Vice President JD Vance shocked European diplomats attending last week’s annual Munich Security Conference by presenting a thoughtful critique of the reasons behind the steady decline of the continent due to its policy failings from “within” rather than the threat from “external actors” such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, or China.
According to Vance, the greatest dangers facing America’s allies in Europe today, including the EU and Great Britain, stem from the continent’s leaders’ abandonment of “some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America” namely free speech and respect for the outcome of democratic elections. Europe’s governing class has also failed to meet their commitments to NATO and America by paying their fair share of the costs of their common defense, and by opening Europe’s borders to mass immigration, it has exposed the continent to the threat of Islamic terrorism.
Three days earlier, Vance delivered an equally disturbing message at a Paris summit meeting evaluating Europe’s progress in developing the cutting-edge field of artificial intelligence (AI). Vance said that the European Union was falling behind in that crucial technology because of the excessive risk aversion and regulatory restrictions of the unelected EU bureaucracy in Brussels, and that the only alternative would be for it to pursue AI research with “optimism rather than trepidation.”
Taking the two speeches together, Vance’s “tough love” message was that while the United States and Europe should be natural partners in innovation and in promoting liberty, free speech, and democracy, Europe’s shortcomings that he had identified were making that partnership increasingly difficult.
Constitutional law expert and commentator Jonathan Turley of George Washington University compared the importance of Vance’s speech to the European leaders in Munich to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s historic “Iron Curtain” speech marking the beginning of the Cold War that he delivered on March 5, 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Churchill declared that “an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent” of Europe, launching the struggle between the two superpowers that emerged from World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, for world domination. To withstand the strong postwar Soviet push to turn Western Europe communist, Churchill called for the strengthening of the Anglo-American partnership. That led to the formation of the NATO alliance in 1949, which stabilized Western Europe and maintained peace through military strength until the Soviet empire collapsed in 1991 due to its internal weaknesses.
EUROPE AT A HISTORIC CROSSROADS
According to Vance, Europe today stands at a similar turning point. The vice president also said that because Europe’s leaders have lost the faith and trust of their own people, they have no right to call for more military assistance from the United States “in the name of our shared democratic values” because they have abandoned those defining values, such as free speech and fair elections.
Vance was not speaking in generalities. He cited numerous events across Europe reported in recent headlines. These included a law passed in Scotland last October that makes it illegal for a person to stand in silent prayer within 200 yards of a women’s health clinic. Three weeks ago, a Christian man in Sweden was prosecuted for burning a copy of the Koran in protest against the murder of his friend, and was told by the judge who convicted him that Sweden’s laws to protect free expression did not grant him, “a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.” Vance also noted an EU Commission plans to shut down social media during times of civil unrest and to conduct police raids on people suspected of spreading misinformation on the internet.
According to Turley, Vance was accusing the leadership of the European nations participating in the Munich conference of “erasing the very distinctions between us and our adversaries.”
VANCE CONDEMNS THE EU’S “DIGITAL ENFORCER”
Vance directed his harshest criticism at Thierry Breton, a former EU Commissioner for the Internal Market who has become infamous as a self-styled “digital enforcer,” stifling free speech and ruthlessly suppressing the dissemination of unconventional political ideas both inside and beyond the European Union. Last August, Breton tried to use the EU’s notorious Digital Services Act (DSA) to prevent Elon Musk from using his X social media platform (formerly known as Twitter) to give its large European audience access to his live, 2-hour interview with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Breton claimed in a threatening open letter to Musk that the “spillover” in Europe from the Trump interview posed a threat to “civic discourse” and “public policy” and fell under the DSA prohibition of “harmful content,” which Breton defined overbroadly as, “content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.”
Breton’s effort to pre-censor the Trump interview sparked a protest letter from 18 respected European free speech organizations and activists, who wrote that it reflected “an alarming disregard for freedom of expression; it is inconsistent with. . . the very spirit of a free and vibrant democratic culture. Your interpretation of the DSA will harm, not enhance, civic discourse, both in the European Union and globally.”
