Rubio Says US-European Alliance 'Has to Change'

Marc Champion, Bloomberg Opinion Columnist, discusses Secretary of State Marco Rubio's remarks at the Munich Security Conference and the bigger picture when it comes to US-EU relations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Europe’s fate is intertwined with the US while faulting the continent for what he said was a drift away from their shared Western values.

The double-edged message offered some reassurance to allied leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference but did little to temper their push for more independence from Washington.

“We want Europe to prosper because we’re interconnected in so many different ways, and because our alliance is so critical,” Rubio told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on the sidelines of the conference on Saturday. “But it has to be an alliance of allies that are capable and willing to fight for who they are and what’s important.”

“What is it that binds us together? Ultimately, it’s the fact that we are both heirs to the same civilization, and it’s a great civilization,” he said. “It’s one we should be proud of.”

Rubio’s comments elaborated on a speech he delivered to the event, Europe’s premier annual security gathering, earlier Saturday morning. The speech was the most anticipated of the three-day conference, with fellow leaders eager to hear if he would double down on the contemptuous tone voiced a year earlier by Vice President JD Vance at the same venue.

That tension has only gotten worse in the last year as European leaders struggled to respond to Trump’s amped-up demands to take over Greenland, his clashes with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his repeated threats to tariff French wine and other European goods.

In the interview, Rubio said he was not turning away from Vance’s message, which warned European nations of dangers from their own policies, but wanted to help explain why President Donald Trump’s team felt compelled to make it.

“The alliance has to change,” Rubio told Bloomberg. “When we come off as urgent or even critical about decisions that Europe has failed to make or made, it is because we care.”

He framed the problem as Europe’s fault, urging leaders to reject the “climate cult” and saying the US had no interest “in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” He criticized “an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies.”

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