US Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears in New York City during the UN General Assembly on September 28, 2025. Secretary Rubio’s recent speech at the Munich Security Conference has won praise from European leaders. (Shutterstock/Fotofield)

Marco Rubio’s Munich Moment

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech has instilled a new sense of purpose within the transatlantic alliance.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio just added more jobs to his lengthy list of responsibilities. In Munich this week, he became a master storyteller and “Europe whisperer.” He translated President Donald Trump’s vision for America’s role in the world order into concepts that its allies could understand and largely support.

The stage for Rubio’s proposal was Germany’s Munich Security Conference, Europe’s premier annual gathering of world leaders and diplomacy wonks.

When Rubio arrived, many allied officials were preparing a funeral for the transatlantic relationship. The German organizers officially titled their Munich meeting: “Under Destruction.” By deftly combining statecraft with stagecraft, Rubio flipped European pessimism on its head.

Instead of greater isolation, Rubio proposed greater unity between the United States and Europe, a twist many foreign capitals did not expect. The Trump administration did not want to destroy the international system, he argued, but work with Europeans to fix what was broken and benefit the interests of our shared competitors.

When Vice President JD Vance spoke at the same conference last year, Europeans responded dismissively. Even though the core of Rubio’s points was not fundamentally different from Vance’s message, this time America’s allies applauded.

The difference was apparent in one word: “together.” Rubio repeated it nearly 30 times in 20 minutes. His constant repetition of togetherness was hard to miss—and it landed.

Equally important, Rubio framed the administration’s view of Europe in the grandest terms possible: as family members with 5,000 years of shared history and a shared mission to save Western civilization itself.

“And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe,” Rubio declared. “For the United States and Europe, we belong together.”

This was not empty rhetoric. Rather, Rubio used the sweeping scale of his remarks to insert one of the Trump administration’s harshest critiques to date of Western political elites who had lost their way. 

He slammed public devotion to the “climate cult,” policies that promoted deindustrialization, and the pursuit of a world without borders. “We made these mistakes together,” he declared, “and now together we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward to rebuild.”

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Rubio’s rhetorical brilliance was to shrink recent controversies over Greenland and trade tariffs by contrasting them with the grand scale of a higher mission: conserving the “common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”

Notably, Rubio did not mention China or Ukraine in his main remarks. In follow-up questions, he avoided controversy on these topics. Washington would work with Beijing when its interests aligned, and it was committed to brokering a just and lasting peace between Moscow and Kyiv. It was enough to cause an immediate sigh of relief across European capitals. 

“The return of American politeness” was lauded by Poland’s mercurial foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who noted that Warsaw shared Washington’s concern about the effects of unrestricted mass migration.

German foreign minister Johann Wadephul was equally upbeat, summarizing Rubio’s key message as “let’s do it again,” that is: repeat the record of transatlantic successes that Europe and the United States achieved in the last century.

Some reactions were more jaded. Former chief of staff at the German Ministry of Defense, Nico Lange, dismissed the speech as a “passive-aggressive” lecture on migration and cultural issues.

Criticism aside, a major burden will now fall to Europe. Defending a civilization from predatory regimes like Vladimir Putin’s Russia costs money and lots of it. “If anyone thinks that Europe can defend itself without the United States, keep on dreaming,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently warned.

Worse, the clock is ticking for NATO defense preparedness. Estonia’s intelligence agency warned that Russia could fully rearm within two years—a pace far faster than most allies can scale up to meet the demand to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky continues to plead for Europeans to purchase more US arms. “Ukrainians are people, not terminators,” he stated at Munich.

According to Zelensky, Ukraine needs at least three times the $4 billion Europe raised last year to replenish stocks of Patriot systems and other US equipment. Rubio has given Europe a story to believe in. Now, Washington will be waiting to see if Europe can afford to pay for the ending.

About the Author: Peter Doran

Peter Doran is an adjunct senior fellow focused on Russia, Ukraine, and transatlantic relations at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. A recognized expert on Russia, Ukraine, and transatlantic relations, Doran has testified before Congress on topics covering geopolitics, energy security, and state-sponsored disinformation. His work had appeared in Time, Foreign Policy, Defense News, National Review, and The Hill. He is also the author of Breaking Rockefeller(Penguin, 2017), which examines the rise of Russian oil.

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