Heavy JD Vance vibes still hung in the air of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) on Saturday when US chief diplomat Marco Rubio decided to spare the transatlantic relationship a Valentine’s Day massacre.
Though more conciliatory than the US vice-president a year ago, it was still no love-in as Rubio dropped key Trumpian messages – from “climate cult” to “civilisation erasure” – on to the Munich agenda, though in a less confrontational style.
“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” said Rubio in a keynote address. “We do not seek to separate but to revitalise an old friendship and renew the greatest civilisation in human history.”
Shuttling between realpolitik slap and diplomatic tickle, the secretary of state dismissed the West’s rules-based order as “an overused term”. Only when countries prioritised their national interests, he said, could they reverse deindustrialisation, rebalance global trade, boost domestic growth and end the West’s “malaise of hopelessness and complacency”.
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Rubio said: “We made these mistakes together and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and move forward.”
European leaders and EU officials, braced for the worst, applauded cautiously at the end but did not join a Brooks Brothers-suited US delegation in their standing ovation.
A visibly relieved MSC chairman Wolfgang Ischinger rushed to praise Rubio’s message of “reassurance and partnership”.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said she – and others in Europe – praised Rubio as “a good friend, a strong ally ... and very reassuring to listen to”.
“We know that in the administration some have a harsher tone on these topics,” she said. “But the secretary of state was very clear. He said ‘We want strong Europe in the alliance’, and this is what we are working for intensively in the European Union.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee took heart, too, at Rubio’s observation that the United Nations – usually ridiculed by US president Donald Trump and his officials – “still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world”.
“The way I took it, he said it needs to be reformed,” said McEntee. “The UN has served us extremely well ... but we all agree that there is change and reform needed to reform it from within to reflect the world we live in now.”
Immediately after Rubio, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister and politburo member, flagged “growing turbulence” in the last year as proof that “humanity has come to a new crossroads”.
He placed blame for tensions less with the UN, “not perfect in its current form but remains the most universal and authoritative” organisation of its kind, but with unnamed “certain countries who seek to magnify differences and disagreements” and “revive a Cold War mentality”.
“We live in a multipolar world, and need to practice true multilateralism,” he added. In a final pitch to his Munich audience, unlikely to be taken to heart by all, was that China and Europe are “partners, not rivals”.
“As long as we keep that in mind, we will be able to make the right choices in the face of challenges,” he said.
While Rubio’s address focused on the transatlantic relationship, with only a brief expression of hope over ongoing Ukraine-Russia peace talks, his Chinese counterpart covered at least five of “more than 60” ongoing conflicts in the world.
Wang Yi called on all parties in Iran to act with prudence and avoid creating new conflicts while the Gaza ceasefire and reconstruction “will require unremitting efforts to implement the two state solution and restore justice to the Palestinian people”.
Turning to Venezuela he urged all parties to ensure that “the red line of international rule of law must not be crossed”.
On Ukraine, Wang Yi said Beijing welcomed how “the door to dialogue is finally open,” urging parties to “reach a comprehensive, durable and binding peace agreement”.
He acknowledged “challenges” to peace in China’s backyard, criticising Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi’s recent comments on Taiwan as unacceptable for how they “violate China’s territorial sovereignty”.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer triggered applause for deriding the notorious “take back control” Brexit slogan as, a decade later, he sidled up closer to Europe.
“In a dangerous world, we would not take control by turning inward; we would surrender it and I won’t let that happen,” he said. Risking the wrath of the British opposition and right-wing press, Starmer insisted there was “no British security without Europe, and no European security without Britain”.
“That is the lesson of history and it’s today’s reality as well,” he added.
On a French offer to extend its nuclear deterrence to Germany and possibly the rest of Europe, Starmer said that “for decades, the United Kingdom has been the only nuclear power in Europe to commit its deterrent to protect all Nato members”.
“Any adversary must know that in a crisis, they could be confronted by our combined strength,” he added.
Asked about last month’s Greenland crisis, he welcomed its shift “into a process of dialogue, which is where it should have been”.
Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen sounded less convinced. Trump’s plan to annex Greenland, a part of the Danish kingdom, by force if necessary “is exactly the same”.
In advance of talks with Russia next week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that the war – and Russian aggression – continued to evolve. After thanks, and slides outlining new drone and missile types, he aired frustration at how some promised European arms deliveries took “months” or “years” to arrive.
“Everyone who seeks security and peace must understand this: every day matters,” he added.
Events in Munich took an unexpected turn in the afternoon with a statement from Julia Navalnaya, widow of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, confirming that her husband was poisoned in prison using epibatidine – a neurotoxin, one of the deadliest known poisons.
The result was clear, she said, from an analysis backed by laboratories in the UK, Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands.
“I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth,” she added. “Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
Speaking in Munich, UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Only the Russian government had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin against Alexei Navalny during his imprisonment in Russia.”
Outside the MSC high-security venue, almost 250,000 exiled Iranians gathered in Munich for what surprised organisers called Europe’s largest-ever rally demanding an end to the Islamic regime.
Chanting “Change! Change! Change!” and “Javid shah” (long live the shah) demonstrators ignored rain and wind to transform the Oktoberfest meadow into a sea of green-white-red flags with lion and sun emblems of the Pahlavi dynasty.
Demonstrators descended from all over Europe in response to a rally call from exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah, deposed during the 1979 revolution.
In Munich, Pahlavi urged world leaders to push for an end to the regime “responsible for the bloodshed of my compatriots”, with an estimated 18,000 deaths last month alone.
The Iranian government’s continued survival, he said, “sends a clear signal to every bully: kill enough people and you stay in power.”
“To president Trump ... the Iranian people heard you say ‘help is on the way’, and they have faith in you. Help them,” he said. “It’s time to end the Islamic Republic.”
Pahlavi is criticised by many in Iran’s opposition for his pro-Israel stance and refusal to distance himself from his father’s autocratic rule.
“I’m not here to promote the monarchy,” said Pahlavi in Munich. “Let the Iranians decide what system they want.”
