If you follow these things closely, you may have seen a clip of the chairman of the Munich Security Conference breaking down in tears, unable to speak any further while reflecting on Vice President JD Vance's speech there. This breakdown is remarkable because the chairman, Christoph Heusgen, is not a minor apparatchik but a sophisticated and knowledgeable official who was former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's national security adviser from 2005 to 2017.

He had a front-row seat to Merkel's epochal decisions -- to shut down nuclear plants in 2011, admit 1 million Muslim male "refugees" in 2015, and hold defense spending far below the 2% level sought by the second Obama and first Trump administrations. His previous appearance on social media came when, as head of Germany's United Nations delegation in 2018, he led his colleagues in laughing derisively at President Donald Trump's criticism of Germany's reliance on Russian natural gas.

Heusgen's tears were apt. Merkel's policies, hailed by European elites at the time, now "lie in ruins," writes the Economist.

Vance's speeches in Munich and earlier in Paris criticized Europe generally and Germany in particular for stifling technological innovation, for suppressing speech, especially opposition to mass migration, and for spending well below NATO targets on defense. The European elites have had things their way and have led their societies on a path to decline.

All of which, the German journalist Wolfgang Munchau wrote, marked "the end of the transatlantic alliance." Trump's decision to conduct negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war with Russian........

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