Sometimes, it takes a concerned old friend to point out things you’d rather not face. Like the fact just a few glasses of wine in the evening have slithered into alcoholism. Or your tendency to be a bit smug and bossy somehow ended up with people being arrested for things you find offensive. That was the role played by JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference.
It must spend more for its own defense, as American leaders have warned for years.
Europe has been warned, and warned again.
Still, it has been reduced to a near-fainting fit — and, in the case of one German official, actual tears — over the Trump administration’s tough words about its deficient military spending and its moves to begin negotiating on its own with Russia over the Ukraine war.
Robert Habeck—Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and unpopular lead candidate for the left-wing Greens at the upcoming elections in Germany—has criticised President Donald Trump and his ally, South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, for teaming up “to eliminate boundaries on power.”
Habeck stated that Musk—the owner of social media platform X, formerly Twitter—and other U.S. tech giants “must be regulated, if necessary, in a way that aligns with our values,” during a TV debate on Monday, February 17th. Together with his leftist colleagues in the German parliament, he has sought repeatedly to close down free speech.
Faced with undisguised hostility from the Trump administration, Europeans are preparing for what is shaping up to be a go-it-alone era.
For years, European leaders have fretted about reducing their dependence on a wayward United States. On Monday, at a hastily arranged meeting in Paris, the hand-wringing gave way to harried acceptance of a new world in which Europe’s most powerful ally has begun acting more like an adversary.
President Trump’s plan to negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, with neither the Ukrainians nor Europeans invited to take part, has forced dazed leaders in capitals like Berlin, London and Paris to confront a series of hard choices, painful trade-offs and costly new burdens.
So the emerging consensus narrative is to smear President Trump’s administration as “adversarial” for asking fellow NATO members to pony up their fair share if they want a seat at the table.
No pay no play was inevitable and they’ve known it for years.
His intellectual waterboarding of Europe’s elites was a joy to watch.
Well, that was a delicious spectacle. America’s self-made VP gloriously roasting the wizened technocrats of Europe. A Yank from dirt-poor origins sticking it to Europe’s turbo-smug ruling class. How they squirmed as the boy from Ohio who somehow made it to the top of US politics chastised them for their indecent desertion of the ideals of liberty, democracy and security. It was like an intellectual waterboarding, and I loved every minute of it.
Europe’s political and security elites are flocking to the Munich Security Conference to witness their American security umbrella being folded up and packed away. On Thursday morning, a car reportedly driven by an Afghan asylum seeker rammed into a group of trade union protestors injuring almost 30 people. This apparent terrorist attack underlines the continent’s existential problem: it is ruled by people who cannot ensure its safety, within or without its borders.
Yesterday a car was deliberately driven into a crowd of bystanders, injuring 30. Attacks of this nature – violent, random, nihilistic – have become commonplace, even mundane, in Europe; the identity of the alleged perpetrator (reported as a Afghan failed asylum seeker) grimly predictable even as the motive remains obscure.
That this particular attack received so much coverage reflected less the scale of the violence and more the location and timing: in the centre of Munich, a day before the Security Conference.
Perhaps it may have given some pause to the delegates of the liberal Western order, travelling to the city to discuss Europe’s external security threats, to be reminded in such a brutal fashion that the greatest danger to our civilisation operates within our borders. Or perhaps not: much easier to offer thoughts and prayers, and turn our eyes to the undoubtedly urgent questions of the future of Ukraine and Nato.
German Defense Minister Pistorius reacts to VP Vance after he slammed EU leaders for their suppression of free speech and warned about mass migration:
His response? "This is not acceptable."
Judging by this reaction, looks like VP Vance was right on target.
German citizens… pic.twitter.com/MEwDYC0Gna
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 14, 2025
MUNICH — United States Vice President JD Vance launched a blistering attack on European governments on Friday, chastising them for ignoring the will of their people, overturning elections, ignoring religious freedoms and not acting to halt illegal migration.
