The groans and the anxious side glances gave way to silence as Vice President JD Vance took center stage in Munich to pour contempt on longstanding US allies and cut Europe down to size.
It was an attack of unbridled ferocity in the name of free speech that laid bare the long-stewing hostility that Donald Trump and his most senior aides feel for the European Union — they see the bloc as a symbol of big government that constrains US companies.
But as European diplomats from Berlin to London pick through the rubble of the transatlantic relationship, the reality is that the continent has had eight years since Trump’s last election victory to get its house in order and three since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The wake-up call was a long time coming.
“This is existential,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in an interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, where Vance had been speaking.
French President Emmanuel Macron is looking to convene an emergency meeting of European leaders in an attempt to come up with a response.
Europe’s fate has turned on events in the Bavarian capital before, and not only in 1938 when the UK acquiesced to Adolf Hitler’s claims to part of Czechoslovakia in a doomed attempt to avoid war.
The illusion that Vance shattered was the belief, deep down, that the US would always be there to step in when needed, from World War II through to the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
“When I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the cold war’s winners,” Vance said. His disdain for Europe’s mainstream politicians was clear when he ducked out to see the leader of Germany’s far-right AfD party.
US officials told some Europeans in Munich that they believe America and China are the two big powers in discussions over Ukraine, even though the war is in the EU’s backyard, one European official said. The US will keep the Europeans abreast on progress but they’re not seen as significant players.
One veteran official said that Vance’s attack during his debut abroad was a watershed moment because it was such a fundamental attack on Europe’s values. It didn’t matter that European nations were dependent on the US for security when they shared the same basic principles, the official said. Without that common understanding, liberal democracy in Europe is at risk.
Europe now find itself in a desperate race to agree on plans for Ukraine’s security in the event of a peace deal with Trump already rushing into negotiations with Russia. The US president is planning to see Vladimir Putin as soon as this month.
The fear for many officials gathered for this year’s conference is that by dialing back support for Ukraine, Trump is inviting Putin to probe NATO’s willingness to defend the alliance’s eastern borders.
“If Putin continues, there will be a NATO test,” Tsahkna said.
Over the years there has been a lot of talk about the need for a common defense strategy. Macron was among the most vocal about the need to ramp up European capabilities but that never went far. Germany remained stubbornly opposed to joint borrowing with European defense bonds, the key step required to unleash defense spending to the tune of trillions.
A day after Vance’s address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spelled it out when describing his discussions with Trump about US plans for ending the war: “Not once did he mention that America needs Europe at that table.”
“That says a lot,” Zelenskiy noted on Saturday. “The old days are over – when America supported Europe just because it always had.”
The challenge for Europe goes deeper than a future Russian threat. In the here and now, Europe can’t afford to be sidelined from the conversations that will change the way the world works.
Multilateral forums like the Group of Seven and the Group of 20 are other places where its voice is heard. But if Trump decides they are not worth going to — a possibility officials are taking seriously — then their influence will be diminished even further.
That disrespect was tangible in the US dealings with both the UK and Ukraine this week.
After David Lammy’s meeting with Vance, the UK Foreign Secretary told reporters that the conversation had gone very well. Hours later the vice president was lambasting the British state for restricting protests outside abortion clinics.
In all this, the US was trying to ram through a one-sided deal to secure access to Ukraine’s natural resources after the war, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented the terms to Ukrainian officials in Kyiv earlier in the week and Vance’s team in Munich were pressuring the Ukrainians to sign, the people said.
One official compared the US approach to the Belgians in Africa in the 19th century. The parallel there is with Leopold II, who bought the Congo as his personal fiefdom.
European leaders are clinging to the limited reassurances they’ve received in private meetings with US officials. Vance, in bilateral meetings in Munich, left open the possibility of US involvement in security guarantees if Europe significantly stepped up its support , people familiar with the matter said.
“The conversation with Vance behind closed doors was very different from what he said on the public stage,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in an interview.
One European minister noted that everything is moving fast and Europe is not good at moving fast. To emphasize that point, another official insisted that nothing can happen until after next week’s German election, even though it may take weeks to form a new government.
The crunch point could come within a few months, according to one European who speaks to both Zelenskiy and the Trump team.
Russia has prepared for this moment, assembling already its cast of top-tier negotiators. Europeans are worried that the US has made too many concessions already and is eager to declare the problem solved, leaving them with the fallout.
The challenge is that the EU is good at negotiating when everyone plays by the same rules. In the free-for-all that Trump has set off, the EU is lost, because its leaders hands are tied.
Multiple officials in Munich said allies needed to agree on security guarantees among themselves before talks with Putin, but Trump is moving on a different timeframe.
Sensing the dangers ahead, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk implored the bloc to come up with a plan now.
In a week where the wheels of history appeared to turn with potentially massive consequences, it’s unclear whether everyone on the continent grasps the enormity of the stakes and the need to deal with reality as it is.
“There are only two things that motivate people to act: sex and the fear of death,” Tsahkna said. “The fear of death – do we have enough of it in Europe?”
