It didn’t take long for US Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at Munich to be dubbed the ‘New Valentine’s Day Massacre’.
Clichés abound whenever Trump is near. Vance’s speech came hot on the heels of defence secretary Hegseth’s comments outlining the new administration’s terms for a peace deal with Russia - no return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 boundaries and no NATO guarantees. And Secretary of State Mark Rubio has flatly said that unipolarity is over. It could not have been better set up for the obvious comparison; as tedious as it is predictable:
(How depressing it is that Chamberlain has to be named)
Donald Tusk tweets: “As a tourist I really like this place. Nice people, perfect beer, amazing Pinakothek. As a historian and politician the only thing I can say today is: MUNICH. NEVER AGAIN.”
The establishment commentary has been predictably scornful and dismissive, although largely focused on concerns about the implicit support for the inappropriate bedfellows of the AfD, rather than immigration per se. Frank Gardner of the BBC referred to the speech as “extremely poorly judged” whilst buying the line that it was all for the domestic audience; the Guardian berates as “indefensible” the Trump administration actively cheerleading for far-right parties . The message from the authorised right of the Marshall stable is mixed: the Spectator both warns about “risks to Americans becoming involved in the domestic politics of foreign countries” (lol) and cheers on Vance’s message on immigration. UnHerd complains that Europe has “starved their militaries for decades”, and bemoans a lack of coordination in defence. Brendan O’Regime at Spiked coins a new corker: “Enlightenment Backsliding”. And over at the Critic we get both: accepting Vance’s “merited scolding”, but claiming “American might shields us from Russian aggression”. At least it strikes a note of sanity: “Those looking to the States as a haven from progressive extremism, economic dysfunction and open borders are deluding themselves.” I have said before that it is a likelier outcome that Trump II provokes a doubling down from the elite on this side of the Atlantic, rather than solving our problems through osmosis or magic vibes.
So, one element of the speech has been to solidify (in the UK at least) the drive to increased military spending from both mainstream left and right, whether accompanied by derision or misplaced adulation. Starmer and Macron talk about troops on the ground in a post-peace Ukraine, unlike Scholtz.1 But where else was the speech targeted, and why?
The Home Front
Washington, D.C., it's paradise to me
It's not because it is the grand old seat
Of precious freedom and democracy, no no no…2
A semi-truism states that “all foreign policy speeches are intended for the domestic audience.” This is only partly true; it is always important to manage the public in a ‘democracy’, but to dismiss the rhetoric so easily is naive. Vance was of course speaking in the early weeks of the new Trump administration - a presidency where he will not seek a further term - so outright politicking may be expected to be minimal. And, candidates will already be setting themselves for nomination in four years. This serves to remind us that the US is - maximally - in a mode of permanent electioneering. Before even taking office, the President has more than half an eye on the mid-terms, and Congress. Nowhere in the world is ‘democracy’ as ever-present as in America; although I would note that the almost daily opinion polls now taken in the UK serve as something similar. They are part of the narrative to keep everything political, and everything current.
Undoubtedly, though, there is a domestic message at the heart of Vance’s Munich speech, and it’s not hard to divine. At the heart of Trump II is the simple re-assertion of the American political formula, Freedom and Democracy, that has taken such a beating in the Biden years, including the integrity of the 2020 election itself. Vance cannot believe that he will change the policy of the European (and British) governments he was addressing at the MSC. Vance’s Freedom targets are designed for ears of the religious right: the murder and imprisonment of Qur’arsonists in Sweden, and Abortion Buffer Prayer Zones in Britain. The fact that both are wrong and beyond ridicule is not the point: no words from the Vice President will change anything.
Even when addressing immigration, Vance has an eye to the States: he notes that both the US and Germany now have approaching a fifth of their populations born abroad. He is perhaps more explicit about the direct costs of immigrant atrocities that is usual in polite circles in Europe. But also note that he does not address the matter much differently from Starmer’s recent speech calling out the Tories:
It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade… No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants3
and is at pains to use the formula “out-of-control migration”.
The Democracy side of the speech was more direct. The cancelled presidential election in Romania comes in for two mentions, including
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.
(Thierry Breton is not name-checked - one aspect of Vance’s speech that has not received attention is that his targets are specific, and France is not one of them.)
