideas in a few parts of his speech, in particular in a line in which he talked about the “civilizational erasure” that threatens the United States and Europe. He spoke several times of the dangers of “mass migration” and the need for nations to place much stricter limits on who enters their borders and settles in their lands.This was a central theme in the speech that Vice President JD Vance delivered in Munich last year, which alarmed European officials and drew scorn.Still, the diplomatic tone that Mr. Rubio struck sent a ripple of relief through the main conference hall. Mr. Rubio came to Munich aiming to reassure European nations that the Trump administration did not intend to widen schisms that have emerged in relations in the past year. He told reporters in Washington on Thursday that he thought his speech would be “well received.”Mr. Rubio also spoke in vague terms of a shared future. He told the Europeans that “our destiny together awaits.” He said he wanted to make it clear that “America is charting a path of a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends.”Mr. Rubio said the U.S.-Europe alliance cannot allow itself to be crippled by the “malaise of hopelessness and complacency” and paralyzed by fears of climate change and new technology.And he emphasized the need for greater defense spending by European nations, an idea that over the last year has become one that European leaders are voicing as well.“We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary can ever be tempted to test our collective strength,” Mr. Rubio said. That same demand is being made here at the conference by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy. Though it is one that first alarmed European officials when the Trump administration began emphasizing it early last year, the notion is now being embraced across this continent. That is also partly because of Russia’s persistence in carrying out its war in Ukraine.European officials say their countries need to be self-sufficient because Washington’s foreign policy sometimes directly threatens European interests, most notably in President Trump’s recent insistence that the U.S. government play a significant role in the control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.Mr. Rubio did address some specific shared security issues, including efforts to push Russia to end its war in Ukraine.“We don’t know if the Russians are serious about ending the war,” he said when asked about the conflict in a brief onstage chat after his speech. “We’re going to continue to test it.”He said the United States plans to continue to pressure Russia with economic sanctions and to sell weapons to Europe that will ultimately be used by Ukraine in its defensive efforts.European officials, however, are wary of Mr. Trump’s history of voicing admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Mr. Rubio also said the United States and European nations should try to carry on positive conversations with China, given China’s status as a superpower, without compromising their national interests. Mr. Trump halted his trade war with China because of the leverage wielded by the Chinese government on processed critical minerals and rare earths.“It would be in geopolitical malpractice to not be in conversations with China,” Mr. Rubio said. The two nations can find areas of cooperation, he said — a message that he eschewed in his previous job as a U.S. senator, when he advocated hard-line policies on China. But Mr. Trump often speaks of seeking a partnership with China, and he and Xi Jinping, the leader of China, are planning for a summit in Beijing in April.After Mr. Rubio’s speech, Wolfgang Ischinger, the chairman of the security conference, asked the American diplomat onstage whether he had heard the room’s collective “sigh of relief.”Starmer said that “too often” Europe’s defense capacity “adds up to less than the sum of its parts.” Fragmented manufacturing and planning “have led to gaps in some areas and massive duplication in others,” he said, noting that Europe has more than 20 kinds of frigates and more 10 kinds of main battle tanks. “It’s wildly inefficient, and it harms our collective security,” he said.“We must spend more, deliver more, and coordinate more, and crucially, we must do this with the United States,” Starmer said, describing the United States as an “indispensable” ally. But he also said that Europe had to take “primary responsibility” for its own defense.