Oktoberfest was more fun
Generally speaking, if you want an exciting time in Germany, you go durning October where some drindl clad gal can sling you a cocker spaniel sized stein of beer. You do not go to the Munich Security Conference. There used to be a quaint phrase journalists used for those preplanned, no-news big league conferences where you learn nothing: A Mongolian Clusterfuck. I doubt that’s still the term, it seems like it might offend the good people of Ulaanbaator.
This weekend in Munich really was supposed to be a MCF - but the new administration didn’t get the memo. Despite a decade of “Wake-up calls” on European security since Russia took its first bite of Ukraine, Europe’s leaders have been sleepwalking through speeches and declarations and lots of talk of Europe assuming a leadership role in… Europe. Which seems pretty obvious and if you have to be told that by a greaser like Pete Hegseth, frankly, you deserve everything coming to you.
I’ll give this to President Trump, for good or for ill, the man simply will not stick to a script – evidently neither will anyone in his administration. No one is fool enough to put their head in the noose and claim to be speaking for the man.
For his part, US defense chief Pete Hegseth told European leaders that the US was no longer the “primary guarantor of European security.” In his defense, you can’t say that Europe wasn’t warned that eventually the kids would get moved off Dad’s car insurance.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio – who represents what is left of the GOP establishment – took a more philosophical approach to Europe’s predicament, telling Face the Nation some foolishness that amounted to “You fucked up, you trusted us.” He suggested that European leaders aggressively need push back against multi-point incoherence of the American policy on Europe.
Then there was the Vice-President… I understand from someone who knew J.D. Vance at Yale that he’s always been an “angry jerk,” so he was certainly on brand. And appeared almost life-like as he delivered his hectoring address pointing out that the greatest threat Europe faced was from within. I might suggest that while European immigration is certainly out of control, the bigger threat is from without. Then again, Vance’s defense strategy is informed by his military service in Iraq, where he wrote for Stars and Stripes. Most of the battles he fought were of the editorial sort. Hell, I spent more time in enemy territory than Vance and I was a comedy writer. Either way, the timing was sub-optimal: the Germans were already pissed that Elon Musk has waded into the refreshing boredom of German politics.
It was after the stunned silence following JD Vance’s remarks that Volodymyr Zelenskyy injected a bit of vim by calling for an “Armed Forces of Europe.” Since NATO already exists, this is a little like Trump building a country club across the street from the one that black-balled him. Still, Zelenskyy’s wording here was clever, he didn’t urge Europe to stand alone, but to “make America want to stand with a strong Europe.”
In what must be the most telling quote of the conference, General Keith Kellogg, the White House’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine said, “To be very candid with you, I do not speak for the President of the United States, the President speaks for himself.”
What then was the point of all these US representatives crawling over the globe making noise? Whatever will happen will be announced, off the cuff, by the same man who has threatened to invade Greenland, Panama, and send troops into the Middle East to make Gaza an all-inclusive honeymoon destination.
Hours after Pete Hegseth’s remarks, Trump announced that he’d open talks with Russia without Europe or Ukraine after floating an idea last week for Kyiv to sign over $500bn in critical mineral rights, not for future aid, but services already rendered.
Behind the scenes is really where you want to be for these things, and I dutifully wasn’t. There both Hegseth and Vance walked back their remarks and hedged their red lines. American officials tried to push Kyiv to sign the critical minerals deal. Ukraine refused to sign, again the devil is in the details, but agreed to keep talking. Likely Trump is trying to scare Kyiv into signing by going over everyone’s heads.
All of Europe may be freaking out, but the grim truth is that this is this approach just might work well with Putin: Just a pair of old school superpowers carving up the spoils of the world like we used to back in the day. The suggestion that Russia rejoin the G7 is a fine idea as long as the carrot stays just out of reach. And just when a dangerous rival is feeling self-important and expansive, you stomp on the guys cods. I wouldn’t be too worried about all the talk at this point if I thought Trump was capable of doing the cod-stomping rather getting stomped himself.
So, what does it all mean? Hell if I know. Apparently from the emails I’ve gotten, neither does anyone else. Not even the administration. What is clear is that there is no clear US plan and, looking back at the last administration, there never was one.
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