Rubio Strikes Warmer Tone As Trump’s Upheaval Of Atlantic Ties Looms Over Munich Summit | EUROtoday

BERLIN/MUNICH, Feb 13 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned transatlantic ties confronted a “defining moment” in a quickly altering world however struck a hotter tone forward of the Munich Security Conference on Friday after a yr of unprecedented upheaval.

At the identical gathering of prime safety officers final yr, Vice President JD Vance had attacked European allies, triggering a sequence of confrontations, with the U.S. seemingly set on dismantling a lot of the worldwide order it helped to construct.

In response, Washington’s companions have been pushing to chart a extra impartial course whereas preserving the idea of the alliance, as they face myriad threats from Russia’s conflict in Ukraine to huge ructions in world commerce.

“I think it’s at a defining moment … the world is changing very fast right in front of us,” Rubio stated earlier than departing for Munich.

“The Old World is gone, frankly, the world I grew up in, and we live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to re-examine what that looks like and what our role is going to be.”

″(The U.S. is) deeply tied to Europe, and our futures have at all times been linked and can proceed to be,” stated Rubio, who’s a possible rival to Vance for the 2028 U.S. presidential race. “So we’ve just got to talk about what that future looks like.”

This yr’s assembly comes in opposition to a backdrop of a number of conflicts, together with conflict in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.

“I cannot remember a time when we had more simultaneous wars, crises, and conflicts of that dimension,” Wolfgang Ischinger, the previous German diplomat who heads the discussion board, informed a gathering earlier this week.

Transatlantic ties have lengthy been central to the Munich Security Conference, which started as a Cold War discussion board for Western defence debate. But the unquestioned assumption of cooperation that underpinned it has been upended by what Ischinger known as “wrecking-ball politics” wherein “sweeping destruction – rather than careful reforms and policy corrections – is the order of the day”.

U.S. President Donald Trump has toppled Venezuela’s chief, threatened different Latin American international locations with related army motion, imposed tariffs on pals and foes alike and talked brazenly about annexing Greenland – a transfer that would successfully finish the NATO alliance.

Last yr’s speech by Vance on the convention, accusing European leaders of censoring free speech and failing to manage immigration, was a milestone within the deterioration of relations.

The Trump administration’s harsh new tone, together with a dire warning that Europe faces “civilisational erasure”, has shaken its allies, which have pledged to step up spending on their very own militaries after many years of neglect.

Europe’s dependence on U.S. army assist will take years to undo, nonetheless, leaving it susceptible because the standoff with Russia over the Ukraine conflict persists.

Germany’s international minister stated on Friday that current feedback by U.S. officers have precipitated irritation inside NATO.

“This alliance is also under pressure. There is alienation, there is irritation about some of the things we hear from Washington. We need to talk about this here together,” Johann Wadephul informed German broadcaster ARD.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will open the convention with a speech on Friday afternoon, whereas round 70 heads of state and authorities and greater than 140 ministers are anticipated beneath tight safety in Munich.

Prominent attendees embody Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Christine Lagarde is because of be the primary European Central Bank president to deal with the occasion, underlining how efforts to make Europe’s economic system extra resilient are seen as a part of the broader political stakes.

Russia is just not sending a delegation and the discussion board withdrew invites to Iranian officers after the Tehran authorities’s countrywide crackdown on protests final month, wherein hundreds of individuals have been reported killed. Instead the son of the final Shah of Iran is anticipated to provide a speech, whereas a big Iranian opposition rally is seen going down within the metropolis.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Sarah Marsh, Andrew Gray, Mark John, Ludwig Burger; Writing by Sarah Marsh and Matthias Williams; Editing by James Mackenzie and Toby Chopra)