Thank you very much. We gather
here today as members of a historic alliance, an alliance that saved and changed
the world. When
this conference began in 1963, it was in a nation
-- actually, it
was on a continent -- that was divided against itself. The line between communism
and freedom ran through the heart of Germany. The first barbed fences of the
Berlin Wall had gone up just two years prior.
And just months before that first conference, before our predecessors first met
here, here in Munich, the
Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the
brink of nuclear destruction. Even as World War II still burned fresh in the
memory of Americans and Europeans alike, we found ourselves staring down the
barrel of a new global catastrophe -- one with the potential for a new kind of
destruction, more apocalyptic and final than anything before in the history of
mankind.
At the time of that first gathering, Soviet communism was on the march.
Thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance. At that time,
victory was far from certain. But we were driven by a common purpose. We were
unified not just by what we were fighting against; we were unified by what we
were fighting for. And together, Europe and America prevailed and a continent
was rebuilt. Our people prospered. In time, the East and West blocs were
reunited. A civilization was once again made whole.
That infamous wall that had cleaved this nation into two came down, and with it
an evil empire, and the East and West became one again. But the euphoria of this
triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, “the end of
history;” that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties
formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the
rules-based global order -- an overused term
-- would now replace the national
interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone
became a citizen of the world.
This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and it ignored the
lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history. And it has cost us
dearly. In this delusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered
trade, even as some nations protected their economies and subsidized their
companies to systematically undercut ours -- shuttering our plants, resulting in
large parts of our societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of
working and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical
supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.
We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions while
many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the
ability to defend themselves. This, even as other countries have invested in the
most rapid military buildup in all of human history and have not hesitated to
use hard power to pursue their own interests. To appease a climate cult, we have
imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as
our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else -- not
just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.
And in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an
unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our
societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. We made
these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face
those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.
Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the
task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as
sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. 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.
For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250
years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who
settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the
memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a
sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.
We are part of one civilization -- Western civilization. We are bound to one
another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of
shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the
sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we
have fallen heir.
And so this is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and
urgent in our counsel. This is why President Trump demands seriousness and
reciprocity from our friends here in Europe. The reason why, my friends, is
because we care deeply. We care deeply about your future and ours. And if at
times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern
about a Europe with which we are connected -- not just economically, not just
militarily. We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally. We
want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive, because the two
great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that
ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours, because we
know -- because we know that the fate of Europe will never be
irrelevant to our own.
National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series
of technical questions -- how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy
it, these are important questions. They are. But they are not the fundamental
one. The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are
we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a
people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is
what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of
its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its
own economic and political destiny.
It was here in Europe where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that
changed the world were born. It was here in Europe where the world -- which gave
the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution. It
was this continent that produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante
and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling
Stones. And this is the place where the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel
and the towering spires of the great cathedral in Cologne, they testify not just
to the greatness of our past or to a faith in God that inspired these marvels.
They foreshadow the wonders that await us in our future. But only if we are
unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we
together begin the work of envisioning and shaping our economic and our
political future.
Deindustrialization was not inevitable. It was a conscious policy choice, a
decades-long economic undertaking that stripped our nations of their wealth, of
their productive capacity, and of their independence. And the loss of our supply
chain sovereignty was not a function of a prosperous and healthy system of
global trade. It was foolish. It was a foolish but voluntary transformation of
our economy that left us dependent on others for our needs and dangerously
vulnerable to crisis.
Mass migration is not, was not, isn’t some fringe concern of little consequence.
It was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing
societies all across the West. Together we can reindustrialize our economies and
rebuild our capacity to defend our people. But the work of this new alliance
should not be focused just on military cooperation and reclaiming the industries
of the past. It should also be focused on, together, advancing our mutual
interests and new frontiers, unshackling our ingenuity, our creativity, and the
dynamic spirit to build a new Western century. Commercial space travel and
cutting-edge artificial intelligence; industrial automation and flex
manufacturing; creating a Western supply chain for critical minerals not
vulnerable to extortion from other powers; and a unified effort to compete for
market share in the economies of the
Global South. Together we can not only take
back control of our own industries and supply chains -- we can prosper in the
areas that will define the 21st century.
But we must also gain control of our national borders. Controlling who and how
many people enter our countries, this is not an expression of xenophobia. It is
not hate. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty. And the failure to do
so is not just an abdication of one of our most basic duties owed to our people.
It is an urgent threat to the fabric of our societies and the survival of our
civilization itself.
And finally, we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital
interests of our people and our nations. We do not need to abandon the system of
international cooperation we authored, and we don’t need to dismantle the global
institutions of the old order that together we built. But these must be
reformed. These must be rebuilt.
