Welcome to the second pop-up version of International Coverage’s State of affairs Report on the 2026 Munich Safety Convention. It’s been an action-packed day dominated by conversations about whether or not america and Europe can hug it out and save their historic alliance.
Alright, right here’s what’s on faucet for the day: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio affords Europe a softer contact (however stays on message), NATO chief Mark Rutte denies that there’s a disconnect with the U.S. on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham makes the case for regime change in Iran.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio marked Valentine’s Day by attempting to kiss and make up with Europe, precisely a 12 months (virtually to the minute) after U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance left many throughout the continent questioning their relationship with Washington.
The venue for each speeches was the identical—the principle stage on the Munich Safety Convention within the Bayerischer Hof Lodge—however the response from the room couldn’t have been extra completely different.
The place Vance gobsmacked the viewers in 2025 with a lecture about Europe’s retreat from “shared values,” Rubio spent a lot of his speech interesting to america’ and Europe’s shared historical past, tradition, and heritage (together with three mentions of Christianity) and telling Europeans that Washington needs to work along with them to “renew the best civilization in human historical past.”
On the first-ever Munich Safety Convention in 1963, held towards the backdrop of the Chilly Battle and the Cuban missile disaster, america and Europe “had been unified not simply by what we had been preventing towards; we had been unified by what we had been preventing for,” Rubio stated. “And collectively, Europe and America prevailed and a continent was rebuilt.”
It was a message Europe actually wished to listen to after spending two days in Munich (and a whole lot extra earlier than) fretting in regards to the trans-Atlantic alliance. “In a time of headlines heralding the tip of the trans-Atlantic period, let or not it’s identified and clear to all that that is neither our purpose nor our want—as a result of for us Individuals, our dwelling could also be within the Western Hemisphere, however we’ll all the time be a toddler of Europe,” Rubio added, in one of many largest applause strains of his speech.
Many, together with convention chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, who launched Rubio, and European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen, who spoke shortly after him, stated they felt “reassured” by the speech.
However Rubio additionally devoted a lot of his handle to reiterating factors Vance made a 12 months earlier, together with warnings in regards to the “disaster” of “mass migration” and the “local weather cult” that has imposed “impoverishing” vitality insurance policies on Western nations. He additionally underlined the Trump administration’s retreat from multilateralism, calling the rules-based international order that Washington put in place an “overused time period” and a “delusion.”
A lot of it was outdated wine in a brand new bottle, barely extra chilled—a truth not misplaced on European officers we spoke to.
“Once you speak about content material, what Mr. Vance stated and what Mr. Rubio stated an hour in the past was just about the identical,” Belgian Protection Minister Theo Francken advised SitRep in an interview shortly after Rubio’s speech. Although Francken added that Rubio’s message was delivered “in a really diplomatic means” and was “extra about our heritage, our bonds, so it was a really emotional speech, and it touched lots of people within the room—and in Europe—actually to the center.”
Norwegian International Minister Espen Barth Eide additionally acknowledged “the MAGA program” working by Rubio’s speech. “However [Rubio was] additionally mainly saying: ‘We’re nonetheless right here, and it’s probably not America alone.’ In order that’s my studying, however some injury has been completed,” Eide added.
Rupture or rebuilding? In assessing the extent of that injury, Francken and Eide each pointed to not the speeches by Vance or Rubio, however to the one U.S. President Donald Trump gave in Davos final month wherein he mused a few U.S. takeover of Greenland. That “was fairly the shock to the trans-Atlantic household,” stated Eide, who was within the room for that speech.
However Eide stated that Europe’s assertiveness, which bought Trump to again down from the Greenland threats, set a tone for the connection that higher ready the continent to listen to Rubio’s message this week. “The Europeans and Canada got here to the place that now now we have to say, ‘Sufficient is sufficient,’ and there was truly various satisfaction in lastly saying that we’re allies, we need to stay allies, however there are particular belongings you merely don’t do,” the Norwegian minister added.
There additionally seems to be a want in Europe to maneuver ahead from lamenting the breakdown of the worldwide order, as illustrated by U.Ok. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday. “As an alternative of a second of rupture, we should make it considered one of radical renewal,” Starmer stated, considerably subtweeting the phrases of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s personal viral Davos speech. “I’m speaking a few imaginative and prescient of European safety and larger European autonomy that doesn’t herald U.S. withdrawal however solutions the decision for extra burden sharing in full and remakes the ties which have served us so properly,” Starmer added.
That European assertiveness, bookended by the Vance and Rubio speeches and pushed into overdrive by Trump’s, seems right here to remain and a baseline for the trans-Atlantic future. “Europeans went from a state of shock to a state of motion, and the coalition of the keen was mainly fashioned within the days after Vance’s speech,” stated Eide, referring to a coalition of nations dedicated to supporting Ukraine. A 12 months after that shock, “there may be now a way more united Europe,” he added.
