Welcome to the second pop-up version of Overseas Coverage’s Scenario Report on the 2026 Munich Safety Convention. It’s been an action-packed day dominated by conversations about whether or not the US 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 battle, 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 making an attempt to kiss and make up with Europe, precisely a yr (nearly 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 primary stage on the Munich Safety Convention within the Bayerischer Hof Resort—however the response from the room couldn’t have been extra totally 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 the US’ and Europe’s shared historical past, tradition, and heritage (together with three mentions of Christianity) and telling Europeans that Washington desires 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 Struggle and the Cuban missile disaster, the US and Europe “had been unified not simply by what we had been combating towards; we had been unified by what we had been combating for,” Rubio mentioned. “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 bunch extra earlier than) fretting in regards to the trans-Atlantic alliance. “In a time of headlines heralding the top of the trans-Atlantic period, let or not it’s recognized and clear to all that that is neither our aim nor our want—as a result of for us People, our residence 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, mentioned they felt “reassured” by the speech.
However Rubio additionally devoted a lot of his deal with to reiterating factors Vance made a yr 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 international locations. 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 previous wine in a brand new bottle, barely extra chilled—a truth not misplaced on European officers we spoke to.
“If you discuss content material, what Mr. Vance mentioned and what Mr. Rubio mentioned 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 method” 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 Overseas Minister Espen Barth Eide additionally acknowledged “the MAGA program” working via Rubio’s speech. “However [Rubio was] additionally principally saying: ‘We’re nonetheless right here, and it’s not likely America alone.’ In order that’s my studying, however some injury has been finished,” 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 by which he mused a couple of U.S. takeover of Greenland. That “was fairly the shock to the trans-Atlantic household,” mentioned Eide, who was within the room for that speech.
However Eide mentioned that Europe’s assertiveness, which received 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 really various delight in lastly saying that we’re allies, we wish to stay allies, however there are specific stuff 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 a substitute of a second of rupture, we should make it considered one of radical renewal,” Starmer mentioned, considerably subtweeting the phrases of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s personal viral Davos speech. “I’m speaking a couple of 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 principally shaped within the days after Vance’s speech,” mentioned Eide, referring to a coalition of nations dedicated to supporting Ukraine. A yr after that shock, “there’s 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 to 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 pressure decisively to again up his pledges to work with our allies,” Colby mentioned, when requested if the US would come to assistance from a NATO ally who was attacked. (Operation Midnight Hammer is the code identify for the U.S. navy strikes on Iran’s nuclear amenities 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 relation to the Ukraine peace negotiations. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for instance, advised the convention on Friday that Moscow “is just not 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-Common 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 mentioned, “I believe we’re on the identical web page. The difficulty is that this, that it’s the People who’ve to guide this—there’s no different method. 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’s also 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 severe, is Putin actually keen to play ball or not? Ukraine is, we all know,” Rutte mentioned. (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 should get transferring. In any other case, he’s going to overlook an important 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] function because the one who’s along with his crew main this course of. And he’s the one one who can try this,” Rutte mentioned. “Europeans are fully saved knowledgeable of what’s taking place. NATO is being saved knowledgeable. So I believe that’s in 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 Pictures
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 recent strikes amid ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
“In case you don’t need regime change, then transfer to Iran and dwell a yr 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 mentioned, “That’s the dumbest fucking factor I’ve ever heard. You assume these individuals out within the streets would object to us bombing their oppressor?” He was referencing the current mass anti-government protests in Iran that led to a brutal crackdown that’s estimated to have killed hundreds of demonstrators.
Whereas conceding that he doesn’t know “what’s going to occur subsequent” if the regime falls, Graham mentioned it might be a “good factor, not a foul factor” and that the “payoffs” of “serving to the Iranian individuals 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 state of affairs much like the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which resulted in a protracted and expensive battle that additionally catalyzed the rise of the Islamic State. “We’ve realized so much,” Graham mentioned, suggesting that what can be totally different this time is that there can 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 so much 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 believe it’s merely not sensible to maintain this military exterior NATO.”
—Zelensky in his speech to the Munich Safety Convention.