For example, the United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for
good in the world. But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters
before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role. It could not
solve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives
from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce. It had not solved the war in
Ukraine. It took American leadership and partnership with many of the countries
here today just to bring the two sides to the table in search of a still-elusive
peace.
In a perfect world, all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats
and strongly worded resolutions. But we do not live in a perfect world, and we
cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens
and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of
international law which they themselves routinely violate.
This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon.
It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on. It is a path we have
walked together before and hope to walk together again. For five centuries,
before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding -- its
missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its
shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out
across the globe.
But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting.
Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked
like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal
decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial
uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle
across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.
Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West’s age of
dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and
feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline
was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did
together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States
want to do again now, together with you.
And this is why we do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us
weaker. We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever
be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our
allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their
culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same
great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to
defend it.
And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo
rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it, for we in America have no
interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.
We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the
greatest civilization in human history. What we want is a reinvigorated alliance
that recognizes that what has ailed our societies is not just a set of bad
policies but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency. An alliance -- the
alliance that we want is one that is not paralyzed into inaction by fear -- fear
of climate change, fear of war, fear of technology. Instead, we want an alliance
that boldly races into the future. And the only fear we have is the fear of the
shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger, and wealthier for our
children.
An alliance ready to defend our people, to safeguard our interests, and to
preserve the freedom of action that allows us to shape our own destiny -- not one
that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins
of past generations. An alliance that does not allow its power to be outsourced,
constrained, or subordinated to systems beyond its control; one that does not
depend on others for the critical necessities of its national life; and one that
does not maintain the polite pretense that our way of life is just one among
many and that asks for permission before it acts. And above all, an alliance
based on the recognition that we, the West, have inherited together -- what we
have inherited together is something that is unique and distinctive and
irreplaceable, because this, after all, is the very foundation of the
transatlantic bond.
Acting together in this way, we will not just help recover a sane foreign
policy. It will restore to us a clearer sense of ourselves. It will restore a
place in the world, and in so doing, it will rebuke and deter the forces of
civilizational erasure that today menace both America and Europe alike.
So in a time of headlines heralding the end of the transatlantic era, let it be
known and clear to all that this is neither our goal nor our wish -- because for
us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a
child of Europe.
Our story began with an Italian explorer whose adventure into the great unknown
to discover a new world brought Christianity to the Americas -- and became the
legend that defined the imagination of a our pioneer nation.
Our first colonies were built by English settlers, to whom we owe not just the
language we speak but the whole of our political and legal system. Our frontiers
were shaped by Scots-Irish -- that proud, hearty clan from the hills of Ulster
that gave us Davy Crockett and Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt and Neil
Armstrong.
Our great midwestern heartland was built by German farmers and craftsmen who
transformed empty plains into a global agricultural powerhouse -- and by the
way, dramatically upgraded the quality of American beer.
Our expansion into the interior followed the footsteps of French fur traders and
explorers whose names, by the way, still adorn the street signs and towns’ names
all across the Mississippi Valley. Our horses, our ranches, our rodeos -- the
entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American
West -- these were born in Spain. And our largest and most iconic city was named
New Amsterdam before it was named New York.
And do you know that in the year that my country was founded, Lorenzo and
Catalina Geroldi lived in Casale Monferrato in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.
And Jose and Manuela Reina lived in Sevilla, Spain. I don’t know what, if
anything, they knew about the 13 colonies which had gained their independence
from the British empire, but here’s what I am certain of: They could have never
imagined that 250 years later, one of their direct descendants would be back
here today on this continent as the chief diplomat of that infant nation. And
yet here I am, reminded by my own story that both our histories and our fates
will always be linked.
Together we rebuilt a shattered continent in the wake of two devastating world
wars. When we found ourselves divided once again by the Iron Curtain, the free
West linked arms with the courageous dissidents struggling against tyranny in
the East to defeat Soviet communism. We have fought against each other, then
reconciled, then fought, then reconciled again. And we have bled and died side
by side on battlefields from Kapyong to Kandahar.
And I am here today to leave it clear that America is charting the path for a
new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with
you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends.
We want to do it together with you, with a Europe that is proud of its heritage
and of its history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty
that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a
Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive. We should be
proud of what we achieved together in the last century, but now we must confront
and embrace the opportunities of a new one -- because yesterday is over, the
future is inevitable, and our destiny together awaits. Thank you.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I’m not sure you heard the sigh of relief through this
hall when we were just listening to what I would interpret as a message of
reassurance, of partnership. You spoke of intertwined relations between the
United States and Europe -- reminds me of statements made decades ago by your
predecessors when the discussion was: is actually America a European power? Is
America a power in Europe? Thank you for offering this message of reassurance
about our partnership.
This is actually not the first time that Marco Rubio is here at the Munich
Security Conference -- been here before a couple of times, but it’s the first
time he has been and he is the speaker as Secretary of State. So thank you
again. We have only a couple of minutes now for just a few questions, and if I
may, we collected questions from the audience.
One of the key issues here yesterday, today, is, of course -- continues to be the
question of how to deal with the war in Ukraine. Many of us in the discussions
over the last day, the last 24 hours, have voiced their impression that the
Russians -- let me put it colloquially -- the Russians are playing for time,
they’re not really interested in a meaningful settlement. There is no indication
that they’re willing to compromise on any of their maximalist objectives. Offer
to us, if you could, your assessment of where we are and where you think we can
go.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I think where we are at this point is that the issues at
play that have to be -- here’s the good news. The good news is that the issues
that need to be confronted to end this war have been narrowed. That’s the good
news. The bad news is they’ve been narrowed to the hardest questions to answer,
and work remains to be done in that front. I hear your point about -- the answer
is we don’t know. We don’t know the Russians are serious about ending the war;
they say they are -- and under what terms they were willing to do it and whether
we can find terms that are acceptable to Ukraine that Russia will always agree
to. But we’re going to continue to test it.
In the meantime, everything else continues to happen. The United States has
imposed additional sanctions on Russia’s oil. In our conversations with India,
we’ve gotten their commitment to stop buying additional Russian oil. Europe has
taken its set of steps moving forward. The Pearl Program continues in which
American weaponry is being sold for the Ukrainian war effort. So all these
things continue. Nothing has stopped in the interim. So there’s no buying of
time here in that regard.
What we can’t answer -- but we’re going to continue to test -- is whether there is
an outcome that Ukraine can live with and that Russia will accept. And I would
say it’s been elusive up to this point. We’ve made progress in the sense that
for the first time, I think in years, at least at the technical level, there
were military officials from both sides that met together last week, and
there’ll be -- and there’ll be meetings again on Tuesday, although it may not be
the same group of people.
Look, we’re going to continue to do everything we can to play this role of
bringing this war to an end. I don’t think anybody in this room would be against
a negotiated settlement to this war so long as the conditions are just and
sustainable. And that’s what we aim to achieve, and we’re going to continue to
try to achieve it, even as all these other things continue to happen on the
sanctions front and so forth.
QUESTION: Thank you very much. I’m sure if we had more time there were many
questions on Ukraine. But let me conclude by asking a question about something
entirely different. The next speaker here in just a couple of minutes will be
the foreign minister of China. When you served in the Senate, sir, people
considered you a kind of a China hawk.
SECRETARY RUBIO:: So did they.
QUESTION: So did they?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah.
QUESTION: The -- we know that there will be, in about two months’ time, a summit
meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping. Give us your
expectation. Are you optimistic? Can there be a, quote/unquote, “deal” with
China? What do you expect?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I would say this. The two largest economies in the world,
two of the big powers on the planet, we have an obligation to communicate with
them and talk, and so do many of you on a bilateral basis as well. I mean, it
would be geopolitical malpractice to not be in conversations with China. I would
say this: because we’re two large countries with huge global interests, our
national interests will often not align. Their national interests and ours will
not align, and we owe it to the world to try to manage those as best we can,
obviously avoiding conflict, both economic and worse. And that -- so it’s
important for us to have communications with them in that regard.
On areas in which our interests are aligned, I think we can work together to
make positive impact on the world, and we seek opportunities to do that with
them. So -- but we have to have a relationship with China. And any of the
countries represented here today are going to have to have a relationship with
China, always understanding that nothing that we agree to could come at the
expense of our national interest. And frankly, we expect China to act in their
national interest, as we expect every nation-state to act in their national
interest. And the goal of diplomacy is to try to navigate those times in which
our national interests come into conflict with one another, always hoping to do
it peacefully.
I think we also have a special obligation because whatever happens between the
U.S. and China on trade has a global implication. So there are long-term
challenges that we face that we’re going to have to confront that are going to
be irritants in our relationship with China. That’s not just true for the United
States; that’s true for the broader West. But I do think we need to try to
manage those the best we can to avoid unnecessary friction if it’s possible. But
no one is under any illusions. There are some fundamental challenges between our
countries and between the West and China that will continue for the foreseeable
future for a variety of reasons, and it’s some of the things we hope to work
together with you on.
QUESTION: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. We’ve run out of time. I’m sorry
that I can’t take questions from all those who wanted to ask questions. Mr.
Secretary of State, thank you for this message of reassurance. I think this is
much appreciated here in the hall. Let’s offer a round of applause.
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