And later, directly:
Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls.
The target is clear: the “firewall” of the AfD. If we grant the message is not solely aimed at American audiences, what was the idea behind it? Eugyppius (easily the best commentator on German politics) noted here (my emphasis):
I want to conclude with some thoughts about the strategy of the Trump administration here. You expect me to be a realist and to tell the truth, and so I must say that I hope Vance had no illusions his words would soften the firewall against the AfD, because if anything they have had the opposite effect. As I noted, the CDU responded to his words with offended condemnation. In public anyway, the firewall is stronger than before – propped up on the one hand by a desperate CDU seeking cover from press attacks after they voted twice with the AfD at the end of January, and on the other hand stabilised by a fresh round of hypocritical outrage at American ElEcTiOn InTeRfErEnCE…
Vance’s appeal made it effectively impossible for the CDU and the CSU to endorse his speech or align themselves with his anti-migration message. He pushed them in the opposite direction. Now that may have been precisely his intent, for what reason I can only imagine. It’s also possible that he doesn’t care, because he was serious about his threats to use NATO leverage to force change regardless.
Vance is no stupid Yank putting his foot in matters he knows nothing about, and the Munich speech seems to be part of a curated strategy across the administration. Nor do I believe that idealistically driving Freedom and Democracy across our continent is a concern for the United States in 2025 (not that it ever it was).
Rather than “fanning the flames of populism”, Vance has made it likelier that the establishment parties will retain control, as Eugyppius divined. Overt backing of a controversial party shortly before an election in a highly public forum does not tend to go down with either the elites or the electorate.
Of course, the simple explanation for this could be that the US wants to ensure that the pro-war parties remain in power in Germany. Whilst this seemingly goes against Trump’s stated desire to achieve a peace agreement, it would serve as a lesson that it is the US, not Europe, who will settle the terms; the Empire is still in charge, even as it retreats. Altogether, this fits with a more general thesis I hold: that the US is a retrenching power (as, by the way, is Russia). Let’s now look at the European angle, and how this would fit.
Europe, America and Multipolarity
Rome’s real failure in its final phase of grand strategy was that it didn't provide a mechanism for a graceful retreat. But it is precisely—& counterintuitively—by planning for such a deft exit from a hegemony that an empire can actually prolong its position of strength.4
Trump’s second presidency is a feature of American retrenchment, not the cause of it, and Robert D. Kaplan here captures perfectly why this is the case.
It’s no secret that it is the stated goal of the US for European NATO members to increase their defence spend: Hegseth stated a goal of 5% of GDP (more than double the level of current UK spend). But NATO has another target: that of the proportion the defence budget spent on equipment (the current guideline is 20%). Much of this of course will be ploughed into Big Defence, although the recipients are likely to be in flux, as the nature of warfare changes and the newer tech industries increase in importance, represented in the new Trump administration by the Musk/Thiel faction5.
We can see here the distribution between NATO members: Poland really is the outlier in both scale and equipment spend:
The financial motivation is obvious. But in a world of increasing multipolarity, getting Europe to step up defence commitments requires a different formulation of the axis of power in Europe itself. Central to this is the replacement of the Franco-German axis that formed the basis of the EU (and its prior incarnations) from its earliest days. Britain’s membership pushed the interests of the two leading continental powers closer than they would otherwise have been, but it is the changing nature of geopolitics that is driving things.
What I believe we will see is an increasing axis of France and the “3 Seas Initiative” countries, led by Europe’s rising power, Poland, connecting the former eastern bloc countries from the Baltics to the Black Sea and the Med. This is a continuation of the strategy of Prometheanism I looked at here, a 20th century drive to weaken Russia through separatist and nationalist movements in an arc ranging from Ukraine, through the Kuban and Don basins, and down to the South Caucasus. The most influential US foreign policy adviser in our lifetimes has been not Kissinger but Brzezinski in my view - not coincidentally, an ethnic Pole. The Polish public are the most maximally anti-Russian of the larger nations6 (worryingly, the UK is not far behind), making it easier for the Polish government to get though their massive defence spend, which can then be used to beat others countries with.