The free speech activists argued that Breton’s effort to censor the streaming of the interview on a popular online platform “is more characteristic of an autocratic nation than a democracy.” They also declared that in its role as “a guardian of fundamental rights, the European Commission and national authorities should ensure that the DSA is not applied in a way that harms freedom of expression.”
MUSK’S REVENGE
Musk got his revenge a month later when Breton was forced to resign from his EU post by European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen, at least partially because Breton had failed to clear his censorship letter to Musk with her or other EU commissioners before he sent it.
But even though he is no longer an EU official, Breton is still part of the liberal elite that rules Europe by stifling free speech and independent political thinking. Last month, in an interview with French TV, Breton was delighted that his role in applying EU pressure to the Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) led to its annulment of the results of the first round of Romania’s presidential elections in December, based on a report by Romania’s intelligence service that a Russian social media advertising campaign had influenced and disqualified the election’s outcome. But it was clear that the real reason the results were thrown out was because the election was unexpectedly won by Calin Georgeascu, a previously little-known right-wing populist candidate who regularly speaks out against NATO and the autocratic rule of the elite EU bureaucracy.
Much the same thing happened in France last summer when the extreme right-wing party led by Marine Le Pen stunned the ruling French elite establishment by clearly winning the first round of parliamentary elections. But instead of disgracing themselves by throwing out the first election results, the elites pooled their votes by creating a united front of several mainstream political parties which managed to defeat Le Pen’s candidates in the runoff election.
Conservative commentator Roger Kimball noted that Trump believes that he suffered the same treatment from the Democrats whom he accuses of having rigged the outcome of the 2020 presidential election to defeat him, but that they were unable to do the same in last November’s election because, in Trump’s own words, his popular vote majority and victories in all seven of the battleground states were “too big to rig.”
VANCE EXPOSES THE WEAKNESS OF EUROPE’S DEMOCRACIES
Vance mocked the primary excuse of Europe’s self-appointed censors of free speech, that they were protecting their citizens from disinformation, by pointing out that, in fact, they were only protecting their privileged positions of power. Vance also had the courage to tell his astonished audience that while “you can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. . . [and] you can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”
Breton had also claimed that the EU’s interference in Romania’s democratic presidential election process was a moral obligation needed to preserve that country’s unpopular political status quo, and warned the German people that if they dared to elect the extreme right-wing AfD [Alternative for Germany] party in their February 23 parliamentary election, they could expect the same kind of EU interference. “We did it in Romania, and we will obviously have to do it in Germany, if necessary,” Breton declared in his televised interview, with no sign of remorse.
In his Munich speech, Vance said that EU bureaucratic despots like Breton who censor dissidents, oppress the practice of religion, and cancel elections were dooming Europe because, like the communist leaders of the Soviet Union, “they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty. The freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build. As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe.”
EUROPEAN LEADERS ARE AFRAID OF THEIR VOTERS
He also memorably warned the European leaders present that, “If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.”
On the other hand, Vance said, “The good news is that I happen to think your [European] democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear, and I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still. Which, of course, brings us back to Munich, where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing [European political] parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations.
“Now,” Vance continued, “we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say, but when. . . political leaders represent an important [voter] constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.”
The vice president also said that, for “many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, [today’s European leaders] looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, G-d forbid, vote a different way or even worse, win an election.”
By this point, Vance’s audience, consisting of liberal elite EU bureaucrats and military leaders, was steaming with quiet fury at being lectured by a messenger from an American president for whom they had so little respect for their betrayal of democracy, for their hypocrisies, and for ignoring the will of their voters.
WHAT KIND OF DEMOCRACY IS EUROPE DEFENDING?
Vance then returned to the security theme of the Munich conference and how European countries “intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that’s great because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent.” But he then asked how you European leaders can “even begin to think through [those] kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we’re defending in the first place?
“What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?” Vance asked. He then warned, “I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now. . . is one of our own making.”
Vance then turned to another urgent challenge facing both the United States and Europe — mass migration. He began by observing that “Today, almost one in five people living in this country [Germany] moved here from abroad. . . The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone, and of course, it’s gotten much higher since. . .”
