Vice President JD Vance’s speech Feb. 14 at the Munich Security Conference was not merely the most important speech the precocious young second-in-command has delivered in his political career. It was also a speech that encapsulates an entire geopolitical era — that of a return to prudence, sobriety and nationalism as the hallmarks of American foreign affairs.
This departure from post-Berlin Wall universalist liberalism has been a long time in the making, and Vance’s incisive rebuke of European elites powerfully drove home the point. For the foreseeable future, U.S.-Europe relations will not be the same — and that is a good thing.
Vance took a blowtorch to delicate European elite sensitivities. He excoriated, among other things, Europe’s unfortunate recent turn toward censorship of perceived “dissident” speech and mass immigration from nations such as Syria and Afghanistan. The diplomats assembled in Munich were, expectedly, aghast. One German official broke down in tears from the lectern. In truth, Vance was giving voice to the many Europeans who have been sending clear signals by voting for nationalist-populist anti-immigration parties everywhere from Britain to the old Iron Curtain.
But more than speaking for those Europeans, Vance was speaking as an American — and as a young American nationalist statesman, in particular. And it is here that we see how U.S.-Europe relations could be reset for a decade or more.
For the previous generation of American leaders, the notion of going into the belly of the European Union and delivering such a stern rebuke to high-ranking European leaders would have been unthinkable. For Americans who came of political age during the Cold War, it was simply expected that the United States and Western Europe, specifically, would long be allied in lockstep fashion. After all, in contrast to the Soviet Union and other communist nations, we shared the same values.
Vance’s speech underscored the growing chasm between American and European values. The United States prizes free speech; Europeans increasingly do not. The United States, especially since Jan. 20, once again prizes sovereignty and nationhood; European elites increasingly do not.
But the broader Trump-Vance “America First” critique of Europe goes far beyond a growing “values” chasm. There is also a massive “national interest” chasm. Unless and until Europe comes to appreciate that MAGA-style foreign policy realism places the pursuit of the American national interest above everything else, U.S.-Europe relations will continue to be strained.
The Trump foreign policy doctrine, which goes back to his first term and for which Vance has emerged as an articulate spokesman, is predicated on a sober assessment of the 21st century geopolitical map. We once again live, as we did during the Cold War, in a multipolar world; this time, the power to focus on is communist China. Accordingly, America’s overwhelming imperative is to devote our limited resources — at least those deployed outside our own hemisphere — to containing and repelling China. But America does, of course, have other interests in the world; we are threatened by radical Islamism, and we do depend on the freedom of navigation on the seas just as much as any power.
The relevant question for structuring American foreign relations is thus this: How can we best empower and embolden proficient, generally self-sufficient allies to patrol and safeguard their own regions of the world in a way that redounds to the mutual tangible interests of both our regional allies and the United States itself?
The Abraham Accords peace deals, brokered during the final year of Trump’s first term, demonstrate how this can work in practice. A quintessential act of foreign policy realism statecraft, the accords brought together Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in a strategic Iran-containment alliance. (Saudi Arabia, though formally on the sidelines, supports the accords.) Iran and its myriad proxy militias present a continuing threat to the United States, as we tragically learned at Tower 22 in Jordan last January, and the best-bang-for-your-buck, American-national-interest-securing path to containing the mullahs is to embolden like-minded allies to tend to the problem in their parts of the world.
There could, in theory, be a similar situation in Europe. The United States, after all, is threatened by Russia — albeit not nearly as much as is Europe. But European elites too often try to have it both ways with Russia; they are hopelessly addicted to Russian energy, and Germany above all was the leading proponent of the Vladimir Putin-empowering Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Despite their addiction to Russian energy, they ironically claim to be deathly afraid of Putin’s territorial ambitions. While EU energy purchases power Putin’s war machine, many of Europe’s NATO members still do not meet their defense spending treaty obligations.
There is a genuine “national interest” gulf between the United States and Europe on the pressing question of Russia, including the settlement of the war in Ukraine. If Europeans are so gravely concerned about the precise nature of the redrawn Donbas border in eastern Ukraine, for instance, they can invest more of their own military and diplomatic resources to pursue that settlement themselves. But Europe should not stand in the way of a U.S.-led resolution to the war in Ukraine.
The post-Berlin Wall unipolar moment is long over. Nationalism and realism are not merely the flavors of the day; they are the flavors of the century. It would behoove Europe to get with the program. JD Vance is right.
Josh Hammer is senior editor-at-large for Newsweek. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer
