San Diego World Affairs Council (SDWAC)

Really hard not to make the parallel between JD Vance's speech right now at the Munich Security Conference and Putin's 2007 speech at the very same podium. x.com/business/statu… Both were watershed moments that fundamentally transformed the existing consensus. Putin at the time delivered the speech that marked the beginning of the end of the unipolar moment. JD Vance's speech will probably be remembered as the speech that marked the beginning of the end of the post-WW2 Western alliance. As a European, I'm in two minds about what Vance said about Europe. He is of course right about many things. For instance Europe's attitude with respect to Romania's elections was beyond appalling and unequivocally antidemocratic. I myself called it out repeatedly on this platform. But - and this is a very big BUT - on Romania and much of Vance's criticism directed at Europe, the U.S. was right there alongside Europe acting jointly, and often even guiding Europe's actions. Specifically on Romania for instance, I believe that the US State Department was first in issuing a statement on December 4th (2021-2025.state.gov/statement-on-r…) expressing its concern about "Russian involvement in malign cyber activity designed to influence the integrity of the Romanian electoral process" which led to the elections being cancelled two days later (and which, it was later proven, was completely false: it turned out that this "malign cyber activity" were paid for by the very Romanian party in power that cancelled the elections!). It's only after that State Department statement that the Europeans followed the U.S.'s lead. So it's a bit rich, even very rich, for Vance, less than 2 months afterwards, to lecture Europeans on this without as much as acknowledging the U.S.'s own role in a lot of it. Same could be said about European content moderation and "censorship." He conveniently forgets that much of Europe's current approach was developed in close coordination with American agencies and tech companies. The EU's content moderation framework didn't emerge in a vacuum - it was heavily influenced by American practices and pressures. Or take Vance's criticism of European mass migration policies. He spent a big part of his speech lamenting over the attack in Munich yesterday by (apparently) a young Afghan asylum seeker, describing it as a direct "result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the [European] continent". But he conveniently fails to mention why Afghans migrated en-masse out of their country, which might have a little something to do with a certain great power that decided to wage a 20-year long war over there and completely wrecked the country... Same story for many migrants in Europe, a huge share of them being a direct result of disastrous US foreign policy decisions. I'm also extremely uncomfortable with Vance's stated intentions to meddle in European politics. He calls out - rightly - Europe for not living up to its democratic values, yet in the same breath he's explicitly announcing America's intention to intervene in European politics by supporting certain movements against established institutions. He criticizes European elites for not respecting democratic choices while simultaneously suggesting that a Trump administration would actively work to influence those choices. How is this any different from the kind of interference he hypocritically condemns? Perhaps most worrying of all, Vance's vision seems to completely disregard why the post-WW2 European architecture was built in the first place. Europe is the place where both world wars started, 100% of them. The past 80 years were a uniquely peaceful time in European history: due to the high density of states in a relatively small geography and the somewhat disagreeable character of many European nations (the French very much included), the continent had been in almost constant conflict for the previous millennium. I really dislike European institutions as much as the next guy but I don't forget the original spirit with which they were built: to put an end to endless war in Europe. By positioning America as an ally of nationalist forces against these institutions, Vance isn't just ending an alliance - he's actively working to unwind the entire post-war European peace architecture, which could have immense ramifications. In fact I think we can even legitimately ask ourselves if the U.S. doesn't now have war in Europe as one of its strategic objectives. Given the U.S.'s history in triggering wars left, right and center when it believes they're in their interests, and given Vance's speech, I think the question has merits. All in all, I'm not ashamed to say that I much prefer Putin's 2007 speech to Vance's. Whatever you may think, Putin remained within the confines of what he thought were challenges to Russia's national interests, issues like NATO expansion or American attempt at global hegemony. He didn't try to meddle in intra-Western politics or position Russia as an active force for undermining Western institutions from within. His vision was about creating a multipolar world where Russia would be one independent pole - not about dismantling the internal architecture of other poles. Where Putin wanted to limit Western power globally, Vance seems to want to fracture the European order locally. That's a far more dangerous proposition. I'm all for reforming Europe and I constantly call for it. But to me by far the biggest issue for Europe is its lack of sovereignty and strategic autonomy, especially vis à vis the United States, in almost all domains. If Vance's speech could have any silver lining, it would be to finally wake Europeans up to this reality: let's hope that for once Europe draws the right lesson.