EUROPE IS SUFFERING FROM RUNAWAY IMMIGRATION
“It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade,” Vance noted. He then added that just the day before, one of those Muslim immigrants from Afghanistan had staged a terrorist attack on the city of Munich by deliberately driving a car into a crowd of people at a trade union rally, killing a mother and her two-year-old daughter and injuring at least 37 more people.
“It’s a terrible story,” the vice president said. “But it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe and, unfortunately, too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-twenties, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community.
“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” Vance asked angrily, and then added, “No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.
“But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. . . And more and more all over Europe [including Germany], they’re voting for [right wing] political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. . .”
THE DANGER OF IGNORING THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
“It’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. . . I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process, protects nothing. In fact, it is the most sure-fire way to destroy democracy,” Vance concluded.
“What no democracy, American, German, or European, will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters.”
Vance spoke out against the so-called firewall established by the mainstream German political parties, who have agreed not to allow the AfD party to join any governing coalition because of its alleged neo-Nazi tendencies, no matter how many votes the party might receive in the February 23 election. In Vance’s words, “You either uphold the principle [of electoral democracy] or you don’t.” In the most recent German polls, the AfD, which has been campaigning on a populist, anti-Muslim immigration platform, was predicted to win 21% of the popular vote, which would make it the second-largest party in the new German parliament.”
ADL BLASTS VANCE FOR DEFENDING MUSK AND THE FAR RIGHT AFD
The American vice president also came to the defense of Elon Musk, who has been harshly criticized in Germany and the United States for his campaigning on behalf of the AfD. Back in December, Musk wrote that “Only the AfD could save Germany.” He later told the AfD party members that Germans have “too much of a focus on past guilt.”
Vance quipped, “Trust me, if American democracy survived [climate change and pro-Palestinian activist] Greta Thunberg’s scolding for the better part of a decade, I guarantee you German democracy will survive [a few months of campaigning by] Elon Musk.”
But shortly after Vance completed his Munich remarks, he was rebuked by the Anti-Defamation League, which said that it was “deeply concerning” that the vice president appeared to welcome a dangerous right-wing party with “an extremist agenda and a history that includes antisemitic, anti-Muslim, anti-democratic and xenophobic rhetoric.”
VANCE’S LESSON FROM HIS VISIT TO DACHAU
Vance’s critics asked how he could argue for the inclusion of the AfD in German political life a day after he and his wife paid a visit to the Nazi-era Dachau concentration camp. Vance and his wife toured the camp, which has been preserved as a museum, to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, laid a memorial wreath, and listened to the story of a survivor of Dachau, 96-year-old Abba Naor.
Vance then told reporters, “I’ve read a lot about the Holocaust in books, but being here, and seeing it up close in person, really drives home what unspeakable evil was committed and why we should be committed to ensuring that it never happens again.”
While he was in Munich, Vance met privately with AfD leader Alice Weidel to discuss both German politics and the war in Ukraine. He also met privately with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Friedrich Merz, who is, according to CNN, the frontrunner to become Germany’s next chancellor.
In his public presentation, Vance encouraged European leaders to “embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you.
“And that, to me,” Vance said, “is the great magic of democracy. . . To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little.”
Vance was giving his Munich audience of European leaders the benefit of the lessons that he and President Trump had learned that enabled their electoral victory in November. He recognized that, much like American voters, the people of Europe are in revolt against illegal immigration, Islamic terrorism, rule by government bureaucracy, judicial activism, media bias, and censorship.
EUROPE’S LEADERS REJECT VANCE’S MESSAGE
Not surprisingly, the European leaders in his Munich audience rejected Vance’s scolding message. Few of them were willing to offer the usual polite applause. Instead, at the end of his speech, the smug European leaders looked straight ahead with an expression of disgust on their faces. However, the Wall Street Journal reported that some members of the audience admitted that Vance’s criticisms were right on certain points.
This was not Vance’s first visit to the Munich conference. He attended it last year, as a Republican senator from Ohio, and argued with its participants over U.S. support for Ukraine.
