Rubio:
‘We must return to our Christian roots and reject the flood of third-world migration destroying our societies’
MUNICH, Germany − A year ago, Vice President JD Vance delivered a bombshell speech at the Munich Security Conference that stunned European leaders because it deeply criticized its policies on migration, defense, free speech and warned that the region faced “civilizational erasure” if it didn’t take immediate action.
Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference:
“We, in America, have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.”
“Control over mass migration is not xenophobia and also not hatred. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty. “
Rubio tells Munich Security Conference that UN is playing ‘no role’ in resolving conflicts.
Notoriously leftarded Deutsche Welle makes it sound as if Rubio’s message is different from US Vice President JD Vance who ruffled their feathers last year by lambasting Europe’s approach to free speech, immigration and security.
It isn’t.
The EUnuch’s would like to continue on their tyrannical ways and we can only hope that the US cracks the whip a little harder.
EU leaders welcome US tone shift in Rubio’s Munich speech
Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference didn’t deviate from the themes of Donald Trump’s second term in office.
Europe, he said Saturday, had to speed up its defense spending and army building.
The US secretary of state warned, as the Trump administration has done before, that Europe risked “civilizational erasure.” And he espoused a general view that in a new world order, it was nations — not institutions — that would get an imperfect world on track.
But his tone was far softer than a year ago when US Vice President JD Vance shook the gathering of world political and defense leaders by lambasting Europe’s approach to free speech, immigration and security.
It was the same message, not ‘softer’ at all:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told European leaders that the US and Europe are bound by shared Christian faith, history, and cultural heritage . He strongly emphasized that unchecked mass migration threatens social cohesion and cultural continuity. He also criticized what he called “climate cult” !
DW Chief International Correspondent Richard Walker said it appeared Rubio was trying to create “a Trumpian narrative of what the West actually is.”
Unpacking Marco Rubio’s Munich Security Conference speech
“Rubio’s message was much warmer in its tone, it was really trying to pull on European heartstrings to try and create a sense of common purpose, to create, almost, a unified theory that links security to a different idea of … the West.
“A lot of people here do seem to be relieved that it wasn’t guns blazing like JD Vance, but when you listen closely to what Rubio was saying there was an awful lot of the kind of Trumpian view of nation that was going right through [the speech].”
The last year has seen fears mount that the US wants out of Europe, with Trump eyeing the Danish territory of Greenland and speaking more openly about a sphere of influence focused more intently on the Americas. But Rubio’s speech sought to keep an arm around Europe.
While still asserting a Trumpian view dismissing climate policy and immigration, Rubio cast the US as a “child of Europe.”
He bridged a year of divide by evoking a shared Christian heritage across the Atlantic, and of the European connections that built the US. Rubio also praised partners in Europe for helping broker peace opportunities for Ukraine, while remaining critical of the UN as a forum for effective diplomacy.
Rubio casts ‘civilization’ at heart of US alliance with Europe
But Rubio also maintained a consistent theme of the second Trump administration — echoed by other world leaders, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, on the first day of the MSC on Friday — that the global order had changed, and positioned the US as a muscular guardian of Western values and culture.
“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” said Rubio. “We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”
Civilization was an inescapable theme on Saturday morning in Munich, evoked by Rubio a dozen times in his speech and later touched on by his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, who used the label to describe both China and Europe as partner — not rival — civilizations.
While Wang struck a different chord in his address to delegates, calling for improved global governance with the United Nations, Rubio reiterated Trump’s nations-first view on foreign policy and dismissed the UN as an effective arbiter of international relations.
“Rubio thinks very much about the competition between the United States and China,” said Walker, adding that despite the softer tone, Rubio echoed Vance’s message that a show of national strength was “the way to get things done,” and not the “liberal, international” approach promoted by the EU.
“For the European Union, the underlying ideas and the rhetoric Rubio was using here is actually quite troubling because the whole point of the European Union is almost to move beyond the idea of nation, and not to try to express ideas such as that the West is, as Rubio said, the greatest civilization in human history.”
