Before Vice President JD Vance took the stage at the Munich Security Conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was taking a beating by the commentariat for his own remarks in Europe before the Ukraine Contact Group.
“We must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is simply unrealistic,” Secretary Hegseth told the shocked assembly of mostly Europeans. Worse yet, he said, Ukraine would not be joining NATO.
No matter the messenger, these were unpopular policy statements from the new Trump administration — even if both end up being true. The frothy reception to what he had to say even forced Hegseth to backpedal a little. But then, like a howitzer, Vance fired off a speech that made everyone forget how upset they were with the embattled SECDEF.
Having been a senator during the preceding Biden administration, which rarely lost an opportunity to lecture people about “democracy,” the high-profile Munich forum was Vance’s chance to have a few words on the same theme. Near the top of his speech, Vance lambasted the Romanians for cancelling an election late last year in which the under-dog was winning, polls suggested, because of “disinformation.”
In the Romanian case, the underdog has the bad luck of being seen as “pro-Russian,” and state security services said that somehow Tik-Tok had been manipulated to boost his rating. Pro-Russian, intelligence officials say, any of this sound familiar?
No one ever accused JD Vance of being diplomatic.
He went on to excoriate the Europeans for retreating on democratic values, namely free speech, citing instances in Sweden and England where speech had essentially been criminalized. Unchecked immigration, he went on to say, made Europe less safe.
It had the effect of a gut-punch to the spirit of trans-Atlantic coziness. How dare he?
The theatrics of two speeches by senior U.S. officials in Europe point to a larger shift being fought in the national security corridors back home. This is seen in the lower profile fracas over the nomination of Elbridge Colby to be undersecretary of defense for policy. Republican senators are quietly expressing concerns about Colby, who served at the Pentagon in the first Trump administration is very much seen as Vance’s man.
The reason for this uneasiness is that Colby sees America’s principal threat as coming from China, and that is why he’s suggested redeploying military assets from Europe and the Middle East to reflect this. In a clear-eyed view of the world as it stands today, Colby is not wrong, but his policy prescription ruffles feathers at a deeper level than Hegseth’s or Vance’s speeches.
While the Trump administration has so far been effective in getting highly-controversial nominees like Hegseth, and newly-installed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and DHHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. through the Senate, what looks like a fight brewing over Colby allows administration critics to make their point at a lower political cost. Pundit Charlie Kirk has laid some of the blame for the current fight at the feet of Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas).
What this really comes down to is the question of how much Europe currently matters in America’s national security calculus. And key to that is if, and how, the war in Ukraine ends. While the Trump administration is pursuing direct talks with Moscow, beginning in Saudi Arabia today, that will exclude Kyiv at the outset, everyone concerned — and especially the Europeans — are wondering what comes next.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has even been calling for an “army of Europe” as a backstop against further Russian aggression, should America pull back.
It is unlikely going to come to that, though. As the first Trump administration showed on the issue of NATO dues, with Trump everything is about the negotiation, the “art of the deal,” if you will.
Russia is no angel of peace, as the Ukrainians well know, but eight years of screeching about Russia has had the effect of crying wolf. A peace deal will be painful for everyone. Trump’s job, if he wants that Nobel Prize that Theodore Roosevelt won over a centiury ago for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese war, is to make sure the pain is shared, and — at a bare minimum — equal.
After all, that’s only democratic.
Bidden was just toiling them.
The Muslims have effectively taken over “ Europe “ and are in the process of destroying it . Maine is next .
Europe is basically the Soviet Union 2.0 at this point (as Vance recently pointed out). They censor speech and endlessly fund war. The UK and a lot of other European countries have socialist welfare systems. Hopefully some conservative change occurs there.
Why am I paying for their freedom?