The European leaders attending the Munich Security Conference were expecting to hear Vance talk much more about the Trump administration’s plans to end the war in Ukraine, as well as Trump’s call for NATO members to increase their mandatory minimum annual military spending from the current level of 2% of GDP to 5% in light of the continuing threat of invasion by Russia. In particular, Poland and the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, have boosted their military spending out of fear that they are likely to be Putin’s next targets once the war in Ukraine is resolved. Instead, the European leaders were caught by surprise when Vance focused instead on the internal problems facing European democracy.
HEGSETH LIMITS EXPECTATIONS FOR UKRAINE IN A PEACE DEAL
Instead, it was visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who made headlines during his visit last week to NATO headquarters in Brussels with his comments about the Trump administration’s attitudes towards key issues that will ultimately have to be resolved in any peace deal to end the Ukraine war. Hegseth said that it was unrealistic to expect that the final peace deal would enable Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders, or give it a path to full membership in NATO, which would guarantee the support of the U.S. in the event of another Russian attack, or to expect any U.S. troops to be stationed in Ukraine as a deterrent against a future Russian invasion, as the U.S. has done for the past 70 years in South Korea.
Hegseth’s comments created a great deal of concern among Ukraine’s leaders and their European allies that the Trump administration had compromised Ukraine’s negotiating position with Russia without consulting with them. In response to the Ukrainian and European expressions of alarm, Hegseth walked back those remarks and declared that all options remained available to President Trump during the Ukraine peace talks with Russia.
However, the fact that Trump did not criticize Hegseth for making those provocative comments suggests that he might have made them at Trump’s direction, in an effort to soften up the Ukrainian negotiating position in advance of the start of peace talks with the Russians.
TRUMP PUTTING EVERYTHING ON THE UKRAINE NEGOTIATING TABLE
Vice President Vance also confirmed during a Wall Street Journal interview the day before his Munich speech that, “The president is not going to go [into] this [negotiation] with blinders on. He’s going to say, ‘Everything is on the table, let’s make a deal.’”
When he was asked about Hegseth’s earlier statement eliminating the possibility that American forces might be sent to Ukraine as peacekeepers, Vance said that it was too early to speculate about how much Ukrainian territory the final peace deal would leave in Russia’s hands, or what kind of security guarantees would be given to Ukraine against another invasion by Russia. “There are any number of formulations, of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence,” the vice president said.
Vance said that U.S. negotiators would try to persuade Putin that Russia would achieve more at the negotiating table than continuing the war on the battlefield. More specifically, the vice president said that Russia’s current isolation due to Ukraine-inspired sanctions from the international marketplace made it, in effect, “the little brother in a coalition with China.” But he also warned that if Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t agree to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine in good faith, that guarantees the Kyiv government’s long-term independence, the U.S. could punish Russia with a broad range of measures.
TRUMP HAS A BROAD RANGE OF OPTIONS
“There are economic tools of leverage, there are, of course, military tools of leverage” the U.S. could use against Putin, the vice president said. “There’s a whole host of things that we could do. But fundamentally, I think the president wants to have a productive negotiation, both with Putin and with Zelensky.”
He also said that Trump’s negotiating positions could change depending on how the negotiations unfold. “President Trump could say, look, we don’t want this thing, we might not like this thing, but we’re willing to put it back on the table if the Russians aren’t being good negotiating partners, or there are things that are very important to Ukrainians that we might want to take off the table.”
Vance also said: “I think there is a deal that is going to come out of this that’s going to shock a lot of people.”
TRUMP BREAKS THE ICE WITH A PHONE CALL TO PUTIN
Expectations for a peace deal to stop the fighting in Ukraine were revived last week as a result of a phone call between President Trump and Putin, which put an end to a three-year Biden administration-imposed freeze on talks between top U.S. and Russian leaders. Trump followed up over the weekend with an announcement that preliminary negotiations over a Ukraine peace deal between high-level U.S. and Russian officials would start this week, hosted by Saudi Arabia.
Trump told reporters, “We’re moving along. We’re trying to get a peace deal with Russia and Ukraine, and we’re working very hard on it.” He also said that he expected to hold a face-to-face meeting with Putin “very soon.”
Trump’s announcement of the bilateral U.S.-Russian talks sparked fears expressed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders that Trump was cutting them out of the peace negotiations with Putin. After Zelensky warned in a televised NBC News interview that he would “never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine,” Trump responded with a vague assurance that Zelensky would be “involved” in the negotiations.
