Greetings from the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the 62nd Munich Security Conference—also known as “Davos with guns”—is well underway. I just published a guest essay in the New York Times that reflects on why this year’s conference has arrived at a pivotal moment.
Last year, there was uncertainty about the United States’ longtime role as Europe’s security guarantor, and Ukraine was the dominant topic of discussion. U.S. Vice President JD Vance, too, shocked attendees when he said that Europe faced a “threat from within.”
In the coming days, I’ll publish a special edition of this column with a proper dispatch capturing my reflections, once the proceedings here are over. In the meantime, here are my observations in the run up to Munich excerpted from the New York Times:
The conference, which began on Friday, is a fork in the road for the trans-Atlantic relationship. Of the two paths before us, one is a lasting recalibration of the NATO alliance with a strong Europe at its core, capable of defending itself while sustaining a healthy, if diminished, partnership with the United States. The other is continued trans-Atlantic infighting over shared values, national interests and what counts as a fair division of responsibilities on all sides.
The latter path is no longer just a meddlesome aspect of an otherwise sound alliance. It threatens a messy separation between the United States and its foremost allies that would hurt European and American security. It is in the United States’ interest that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is leading the Trump administration’s contingent at the conference and the accompanying congressional delegations, maximize progress down the first path. And no matter how Mr. Rubio sets the tone, Europe must come together behind meaningful reform.
Europe has its own hard decisions to make. The notion of a stronger, better integrated Europe, envisioned by President Emmanuel Macron of France; Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission; and other political leaders, remains painfully theoretical, hampered by the bloc’s bureaucratic inertia. The former Italian prime ministers Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, among others, have already defined the goals: a unified capital market, a continentwide innovation ecosystem, a defense industrial base that transcends national borders and governance committed more to productivity and investment than to procedure and overregulation. There is momentum behind this vision. But “strategic autonomy,” as it has been labeled, demands political trade-offs, such as defense mobilization, deficit spending, diminished sovereignty and uneven gains, which remain blocked by the parochial interests of many member states.
Building European strategic autonomy and a new, durable relationship with the United States will take more than three days inside Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof. The worst outcome would be more jawboning without tangible progress. Otherwise, a conference founded in 1963 to coordinate allied containment of the Soviet Union now risks becoming a venue not for strengthening shared security but for trans-Atlantic divorce proceedings.
Go ahead and give the full essay a read, and let me know what you think by replying to president@cfr.org.
What I’m tuning into this week:
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My interview for the CFR.org series, “How I Got My Career in Foreign Policy”
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Liana Fix’s article for Foreign Affairs, “Europe’s Next Hegemon: The Perils of German Power”
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The first episode in a new CFR podcast series, “The Spillover,” with co-hosts Rebecca Patterson and Sebastian Mallaby
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Eddie Fishman’s article, “Want to Stop Trump Bullying Your Country? Retaliate,” for the Guardian
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Lindsay Iversen’s article for CFR.org, “Climate, Energy, & Wrecking Ball Politics,” about the Munich Security Conference and the climate realm
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Mike Horowitz and Lauren Kahn’s analysis of international cooperation on the military use of artificial intelligence for CFR.org
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Rebecca Lissner’s columns for Time Magazine, “A Populist Backlash Over AI Is Brewing in America,” and for Foreign Policy, “NATO Has Become a Zombie Alliance”
- Jim Lindsay’s article on the House’s rebuke of Trump’s Canada tariffs for CFR.org
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Erin Dumbacher on the end of New START and the future of arms control for CFR.org
