National security’s Burning Man took place this weekend, as foreign policy types from around the world gathered once again in Bavaria. The Munich Security Conference years ago burst the confines of the Bayerischer Hof hotel, where a medium-sized group of officials and experts once met to talk trans-Atlantic relations. Now it’s a sprawling and frenetic affair, replete with heads of state, bilateral meetings, side events, press conferences, and off-schedule meals. Old touches remain: the Tiki bar, the schnitzel, the smoking section. And while it sometimes feels more cirque than soleil, there is still illumination to be had in Munich.
The new Trump team showed up in force this year: Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were all there, as was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs C.Q. Brown and a bipartisan delegation from Congress. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke, as did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and a slew of others from multiple continents. And so, the discussions revealed how leaders and thinkers are dealing with the world today.
Four themes struck me as emblematic of this year’s Munich zeitgeist.
Trump Acts, Europe Reacts
President Trump set the scene ahead of the conference, stunning Europeans by calling Vladimir Putin and announcing the immediate start of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Brussels then suggested that Ukraine would not recover its lost territories, that U.S. troops would not deploy to Ukraine after a ceasefire, and that Ukraine would not become a NATO member. While few European officials quibbled with the truth of Hegseth’s remarks, they almost unanimously declared them a tactical mistake. Such concessions should be discussed at the negotiating table, most thought, and it is unwise to give away potential bargaining chips.
Hegseth seemed to walk back his remarks a day later, and the Vice President said that, in fact, “everything is on the table” in negotiations. Europeans feared being sidelined by Washington and Moscow, and Ukrainian leaders fretted about an agreement cut over their heads. Trump and his team set the ball rolling toward talks to end the war, but the terms, participants, U.S. vision and redlines, and the role of Europe in post-war security and reconstruction all remained obscure.
The possibility of an end in 2025 to the horrific war between Ukraine and Russia, alongside the entry of a Trump administration with priorities outside Europe, sparked a raft of ideas. Zelensky in his Munich remarks called for a European army, one that would include Ukraine. Senator Lindsey Graham proposed a mechanism by which if Putin ever invaded again, Ukraine would automatically become a member of NATO. Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary general, said that member states would have to boost their defense spending by “considerably more than three percent” of GDP. Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission proposed triggering an emergency clause that would allow E.U. member states to spend more on defense without busting deficit caps. Zelensky told a Congressional delegation that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent a few days ago asked him to sign over 50 percent of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals (Zelensky demurred). As ideas, initiatives, and proposals flew, most conference participants expected U.S. officials to clarify their own aims and principles.
Europe Focused Outward, Washington Focused Inward
Vice President Vance’s address was widely expected to clear up some of the cloudiness around U.S. plans for Ukraine. Most suspected that he would also emphasize allied burden sharing, pressing Europe to spend more on defense and perhaps spelling out key capabilities. He might well, it was thought, emphasize the challenge posed by China, the importance of harmonizing trans-Atlantic approaches to technology, and offer a tough-love vision of allied cooperation against key security threats.
“The threat that I worry most about vis-a-vis Europe,” Vance said instead, “is not Russia, not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within.” Europe, he argued, has retreated from its most fundamental values by repressing conservative speech and political actors. European leaders had grown fearful of their own people. Citing the attack by an Afghan national on a crowd just outside the security perimeter, he said that Europe was reaping the fruits of uncontrolled mass migration. And less than two weeks before German elections, he called on mainstream parties to abandon the “firewall” they imposed to keep the far-right Alternative for Germany out of power. He said virtually nothing about Ukraine, Russia, China, or the Middle East.
This was not the speech Europeans — or even many Americans — expected, and it dominated the subsequent proceedings. Europeans resented the interference in their domestic affairs and some reacted harshly. A top European intelligence official, next to me throughout the remarks, repeatedly muttered epithets.
German political leaders reacted particularly harshly. “It is clear,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, “that the new American administration holds a worldview that is very different from our own, one that shows no regard for established rules, for partnerships that have grown over a long time and for the trust that has been built over time.” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius observed that Vance “is comparing parts of Europe with authoritarian regimes. This is not acceptable.” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, “a commitment to ‘never again’ is therefore incompatible with support for [Alternative for Germany].”
Resetting Expectations
Others divined different messages in Vance’s remarks. One participant said the world could be divided into two parts: those who liked the vice president’s speech and those who did not. He listened with some glee, he added, that Western Europe was being subjected to the kind of lecture so often directed at countries in other parts of the world. Some European participants saw the speech as the opening salvo in a trans-Atlantic divorce proceeding: Washington now cares about domestic issues in Europe more than external threats to the continent — as for the latter, you’re on your own. Still others thought this was the wake-up call Europe needed finally to assert its own independence, unity, and strength.
A few even suggested that spurning Europe would push the continent into China’s hands. Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave remarks that welcomed closer Chinese-European cooperation as a not-so-subtle alternative to ties with the United States. Some European experts said that, given no other choice, they might look to Beijing for partnership. All this seems quite far-fetched. The gap in values between Europe and Beijing makes trans-Atlantic differences look trivial. China is on the wrong side of the biggest land war in Europe since 1945 and enjoys a quasi-alliance with Russia. Beijing is not going to defend Europe or fulfill any of the security roles long performed by the United States. But the Trump administration’s message to Europe could hardly be more different from that of its predecessor.
Ukraine as Source of Allied Division Rather Than Unity
For the past three years, the trans-Atlantic allies have been unified and resolute in their determination to aid Ukraine and punish Russia. While the confidence that their side would prevail has waxed and waned, the common threat in Moscow pushed the allies together. With the Trump administration in office, and as the war moves — possibly — into real ceasefire negotiations, Ukraine is now proving a source of division rather than unity.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, described U.S. concessions on Ukraine’s borders and NATO membership as “appeasement.” Washington has begun pushing European countries to identify what troops and capabilities they could commit to a post-conflict Ukraine, but senior European officials privately acknowledge that they can’t execute a military mission without the United States. The Ukrainians themselves, grateful for European support, say that U.S. security guarantees are nevertheless most important. “Without support of the United States,” Zelensky said, “we will have low chance — low chance — to survive.”
It seems clear that Vance (Rubio did not speak and Hegseth, though in Europe at the time, did not attend the conference) refrained from providing details about the administration’s Ukraine plan for one simple reason: They do not yet exist. This struck many Europeans as exasperating, given Trump’s announcement that talks would start, but there is another way of viewing things. The administration was in Munich consulting allies and friends, asking questions, testing ideas, and floating alternatives. In a strange way, it’s the kind of consultation American allies across the ocean often crave.
Behind the frustration and fears of abandonment lies a major question: What will — what can — Europe do about it? On the fringes in Munich were some searching conversations about European military strength, innovation, productivity, and geopolitical self-sufficiency. The most concrete European outcome of the 2025 conference, of the commencement of U.S.-Russian talks, and of the Vice President’s big speech, was a new set of meetings. The European Union held an emergency meeting of foreign ministers in Munich on Sunday. “A stronger and more sovereign Europe,” Emmanuel Macron wrote on social media, “let’s make it happen now.” He called a meeting of key leaders for Monday in Paris. No Americans invited, obviously.
This year’s Munich Security Conference was a barn burner, on par with 2007, when Putin delivered an infamous rejectionist speech, or even one at the height of the Iraq war when the United States, France, and Germany were at daggers drawn. More than anything, the proceedings this time suggest that we are entering a new geopolitical era, one with huge stakes and low predictability.
That’s why the beers in Munich are large and plentiful.
Richard Fontaine is the chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security.
Image: Midjourney