Europe Today Looks Different From the One Trump’s Team Describes

news analysisSecretary of State Marco Rubio appealed to European leaders in Munich by stressing Christian and cultural bonds that are no longer universal.Speaking over the weekend at the Munich-security-conference" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="16334" data-entity-type="event">Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “We are part of one civilization: Western civilization.”Credit...Alexandra Beier/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 15, 2026, 11:35 a.m. ETThere is an Afghan grocery store on the blocks outside the main train station in Munich. Halal food counters are sprinkled amid the cathedral spires and beer halls. Nearly one of every three residents you meet in town is not German.It’s a decent approximation of what many European cities, and European people, look like today. And a different Europe from the one the Trump administration says it wants to be friends with.Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, tried to soothe a year of friction between the United States and its trans-Atlantic allies on Saturday at the Munich-security-conference" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="16334" data-entity-type="event">Munich Security Conference. His speech there reiterated America’s commitment to Europe but wrapped it in historical and cultural ties that seemingly exclude large sections of the current European population.“We are part of one civilization: Western civilization,” Mr. Rubio told a crowd of anxious diplomats in Munich. “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.”The United States and Europe are indeed pillars of what historians refer to as Western Civilization, which has roots typically traced to ancient Greece.Their modern relationship — and the bonds Mr. Rubio said held it together — has been changed by demographic trends, including new arrivals and rising secularization.The idea of a “shared language” between the continents is a very recent one, and still not complete. About half of the European Union now speaks English as a foreign language, a share that rises to 70 percent for young Europeans.Christianity is declining across much of the continent. In the Europe’s three largest economies — Britain, France and Germany — less than half of residents now identify as Christian, according to survey data by Bertelsmann Stiftung, a nonpartisan foundation. The ranks of the religiously unaffiliated are growing, according to data by the Pew Research Center and others.After a decade-long influx of migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere, the share of Muslims across Europe has ticked up, to about 6 percent in 2020, according to Pew. The Jewish population has declined slightly and remains below 1 percent.In his speech, Mr. Rubio called widespread immigration a crisis for the continent and urged Europeans to change course, though the flow of immigrants to Germany and other European countries has slowed in recent years.ImageLeipzig and other German cities have large immigrant populations.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesCountries across Europe have struggled with questions of migration, culture and heritage in recent years. But many European leaders reject Mr. Rubio’s assertion — echoing President Trump and Vice President JD Vance — that mass migration “threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture and the future of our people.”“Germany’s experience shows that migration is a strength, not a weakness,” Reem Alabali Radovan, Germany’s minister for economic cooperation and development, told me in response to a question about Mr. Rubio’s speech.“People contribute to our society and economy regardless of their background,” she said. “Germany is a country of immigration, and our future prosperity depends on openness, opportunity and integration.”Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, a center-right politician who has tightened migration restrictions, leveled his own sort of critique of American values in Munich.Despite their moves to restrict migration, Mr. Merz and similar leaders across Europe have shown little appetite for the type of mass deportation campaigns favored by Mr. Trump. In a Friday speech to the security conference, Mr. Merz declared that “the culture war of the MAGA movement is not ours.”A few hours after Mr. Rubio spoke in Munich, I climbed a back staircase to meet with Ms. Alabali Radovan, a member of the center-left Social Democrats, the junior partners in Germany’s centrist governing coalition.Like Mr. Rubio, she is a child of immigrants. Her parents are Iraqi and were studying in Russia when she was born. They fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and were granted German asylum in the mid-1990s. In Munich, Ms. Alabali Radovan talked about her efforts to better help impoverished countries at a time when the Trump administration has cut back international aid sharply.Ms. Alabali Radovan said she worried about fraying solidarity — not just across the Atlantic, but globally — as countries prioritize national interests over cooperation. It was effectively a vision of international bonding to rival Mr. Rubio’s.“The challenges that we’re facing don’t know borders, like the climate crisis, like hunger, poverty, social injustice, like more authoritarians than democracies in the world right now,” she said. “We have to face them together.”On Saturday night, after the speeches, an overflow crowd filled Munich’s famed Hofbräuhaus. It was a multiethnic mix: partly European and American conference attendees, and partly groups of protesters who filled the city earlier in the day to demand freedom in Iran.Beer flowed into liter glasses. A polka band played. Diners broke out in songs and shouts. Some called for regime change. Some called for more beer.At times, it was hard to tell them apart.Jim Tankersley is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.SKIP