An annual gathering of top security figures that last year set the tone for a growing rift between the US and Europe opened yesterday, bringing together many top European officials with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others.
The Munich Security Conference opened with a speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, one of 15 heads of state or government from EU countries expected to attend.
The many other expected guests at the conference that runs until tomorrow include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅). In keeping with the conference’s tradition, there would also be a large delegation of members of the US Congress.
Photo: AFP
“Trans-Atlantic relations have been the backbone of this conference since it was founded in 1963 ... and trans-Atlantic relations are currently in a significant crisis of confidence and credibility,” conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger told reporters earlier this week. “So it is particularly welcome that the American side has such great interest in Munich.”
At last year’s conference, held a few weeks into US President Donald Trump’s second term, US Vice President J.D. Vance stunned European leaders by lecturing them about the state of democracy on the continent.
A series of Trump statements and moves targeting allies followed in the months after that — including his later-abandoned threat to impose new tariffs on several European countries in a bid to secure control of Greenland.
With Rubio heading the US delegation this year, European leaders could hope for a less contentious approach more focused on traditional global security concerns, although a philosophically similar one. Rubio would face a heavy lift if he wants to calm the waters.
“In the end it’s about trust: Do we trust each other as partners and can this lack of trust be repaired?” German Marshall Fund senior vice president Claudia Major said. “Particularly Greenland has been a fundamental change for Europeans. That one NATO ally threatens another NATO ally has deeply affected European trust in the trans-Atlantic relationship.”
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