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told reporters in Munich that he thought Trump’s phone call with Putin was a mistake because it seemed to “vindicate” the Russian leader of responsibility for his war crimes, [as did Trump’s call for restoring Russia’s membership in the G8 group of industrialized nations] and lowered morale in Ukraine. But Sikorski then added: “When President Trump says as part of a deal there will have to be European troops, [that means] we will have to be asked to supply them, so sooner or later we will have to be involved [and that will give us an opportunity to have some input].
The American delegation conducting the negotiations over Ukraine with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia was led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He was joined by Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who played a pivotal role in finalizing the Gaza cease-fire deal one week before Trump was inaugurated as president.
WILL PUTIN NEGOTIATE A UKRAINE PEACE DEAL IN GOOD FAITH?
In an attempt to further clarify the Trump administration’s intentions and the current state of negotiations with Russia, Secretary of State Rubio said during a broadcast interview with CBS News, “Well, first of all, I think that we have to understand [that] right now, there is no process. What we have right now is a call between Putin and President Trump in which both sides expressed an interest in ending this conflict. . .
“The next few weeks and days will determine whether [Russia is] serious or not. Ultimately, one phone call [between Trump and Putin] does not make peace. One phone call does not solve a war as complex as this one.
“If it’s real negotiations,” Rubio continued, “and we’re not there yet — but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved, because they’re the one that was invaded, and the Europeans will have to be involved because they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well, and they’ve contributed to this effort [to support Ukraine’s defense].”
Rubio also said, “[When President Trump ran for president] he was very clear. He thinks this war needs to end. And if he sees an opportunity to end it. . . we’re going to pursue it.”
The CBS interviewer, Margaret Brennan, then asked Rubio if “There was any proof that Vladimir Putin was interested in talks. You know the history of Vladimir Putin. He likes to use diplomacy as a cover to distract while he continues to wage war. Do you trust that this time is different?”
TRUMP IS THE BEST NEGOTIATOR IN AMERICAN POLITICS
Rubio answered, “I don’t think, in geopolitics, anyone should trust anyone. I think these things have to be verified through actions. . . What I can tell you is that I know of no better negotiator in American politics than President Trump.
“I think President Trump will know very quickly whether. . . this [is] a real thing or whether this is an effort to buy time. . .
“I think everyone should be celebrating the fact that we have an American president who is seeking to promote peace in the world, not start wars, but end them in a way that’s enduring.
Later in the interview with Rubio, CBS reporter Brennan questioned Vice President Vance’s decision to lecture the European leaders in Munich on their abandonment of the principle of free speech, given the fact that “he was standing in a country [Germany] where free speech was weaponized [by Hitler] to conduct a genocide.”
Rubio then reminded Brennan that “Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal, because they hated Jews and they hated minorities … There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were the sole and only party that governed that country. So [your question is] not an accurate reflection of history.” Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron called for an emergency meeting of European leaders in Paris this week to discuss their role in trying to end the war in Ukraine.
U.S. lawmakers also told the Journal what happened in their private meeting with Zelensky in Munich. Earlier, Zelensky met with Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose arrival in Munich was delayed because a crack in the windshield of the plane bringing him to Munich forced it to turn back to the U.S.
The lawmakers said that Zelensky had told them that when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent visited him in Kyiv, he tried to convince the Ukrainian president to sign over to the U.S. the mining rights to 50% of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which are essential for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and other strategic products. The largest producer of rare earth elements is China, which produces roughly two-thirds of the worldwide supply, followed by the United States, which produces only about 5%.
LIBERAL ELITE HYPOCRISY OVER FREEDOM OF SPEECH
There was also an angry reaction to Vance’s speech by many members of the anti-Trump American foreign policy establishment and some Democrats. They rejected Vance’s open challenge of the allegiance of Europe’s leaders to the fundamental democratic principles of free speech and his condemnation of their disdain for the outcome of free elections and the preferences of the voters.
