After the highly anticipated speech by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt of the CSU expressed overall relief. Speaking to the television channel ntv on Saturday, he said that Rubio “clearly conveyed the solidarity of America and Europe-and that the United States has a strong interest in Europe’s continued development”. “We deliberately set a different tone this year compared with last” Dobrindt added.
He cautioned, however, that Germany still faces a demanding period as it shapes its partnership with the United States. “I also heard the tones of criticism” he said, acknowledging that some in Europe had been dissatisfied with past cooperation. “We must not overlook Rubio’s remark that if things don’t work out, we can do it alone”.
Marie‑Agnes Strack‑Zimmermann, chair of the European Parliament’s Defence Committee and a member of the FDP, warned against reading Rubio’s address as a sign of détente between the transatlantic partners. “It was a poisoned love letter” she told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. “Nothing in that speech was reassuring”.
Strack‑Zimmermann noted that Rubio’s tone differed from that of Vice‑President J.D. Vance at the conference a year earlier. He “evoked a world that is not ours” the former German MP said, arguing that the MAGA movement, led by former President Donald Trump, seeks not only to reshape the United States but also to create a global model lacking value‑based rules, reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s era where borders were shifted and people were robbed. She warned that the collective sense of relief reflected in the large applause for Rubio’s speech is, in fact, an illusion.
