A year after JD Vance’s incendiary speech at the Munich Security Conference, heads of government, business leaders and others are heading back to the Bavarian capital to debate the “new normal” in transatlantic relations, now that the European Union can no longer count on its traditional North American partner. In an interview with CNN Portugal, Munich historian Kiran Klaus Patel says that this year’s conference “perhaps serves, at best, to buy time in the worst-case scenario” and given the fissures exposed within the EU, he assumes: “The situation will remain confusing”
The Munich Report spares no words in its diagnosis of the current geopolitical order. in preparation for the Munich Security Conference (CSM), taking place between this Friday and Sunday in that Bavarian city, the document highlights that, “more than 80 years after the beginning of its construction, the post-1945 international order, led by the USA, is now in a process of destruction” and that the current North American president, Donald Trump, is “the most powerful among those who are destroying the existing rules and institutions”.
A year ago, the CSM was precisely the stage where the new Trump administration sowed the seeds of the reinvention of transatlantic relations that would end up being officially confirmed in the National Security Strategy and, weeks later, in the National Defense Strategy, by Elbridge Colby, the Department of Defense’s undersecretary for Political Affairs – and the second highest authority present at this year’s meetings after Marco Rubio, the head of diplomacy.
Contrary to tradition, the US Vice President, JD Vance, did not go to Munich this year, after he was the one to sow the so-called seeds, with a devastating speech that, at the time, caught many leaders by surprise. Since then, and after a particularly “terrible” last semester, almost nothing that comes from the Trump administration takes the European Union (EU) by surprise, says Kiran Klaus Patel, a historian specializing in the history of the EU and professor at the University of Munich.
“I think the Europeans have really understood that there will not be a serious restart of relations [transatlânticas]in the sense that everything will be well again and that we will be friends again as before”, he tells CNN Portugal from Munich. “In this sense, this conference perhaps serves, at best, to buy time in the worst case scenario, avoiding the chaos we had at the last security conference.”
foto The Review of Democracy
What would you say we can expect from this year’s Munich Security Conference?
I have to say that I was able to follow the news a little less than I would have liked, but I think the crucial point will, of course, be Marco Rubio’s speech. It will be interesting to see what he has to say, but we also shouldn’t take it too seriously, because he is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, not the president – and with the president, you never know what he will do next.
In that sense, I think everyone is eager to hear what Rubio has to say perhaps also in light of a possible post-Trump era, right? However, I think we should approach this with caution. The absence of any major catastrophe, so to speak, will already be good news, but it is good news only for that day, and the next day may bring something new.
Here in the German media, there have been superlatives everywhere, “more than 60 heads of state and government”, Wolfgang Ischinger [que presidente à CSM] also talking about a “really important thing” with all this potential… But, you know, I think it’s very likely that in 10 years no one will remember what happened at that conference.
These meetings take place a year after JD Vance gave that completely unexpected and completely shattering speech. There are those who see his absence, on the one hand, as a lowering of the level of the diplomatic mission, as it is tradition to have the vice-president presiding over the North American delegation, but on the other hand, also as an opportunity, as it is considered that Rubio is more conciliatory and less likely to attack Europe. The president of Finland even believes that this conference will serve to “restart” the transatlantic relationship… How do you look at all this?
Firstly, I think the Europeans have really understood that the last year, in particular the last semester, has been terrible and that there will not be a serious restart of these relations, in the sense that everything will be fine again and that we will be friends again as before. What comes next will be something new, it will be different. We also saw this in NATO’s recent decisions, with the changes not at the highest level, in the highest-ranking bodies, but.
So you don’t foresee this possibility of a reset as presented by Alexander Stubb?
I think we can hope that discussions with Rubio will lead to a smoother, more rational transition to a new landscape, with a slightly different division of labor and some kind of continuity of what exists. But I think Europeans would be completely naive if they expected that, even if the next few days go well, everything will return to normal. So, in that sense, this conference perhaps serves, at best, to buy time in the worst case scenario, avoiding the chaos we had at the last security conference, as you rightly said with Vance here last year.
On the eve of the start of the CSM, European leaders met in retreat debating paths and strategies now that the European Union (EU) can no longer count on the United States. What route do you think we Europeans will be able to chart towards self-sufficiency?
I think we are seeing tectonic shifts within the European Union as well, such as, for example, a rapprochement between Berlin and Rome on a level never seen before. Also, you mentioned Alex Stubb before, which shows that small countries that have never played such an important role, like Finland, are playing a bigger role. And, of course, we are witnessing the end, the sunset, so to speak, of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency, he is no longer taken as seriously as he was two, three or four years ago, due to his internal political problems, but also because this is basically the last year of his term, and it is clear that everything he says has less weight than before.
Macron gave a great interview ahead of the Munich Conference defending, among others, the need for the EU to invest in Eurobonds to finance the bloc’s competitiveness and “challenge” the hegemony of the American dollar in world markets – but Friedrich Merz’s Germany continues. What do these fissures between Paris and Berlin portend?
Unfortunately, the situation, or rather the relationship between Macron and Merz is not good. I don’t think many new initiatives will emerge or develop from this relationship. Things like Eurobonds bring us between France and Germany. I’m not saying it’s a bad option, it’s just clear that everyone knows exactly where everyone stands. Furthermore, with French initiatives in terms of industrial policies, which, as we know, also generate certain reactions from Germany, I wonder if this would not be the time to overcome this and create new initiatives that do not lead people to their old reflexes.
“Who would have imagined, when Giorgia Meloni took office, that she would still be here after the string of brief prime ministers in Italy, and that she would become an important figure in international and European politics?” photo Gregorio Borgia/AP
What kind of new initiatives?
The capital market is an example where, I think, there is probably more potential for consensus than on international trade issues, but also certainly on Eurobonds and other more military issues, in the strict sense of the word.
Unfortunately, at the risk of sounding repetitive, the situation will continue to be confusing, but I believe there will be realignments – it is just not yet known whether they will be permanent. But then again, who would have imagined, when Giorgia Meloni took office, that she would still be here after the string of brief prime ministers in Italy, and that she would become an important figure in international and European politics?
That said, I think we should also not forget that, on certain issues, these realignments represent an even greater rightward reorientation in European politics, whether on issues of migration and asylum, but also on other issues, such as environmental issues. So while we can expect new alliances to emerge to address new challenges on a global scale – and particularly, once again, the weakening of transatlantic relations – I think we also see a certain price to pay.
Is this the price to pay for this increasing shift to the right?
Yes. That price is, to me – this is a normative statement, obviously, but it is this rightward shift that Meloni advocates and that someone like Merz is willing to compromise on. And it’s interesting – Merz isn’t exactly friends with Manfred Weber [eurodeputado alemão que dirige o Partido Popular Europeu]but Weber and his team have been preparing the ground for this “alliance replacement”, so to speak, with Italy for some time. In this sense, it is interesting that some moves made in Brussels by some German actors are now coming to fruition, despite all the tensions between the people involved, including between the capitals.
