The Trump Administration has rattled America’s friends in Europe, sometimes for the better (defense spending) but often for the worse (Greenland). Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a more conciliatory message in a speech this weekend, but the underlying theme remains one of very tough love for the Continent.
Mr. Rubio at the Munich Security Conference recalled the Cold War when much of the world “lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow.” The West was thought to be in “terminal decline” but “our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.”
America and Europe are now at another inflection point. Mr. Rubio offered the Administration’s by now familiar critique about Europe’s policy mistakes on mass migration, defense, climate and energy.
But he rooted that criticism in the shared history and values of Western civilization.
“We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally,” he said. “We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours.”
Mr. Rubio outlined a renewed trans-Atlantic alliance “ready to defend our people, to safeguard our interests, and to preserve the freedom of action that allows us to shape our own destiny — not one that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations.”
He also made a crucial point that the alliance shouldn’t be constrained by multilateral institutions “beyond its control.”
He mentioned the United Nations in particular for its failure to stop any recent conflict of note. The Administration’s liberal internationalist critics, at home and in Europe, too often mistake this critique for U.S. unilateralism when it is practical realism.
Mr. Rubio’s speech won praise in Munich and from nearly every corner of President Trump’s domestic coalition. It is amusing to watch some on the right suggest Mr. Rubio is inventing some new foreign policy cocktail, as if the world began yesterday.
Mr. Rubio is drawing directly from Ronald Reagan’s playbook of “conservative internationalism” — unapologetic about U.S. leadership and the superiority of freedom; anchored by threats to the American people and their interests; wary that diplomacy and commerce by themselves can resolve the world’s differences.
This worldview still represents the best formula for dealing with the accumulating threats to the U.S., namely an axis among China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
Mr. Trump wants America to be the big player in every region, but his greatest failure as President is that he won’t, or can’t, articulate his larger principles.
Vice President JD Vance made motions to a shared culture with Europe in his speech at the same security conference last year. But Mr. Vance all but told Europe it was free to plan its own funeral and gave oxygen to Europe’s right-wing fringes that are sympathetic to Moscow.
Mr. Rubio is also offering a far better vision than Canada’s Mark Carney, the hero of Davos, whose idea for replacing U.S. leadership with a coalition of the world’s “middle powers” is delusional and cynical domestic politics.
The big caveat to Mr. Rubio’s message is Ukraine, which like it or not is the current front line of Western civilization. On that score it wasn’t reassuring that after Munich Mr. Rubio headed to Hungary and Slovakia, Russia’s two best friends in Europe.
The U.S. continues to behave like a mediator of the Ukraine-Russia war, rather than taking the side of the West. Mr. Rubio’s good words about shared values won’t mean much if a rotten “peace” is imposed on Ukraine.