For his part, Rubio sought to keep Europe on the US side of the civilizational theme, describing a shared Western culture that was “unique, distinctive and irreplaceable.” He said it wasn’t “our goal nor our wish” to see the end of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
Cautious welcome of Rubio’s speech
Though a warmer narrative compared to remarks from other US officials, including Trump, since February 2025, Rubio was clearly singing from the administration’s hymn sheet.
He rebuked what he called a “climate cult” amid a US pivot away from the green transition and back toward fossil fuel interests, and said Europe should not fear technology at a time when the EU has sought to assert guardrails against American tech companies.
Those differences were acknowledged by European figures, as they welcomed the US tonal shift.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told DW in Munich that Rubio’s pitch was “a different category to the speech we heard last year [from Vance].”
But Wadephul also stressed the importance of German and European independence on defense, climate policy and trade.
“Climate change is there, and of course we have to give answers, we have, not to deny that climate change is existing, but I understood his speech in a way that we have to give flexible answers, not to be dogmatic,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say that we have 100% overlapping between our priorities and the priorities from the US side, but I would say this is really a common ground for a bright future between the United States and Europe.”
Germany’s foreign minister sees ‘common ground’ with US
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen directly referenced Rubio’s remarks in her speech later Saturday morning, saying that “an independent Europe is a strong Europe. And a stronger Europe makes for a stronger trans-Atlantic alliance.”
“I was very much reassured by [Rubio]. We know him, he’s a good friend, a strong ally,” said von der Leyen.
Both she and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer avoided addressing Rubio’s speech in great depth, instead devoting time to talking up a stronger Europe. Starmer said Rubio’s remarks were “consistent” with theirs that “Europe hasn’t done enough in its own defense and security for many years.”
Little focus on Ukraine: Sikorski
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told DW that while “return of American politeness” was welcome, he was disappointed to see that Ukraine didn’t figure prominently in Rubio’s speech.
“What was somewhat disappointing was the absence of what we Europeans regard as the most urgent security threat to our continent which is the Russian aggression against Ukraine,” said Sikorski.
He added that the “real threat to Europe is Russia’s state ideology — and ideology of autocracy and of expansion, of rebuilding the [Russian] empire. And that would necessarily happen at our [Europe’s] expense, and we must not permit that.”
Sikorski acknowledged that Trump had been right on some issues, and said the EU was now preparing for “a new era in which Europeans will take responsibility for territorial defense in Europe.”
“Western Europe was consuming the peace dividend for too long and credit where credit is due: President Trump — in his inimitable style — told us that we need to get our act together. And we, as Europeans, are now spending double [on defense] of what we were spending before he became president.”
*****
Transcript:
This clip from Marco Rubio‘s speech to the Munich Security Conference is one of the most beautifully written and forcefully delivered speeches by a Senior American official since Ronald Reagan told Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”
Rubio lays it out in a way that leaves no doubt in Europe’s collective mind:
America wants an alliance with countries who are proud of their native cultures and willing to defend them. Here’s the full text: For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding. Its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers, pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires, extending out across the globe.
But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an iron curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great western empires had entered into terminal decline accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.
Against that backdrop, then as now, many came to believe that the west’s age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choose they refused to make.
This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now. Together. And this is why we do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker. We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength.
This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who together with us are willing and able to defend it.
And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it. For we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline. We do not seek to separate but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.
What we want is a reinvigorated alliance that recognizes that what has ailed our societies is not just a set of bad policies, but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency. An alliance that we want is one that is not paralyzed into an action by fear. Fear of climate change, fear of war, fear technology. Instead, we want an alliance that boldly races into the future.
And the only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger, and wealthier for our children. An 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. An Alliance that does not allow its power to be outsourced, constrained, subordinated to systems beyond its control.
One that does not depend on others for the critical necessities of its national life. And one that does maintain the polite pretense that our way of life is just one among many and that asks for permission before it acts. And above all, an alliance based on the recognition that we, the West, have inherited together, what we have inherited is something that is unique and distinctive and irreplaceable. Because this, after all, is the very foundation of the trans-Atlantic bond.
Magnificent.