It was a U.S.-style MAGA, red meat speech that eschewed detailed discussion of defense and security — the topic of the Munich Security Conference. Vance instead hit on some recent hot button cultural issues, from abortion laws in Britain to the recent election in Romania.
Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference:
"If the American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunburg scolding, you can survive a few months of Elon Musk." pic.twitter.com/LAc9X3KRda
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 14, 2025
JUST IN: Vice President JD Vance rips European leaders to their faces at the Munich security conference, calls them out for criminalizing free speech.
Vance specifically called out the United Kingdom for being the worst of them all.
“I wish I could say that this was a… pic.twitter.com/1bj9TKxP4q
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 14, 2025
Pete Hegseth says America will focus on domestic concerns and the threat of China over sending peace-keeping troops to Ukraine
Europe can no longer count on the United States to come to its defence if Russia attacks, Pete Hegseth warned Nato allies on Wednesday.
The firebrand US secretary of defence said the Continent would have to step up to support Ukraine and confront the threat of Russia as his country shifts its focus to tackling China and securing its domestic borders.
He also ruled out sending US troops to help keep the peace in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
There is a wind of change blowing through the West. It emanates from Washington DC, where President Donald Trump continues to dash off executive orders; more than fifty by the end of last week, the highest number in a president’s first 100 days in four decades.
The liberal mainstream media is rattled. The New York Times magazine ran a piece at the weekend in which it described Trump as “the leading light of a spate of illiberal leaders and parties flourishing in democracies around the world.” The paper namechecked some of them: Poland, Holland, India, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and Russia.
Both face shrinking and aging populations. Both either cannot or will not control their borders, despite popular protests. Both suffer from woke political correctness and are pushing back
Consider these European and American binaries.
On December 20, 2024, a terrorist, Taleb Al-Abdul Mohsen, rammed his SUV into a Christmas crowd at Magdeburg, Germany. He killed six pedestrians and injured 299 others.
Eleven days later, on New Year’s Eve at New Orleans, Louisiana, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar smashed his pickup into a festive crowd. He murdered 15 and hurt over 35.
Europe has millions of Syrians who claimed refugee status on the basis of the Assad family, now some are making the calculation it is cheaper in the long run to make a a single cash payment to go home than keep the guests on social welfare programmes indefinitely.
Austria will offer Syrians a €1,000 ($1,000) cash payment “return bonus” to go home, Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said, stating the clearest reason they had for claiming asylum in the first place has now gone. Kronen Zeitung cites Nehammer as having said in a podcast this week: “We are now helping everyone who wants to return voluntarily. There is up to 1,000 euros for this.”
In 1984, Soviet dissident Gunnars Astra was sentenced to twelve years in prison in the USSR for possessing a copy of George Orwell’s “1984” and for secretly translating it. In our 2024, it is difficult to grasp the paradoxes of a new 1984. A clear mind and intellectual courage are needed.
We long for the days when the expression “politically correct police” was just an ironic quip by Philip Roth, not a literal description of what is happening in the West.
WTF?
And there we have it… why Farage refuses to speak out against Islam, and why he made a Mohammedan his Party Chairman.
He has no faith in the English.
“We will lose. We will lose.”
The West has defeated Islam before and we will do so again.
Deus vult!pic.twitter.com/BMTNGB9p4q
— Fr Calvin Robinson (@calvinrobinson) November 17, 2024
The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) has published its annual report 2024 (referring to 2023). According to the organization, during that year more than 2,400 attacks against Christians took place in Europa.
We are witnessing a sea change of political currents both in America and in Europe. Donald Trump’s sweeping election victory has sent shock waves through the liberal establishment on both sides of the Atlantic. But it is a salutary shock.
It forces the European political class , and the German in particular, to abandon some of their illusions and forces us to become more grown up and self-reliant in matters of economic and security policy. Trump’s brutal way of formulating American national interests is refreshing. It tears away the veil of fake moralising and ideological kitsch that have obscured our perception of realities and actual global power issues.