Or, as Francken put it extra bluntly: “We have to step up in Europe. We will do it. We’re not a bunch of losers.”
Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of protection for coverage and the second-most-watched U.S. official in Munich, made his personal try and reassure the Europeans in an onstage interview with FP editor in chief Ravi Agrawal afterward Saturday afternoon. Trump “has proven in locations like Venezuela and in Operation Midnight Hammer that he’s ready to make use of navy power decisively to again up his pledges to work with our allies,” Colby stated, when requested if america would come to the help of a NATO ally who was attacked. (Operation Midnight Hammer is the code title for the U.S. navy strikes on Iran’s nuclear services in June 2025.) “However we’re placing issues on a extra sustainable foundation,” Colby added.
What must be excessive in your radar, if it isn’t already.
Rutte backs Trump on Russia-Ukraine. There’s been an evident disconnect between Trump and NATO allies in the case of the Ukraine peace negotiations. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for instance, advised the convention on Friday that Moscow “just isn’t but keen to speak severely.” That very same day, Trump advised reporters in Washington that Russian President Vladimir Putin is able to make a deal.
However NATO Secretary-Basic Mark Rutte, throughout a roundtable dialogue with journalists right here in Munich on Saturday, insisted there isn’t any such disconnect.
When requested by SitRep whether or not NATO was working to get the White Home on the identical web page because the alliance, Rutte stated, “I feel we’re on the identical web page. The problem is that this, that it’s the Individuals who’ve to guide this—there’s no different means. And if you find yourself main peace negotiations, it’s solely logical that you just put stress on everyone.”
“However on the similar time, it is usually clear, in all my talks with the American administration, that that is additionally a take a look at. It’s a take a look at of the Russians—are they critical, is Putin actually keen to play ball or not? Ukraine is, we all know,” Rutte stated. (It must be famous that in Trump’s Friday feedback, the U.S. president appeared to accuse Kyiv of not being keen to play ball, saying that “[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s gonna need to get shifting. In any other case, he’s going to overlook an amazing alternative.”)
The NATO chief pointed to the sanctions Trump positioned on Russia’s two largest oil corporations final October as “proof he’s actually placing the stress the place it’s wanted,” including that Trump’s efforts to proceed “encouraging the Ukrainians” are additionally “logical.”
“That’s his [Trump’s] position because the one who’s together with his crew main this course of. And he’s the one one who can try this,” Rutte stated. “Europeans are fully stored knowledgeable of what’s occurring. NATO is being stored knowledgeable. So I feel that’s in a great place within the sense of the method, however we’re clearly not but at a peace deal.”
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham speaks onstage throughout an illustration towards the Iranian regime in Munich on Feb. 14.Michaela Stache/AFP through Getty Photographs
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham gave a full-throated endorsement of regime change in Iran throughout a press convention on the Munich Safety Convention on Saturday, because the Trump administration weighs conducting contemporary strikes amid ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
“For those who don’t need regime change, then transfer to Iran and dwell a 12 months and name me again,” Graham advised reporters, whereas referring to the Iranian regime because the “mothership of terrorism” and “spiritual Nazis.”
Graham criticized questions on what would occur after the regime falls as “boring,” and in response to a query from a reporter on whether or not the U.S. bombing Iran may probably lead Iranians to rally across the flag, he stated, “That’s the dumbest fucking factor I’ve ever heard. You suppose these folks out within the streets would object to us bombing their oppressor?” He was referencing the latest mass anti-government protests in Iran that led to a brutal crackdown that’s estimated to have killed 1000’s of demonstrators.
Whereas conceding that he doesn’t know “what’s going to occur subsequent” if the regime falls, Graham stated it could be a “good factor, not a foul factor” and that the “payoffs” of “serving to the Iranian folks take the Ayatollah [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] down, who’s extremely weak,” outweigh the dangers.
Graham additionally pushed again on the notion that U.S.-led regime change in Iran may flip right into a scenario much like the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which resulted in a protracted and expensive conflict that additionally catalyzed the rise of the Islamic State. “We’ve discovered quite a bit,” Graham stated, suggesting that what could be completely different this time is that there could be no want for U.S. boots on the bottom in Iran. “Will there be issues? Yeah, however I’m telling you proper now, the worst downside is to do nothing.”
Graham additionally had quite a bit to say about Russia and Ukraine in the course of the press convention, which you’ll be able to learn extra about right here.
“The Ukrainian military is the strongest military in Europe. … I feel it’s merely not sensible to maintain this military exterior NATO.”
—Zelensky in his speech to the Munich Safety Convention.