Every turn of recent German politics has been to weaken the country; from Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das” immigration nightmare, to the insane climate policies that have destroyed its manufacturing base. (The 3 Seas countries are building nuclear power stations, and France is of course generates most of her electricity from nuclear.) Decoupling from Russian gas has been crippling for Germany, and done with the approval of the US (under the “Biden” regime), even before mentioning the Nord Stream pipeline - and also remember that the previous Trump presidency effectively vetoed Nord Stream 2 .
So, in addition to Vance’s speech increasing the likelihood of the centre holding on to power, (possibly propped up by the Greens), it would also continue the seeming strategy of keeping Germany weaker, poorer and more politically impotent than ever. The German elites are all too happy to collude in their own demise.
Vance could just as easily attacked France, for the reasons of democratic purity, although of course there is not an election imminent there. But more than that, France has behaved herself geopolitically from the US’s point of view (remember Macron’s threat to defend Odessa with French troops). France has energy independence, and a defence industry that can be ramped up - she is the second largest arms exporter after the US - whilst not being as competitive in the newer defence fields of the Musk/Thiel techbro world.
There is a real issue at stake in Vance attacking the worrying mis/disinformation agenda of Europe: the obvious dominance of the American social media giants. I suspect the Europeans would love one outcome of multipolarity to be a separate social media regime for Europe, replicating another firewall, that of China. There is a tug on the lead from Vance here, but it is about protecting US interests, not freedom.
The political formula for the Europe (and I mean here both the countries of the continent and the EU) has never been Freedom and Democracy. Something like 40% of the population of the bloc has been under some from of “dictatorship” in my lifetime. Whatever the political formula is, it is not stable. It changed at the fall of the Berlin Wall from something like “We have overcome brother wars and if that comes at US dominance to protect us from the USSR, that’s fine”, to “We have overcome brother wars, and developed the most civilised socio-economic model in the world”. This has now been shattered by mass migration and energy policy; perhaps it can be best described (aping the term of the American right) as “Europoor and Proud”. An aspect of that pride is Europe managing its own defence, a matter in France has led the way since de Gaulle.
Democracy is not, and never has been, much of a part of this. The architect of the European Coal and Steel Community, Jean Monnet, from the first designed it to be above democracy: “He tried to shape the High Authority as a European administration run by a technocratic elite based in Brussels. He asserted the right to levy taxes… [and] established direct relations with foreign governments.”7 Belgium has demonstrated that a functioning national government is not essential; Italians have barely protested about being ruled by unelected technocrats. Only the French have taken to the streets with any spirit, but this has to date been contained by the creaking Fifth Republic - another reason to keep France on side. The new political formula has nothing to do with Democracy, but rather the suppression of public will that we have seen from Brussels, Bucharest and Berlin. Despite Vance’s words, the US is happy with this.
The multipolar world being admitted and encouraged by America requires Europe to step up its defence commitments, as exemplified by the France/Poland alliance. But the real “firewall” is, and always has been, to keep the possibility of a German/Russian rapprochement off the table. The Ukraine war has been highly successful in achieving this.
NATO’s first secretary general, Lord Ismay, is reputed to have said “The purpose of NATO is to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” We can only speculate about the reasons for the Vance speech, but it fits the pattern. The Americans are aren’t leaving any time soon, but they have certainly achieved the latter.
It is interesting to wonder why Tusk has for a while said that Poland will not participate. My best guess is that it is just a feature of Poland’s maximalist positioning, and that they will relent when a deal is done. I suspect we will know before too long
“Washington, D.C.”, The Magnetic Fields.
“Europe should support Ukraine in continuing fighting to win back territories occupied by Russia”: Poland 40%, UK 38%. See here. Polling carried out by ECFR, which is itself funded by Europe (as well as the Open Society Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) as part of the NGO network to entrench the EU within its member states. There is an excellent report here
Ashoka Mody, “Eurotragedy”, pp 28-9
Brendan O'Regime. Haha.
Hmm. Seems a little too '4D chess' to say that Vance lent his support to AfD because he wants them to lose and would rather have the conventional powers in Germany. The Franco-Polish axis of confrontation may well proceed on its own, but I see no signs that the US wants to weaken, contain, or otherwise harm Russia or keep it out of Europe, quite the opposite.