Turley also recalled that while there were no complaints when Hillary Clinton asked EU officials to start censoring the political content on Twitter by invoking the powers of the DSA after Elon Musk bought it and promptly put an end to its censorship apparatus, Vance’s vigorous call for the restoration of free speech in Europe was greeted with outrage by the liberal elites on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Germany’s Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius, angrily interrupted Vance’s remarks with loud cries of “No!” and afterward rejected his message as “unacceptable.” In his own speech to the Munich conference, following Vance’s presentation, Pistorius declared, to loud applause from the audience, “I am grateful and proud to live in a Europe that defends our democracy and our way of life, both against internal and against external enemies.”
Pistorius, who has been campaigning for Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) ahead of the parliamentary election, insisted that Germany’s democracy does allow for a plurality of views, which means that the AfD can campaign “just like any other party.”
“I strongly oppose the impression that Vice President Vance has created that minorities are being suppressed or silenced in our democracy,” Pistorius added.
GERMANY’S LEADERS BLAST VANCE’S MESSAGE
As part of his lengthy response to Vance’s speech, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that “A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD. This ‘never again’ is the historical mission that Germany as a free democracy must and wants to continue to live up to every day. Never again to fascism, never again to racism, never again to wars of aggression.”
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in response to Vance’s speech, “It is clear that the new American administration holds a worldview that is very different from our own, one that shows no regard for established rules, for partnerships that have grown over a long time and for the trust that has been built over time.”
The German president also warned that the Trump administration’s worldview “must not become the dominant paradigm” and that Europe must not be “dazed with our eyes fixed on the White House.” Steinmeier also expressed “great concern to see how a small elite group of business people [referring to the supporters of AfD] has both the means and the desire to rewrite a significant part of the liberal-democracy playbook” in today’s post-war Germany.
Carl Bildt, a former prime minister of Sweden who is now a co-chairman of the European Council of Foreign Relations, called Vance’s Munich speech a disappointment. “At best, it was totally irrelevant to European or global security concerns,” Bildt posted on social media. “At worst, it was blatant interference in the election campaign in favor of far-right AfD.”
Kaja Kallas, a vice president of the European Commission, accused Vance of “trying to pick a fight.” Other senior European diplomats called Vance’s Munich speech “mad,” “dangerous,” and “outrageous.”
But despite the harsh European criticism of Vance’s speech, President Trump praised his remarks as “brilliant” and “well received. And I think it’s true, in Europe, they’re losing their wonderful right of freedom of speech,” Trump said. He later added that he agreed with Vance’s position that Europe “has to be careful” because the continent “has a big immigration problem.”
New Jersey’s Democrat senator, Andy Kim, who was part of the congressional delegation attending the Munich conference, said of Vance’s presentation, “I was embarrassed for America. That was perhaps the worst foreign-policy speech I’ve heard.”
Veteran journalist Bill Kristol, one of the last of the Republican “Never Trumpers,” curiously labeled Vance’s speech “a humiliation for the U.S. and a confirmation that this [Trump] administration isn’t on the side of the democracies.”
VANCE ECHOES JFK’S 1963 BERLIN SPEECH
Vance’s Munich performance was impressive in presenting the Trump administration’s diagnosis of the reasons behind the serious internal problems of Europe’s democracies, and the fundamental changes in attitude by Europe’s leaders needed to solve them.
The vice president was well aware that his message in defense of free speech and respect for elections would receive a hostile reception from the European leaders in Munich, and how much courage it would take to openly express his “genuine desire for change” in Europe.
According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Dominic Green, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Vance’s real audience was the increasingly dissatisfied people of Europe, rather than their failed rulers.
Green compared the vice president’s courageous message in Munich to President John F. Kennedy’s inspirational 1963 speech in West Berlin in which he declared in defiance of the communist threat to the city, “Ich bin ein Berliner!” and to President Ronald Reagan’s memorable demand in 1987, at Berlin’s Brandenberg Gate, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Jonathan Turley also praised Vice President Vance for delivering his message “with a quintessentially American voice. . . clear, honest and unafraid. . . [with] no pretense or evasion. . . part lament and part liberating.”
Turley then concluded, “Bravo, Mr. Vice President, Bravo.”
