US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for a “reinvigorated” partnership between the US and Europe based on a shared “great civilisation”.
In a speech at a security conference in Munich on Saturday, Rubio sought to reassure Europeans unnerved by a year of Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats to the Nato transnational alliance.
He emphasised Washington’s desire to work “together with you, our friends here in Europe”, describing “a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link” that united the US and its European partners.
“We belong together,” he said. “We are part of one civilisation, western civilisation. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry and the sacrifices our forefathers made.”
If US President Donald Trump “demands seriousness and reciprocity”, it was “because we care deeply”, he added.
Rubio’s address attempted to bolster European audiences still reeling from Trump’s threats to invade Greenland last month, which caused the deepest fissure between the US and the continent in decades.
It also marked a departure from the combative remarks delivered at the forum last year by US vice-president JD Vance, who accused Europe of repressing freedom of speech and retreating from its “fundamental values”.
Conference chair Wolfgang Ischinger said Rubio’s conciliatory message of “reassurance, of partnership” and “intertwined relations” caused “a sigh of relief through this hall”.
Ischinger told Rubio his remarks reminded him of “statements made decades ago by your predecessors”.
Rubio also said: “In a time of headlines heralding the end of the transatlantic era, let it be known and clear to all that this is neither our goal nor our wish, because for us Americans, our home may be in the western hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.”
However, he repeated many of the same ideas and policy goals set out by Vance last year.
He lamented the outsourcing of American industry, the non-western dominance of critical supply chains and green energy policies that he said sought to “appease a climate cult” while “impoverishing our people”.
Above all, he stressed that Europe and the US faced the threat of mass migration and the prospect of “civilisation erasure”.
“National security . . . is not merely a series of technical questions,” he said. What exactly are we defending? . . . We are defending a great civilisation . . . Only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we together begin the work of envisioning and shaping our economic and political future.”
“Mass migration . . . continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilising societies all across the west,” Rubio said.
But he insisted that this is “not an expression of xenophobia. It is not hate. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty.”
German defence minister Boris Pistorius challenged “Rubio’s vision for the world order” and his claim that the west had “outsourced” its sovereignty to international institutions.
“Yes, our international organisations have failed to solve crises and conflicts,” Pistorius said in a speech later on Saturday. “But the answer cannot be for a great power to go it alone. That might work in the short term. But in a world of more competing great powers this will definitely not work in the long term.”
Instead, Pistorius said, Europe and the US had to work on “reforming and reinvigorating international organisations . . . so that they deliver what is crucial: peace and security. We can only do that together.”
Rubio also criticised the “welfare states” that he said Europe had pursued at the expense of funding its security.
Pia Fuhrhop, a political scientist at the German think-tank SWP, said Rubio’s speech came across as polite on the surface, but that he was trying to drag Europe into its Maga mindset. “It’s a poisoned gift,” she said of his message of working together.
His remarks were received coolly by members of the audience, too.
“Not the answer we were looking for,” remarked one German diplomat, saying the speech was geared more for a US “domestic” audience “than for us”.
“It was Maga but without any insight,” said another senior European official. “No mention of Russia, no mention of Ukraine.”
But Jürgen Hardt, a senior member of the German parliament, said that “Rubio has remained a believer in Nato, which is positive. We Europeans won’t embark on American culture wars, however.”
