I’ve been scandalized watching the initial coverage of the Munich Security Conference, which continued last year’s absolute European freak-out on the United States. After many presidents had warned Europe that the United States could not forever carry the bag for Europe, last year Vice President JD Vance essentially elaborated on America’s wishes, that Europe become a truly capable partner and co-guardian of our shared civilizational values. This, to my ears, always sounded like a more dignified thing than being a security dependent whose political class simply enjoys the free dinners and the conference weekends that revolve around NATO and its aligned institutions.

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Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, falsely painted as a full-on “restrainer,” gave an important address to the conference that was mature and sober:

Under President Trump’s leadership, we are reprioritizing the defense of our homeland and the protection of our interests in our Hemisphere. We are grappling forthrightly with the fact that the Indo-Pacific is now a central arena of geopolitics, one with fundamental implications for American security, economic vitality, and technological leadership. It follows that Europe should field the preponderance of the forces required to deter and, if necessary, defeat conventional aggression in Europe. A strategy that pretends the United States can indefinitely serve as the primary conventional defender of Europe while also carrying the decisive burden everywhere else is neither sustainable nor prudent. It is an aspiration divorced from resources. It is a strategy that serves neither regular Americans nor, I must stress, Europeans. Continuing to proclaim the shibboleths of “NATO 2.0” without a credible strategy for how to meet them would not help Europe — it would hurt it, by perpetuating expectations that cannot realistically be met. That is not friendship. True friendship is speaking truly, forthrightly, and credibly. That is why Secretary General Rutte is so right that President Trump has been a true friend to the Alliance — by making it, in the face of enormous resistance, confront the reality of the situation and become fit for that purpose.

Under President Trump’s leadership, we are reprioritizing the defense of our homeland and the protection of our interests in our Hemisphere. We are grappling forthrightly with the fact that the Indo-Pacific is now a central arena of geopolitics, one with fundamental implications for American security, economic vitality, and technological leadership.

It follows that Europe should field the preponderance of the forces required to deter and, if necessary, defeat conventional aggression in Europe.

A strategy that pretends the United States can indefinitely serve as the primary conventional defender of Europe while also carrying the decisive burden everywhere else is neither sustainable nor prudent. It is an aspiration divorced from resources. It is a strategy that serves neither regular Americans nor, I must stress, Europeans. Continuing to proclaim the shibboleths of “NATO 2.0” without a credible strategy for how to meet them would not help Europe — it would hurt it, by perpetuating expectations that cannot realistically be met. That is not friendship. True friendship is speaking truly, forthrightly, and credibly.

That is why Secretary General Rutte is so right that President Trump has been a true friend to the Alliance — by making it, in the face of enormous resistance, confront the reality of the situation and become fit for that purpose.

Colby laid out a vision for the future of NATO that is quite a bit like its Cold War–era past, one in which Europe plays a serious military role. Overall, I’ve been impressed by the administration’s delegation to the conference, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio whose message is much the same as Colby’s. On the other side, I’ve been shocked by the entitlement and disrespect shown by Europeans like Kaja Kallas, the European Commission vice president and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, who could not help rolling her eyes like an entitled student asked to endure a bad speech at graduation. This from people who still, as the munitions roar along their eastern borders, schedule endless sessions on the environment during their security conferences.

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