Europe’s elite gathered at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) and laid out plans to boost their security autonomy from the US but pleaded with the White House not to abandon Nato completely. The US delegation assured Europe that it would not walk away from the treaty entirely but made it clear that European Nato was now largely on its own now.

The conference has been largely focused on the Ukraine war in recent years, but the “rupture” between the Brussels and Washington has become so wide during the first year of the Trump administration that Europe’s own security is now the main focus of diplomacy.

In the midst of this debate, bring the war in Ukraine to an end remains key, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy again said in a plaintive speech that talks are stalled on the issue of the US signing off on US security deal that would ensure Ukraine’s borders and sovereignty in any post-war agreement. “We have strong security guarantees ready to sign. We need those guarantees. And we need them before we sign a peace deal,” Zelenskiy said in his speech to the delegates.

“That is why we need a US backstop. That is why Europe needs Ukraine. Ukraine has the strongest army in Europe. That is why I don’t think it makes sense to keep Ukraine outside of Nato.“

Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a closely followed speech saying the US and Europe “belong together” in a much more consolatory comments than the lambasting US Vice President JD Vance gave EU leaders at the same event a year earlier. However, his comments underscored the distance that has appeared between the White House and Brussels as he told the collected European elite that they must take more responsibility for their own security.

Moreover, Rubio demonstrated the White House's falling interest in supporting Ukraine by skipping the Berlin format meeting of EU leaders and Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the MSC, citing “scheduling problems.” After releasing the US new foreign policy concept in December, US President Donald Trump said that Ukraine is “Europe’s problem now.”

Zelenskiy complained to the MSC delegates that Washington appears to have a bias in Russia’s favour when it comes to negotiations. Washington often asks concessions from Ukraine when it comes to negotiating a resolution, rather than asking Moscow.

"We truly hope that the trilateral meetings ‌next week will be serious, ‌substantive, ​helpful for all us but honestly sometimes it feels like ​the sides are talking about completely different things," Zelenskyy ⁠said referring to another round of trilateral meetings due in Geneva in the coming week.

"The Americans ‌often return to the topic of ​concessions ⁠and too often those concessions are ⁠discussed ​only in the context of Ukraine, not Russia."

Washington does not intend to abandon the transatlantic alliance, but that Europe's leaders have made a number of policy mistakes and need to change course.

Comments by the European leaders at the MSC have been remarkable as one leader after another talked about a “rupture” with the US and made it clear that Europe has to be able to stand on its own feet.

In one of the more outspoken speeches, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on February 13 that Europe must “reset its relationship with the United States” to "repair and revive trust" in a dangerous new era of great power politics, warning the U.S. could not go it alone as the “old global order crumbles.”

He announced that he had opened talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on building up an independent European-based nuclear weapons deterrence based on France and Britain’s nuclear weapons arsenals. Macron in his comments repeated a call for Europe to become a “geopolitical superpower” given the Russian threat would not disappear.

Beefing up security arrangements and achieving autonomy after the US security umbrella snaps shut was a theme that ran through all the European presentations. However, all the leaders also appealed to the US saying that the 80 years of the Nato alliance must remain intact, albeit in a watered-down version.

Rubio outlines the new relations

Rubio's overall message of togetherness at the annual Munich Security Conference was well-received by the gathering of European diplomats and security officials, but they all tacitly acknowledged the new rules of the game. Rubio insisted that the US “does not seek to separate, but to revitalise an old friendship.”

“We do not want allies to rationalise the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it,” Rubio said, adding the US wants “a reinvigorated alliance that recognises that what has ailed our societies is not just a set of bad policies, but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency.” However, rubbing the point home, he said the US is not interested in being “caretakers of the West's managed decline.”

“We do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker,” Rubio said. “We want allies who can defend themselves, so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame… this is why we do not want allies to rationalise the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it.”

Rubio’s address contrasted sharply with Vice President JD Vance's harangue of Europe a year ago, in which he argued that the greatest danger to the continent came from censorship and democratic backsliding - rather than external threats like Russia. But it also contained many of the same criticisms, albeit more politely delivered.

Pointedly, Rubio’s address was notably short on specifics. He did not mention Russia once during the roughly half-hour address, nor did he even bring up Nato by name, which is the core of Europe’s concerns.

Moreover, Rubio did allude to the new National Security Strategy (NSS) released in December that updates the Monroe Doctrine where the US claims to dominate the Western Hemisphere and effectively downgrades Europe from “ally” to “market”.

"In a time of headlines heralding the end of the transatlantic era, let it be known and clear to all that this is neither our goal nor our wish, because for us Americans, our home may be in the western hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe," Rubio told the crowd.

Europe grasps the nettle

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer drummed the security point home, stressing the need to build "hard power" and that the UK needs to be “ready to fight” if necessary, during his speech on February 14.

"We are not at a crossroads today, the road ahead is straight, and it is clear we must build our hard power, because that is the currency of the age," he said, following European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's opening remarks. "We must be able to deter aggression, and yes, if necessary, we must be ready to fight, to do whatever it takes to protect our people, our values and our way of life and, as Europe, we must stand on our own two feet." As a concrete example he announced that the UK is sending a carrier strike group to the north Atlantic and the High North this year.

Another theme is that the UK has been readmitted to the EU in military terms at least and added that Britain needs "deeper links" with the EU. “We are not the Britain of the Brexit era,” Starmer said to a round of applause.

Von der Leyen confirmed the rapprochement with Britain and singled Starmer out in her speech that was also largely about security, calling the UK a “key partner,” as it is also home to one of Europe’s three biggest defence sectors. She appealed to European states to take mutual assistance seriously and advocated for a new security strategy that specifically includes the US as a key partner.

These comments dovetail with Rubio’s comments who also said that while the old international organisation do not need to be dismantled, they need to be “urgently rebuilt and reformed” to meet the new challenges. Nato is not dead, but the US commitment to protecting Europe has clearly been downgraded.

China calls for dialogue

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also attended the summit and warned against “knee-jerk” calls for Sino-US decoupling. Although Beijing remains a key Russian ally since Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed their “no limits” partnership, China would also like to see the war in Ukraine end and offered to mediate on the first anniversary with a 12-point Chinese peace plan that is very similar to the 27-point peace plan (27PPP) thrashed out between the US envoys and Putin at the Moscow meeting on December 3.

China has "neither stood by idly nor thrown fuel on the fire" regarding the crisis in Ukraine, and continues to call for peace and dialogue, Wang said.

Calling for a "positive and pragmatic" policy from Washington, he told the delegates the best outcome for both would be “cooperation” – a theme that Xi has said repeatedly in his various meetings with US top officials in recent years.

Wang met Rubio in what a US official described as a "positive and constructive" meeting Reuters reports and discussed a planned visit by Trump to Beijing in April.

Wang said there were some in the US that were "doing everything to attack and smear China" and there were two possible prospects for bilateral relations: the US could understand China reasonably and objectively and have a positive and pragmatic policy toward China, he said.

"The other prospect is seeking decoupling from China and severing supply chains and to oppose China on everything in a purely emotional, knee-jerk way," he said. He warned that some were "trying to split Taiwan from China and stepping on China's red lines, which would very much likely push China and the United States to a conflict," he added, cited by Reuters. "China, on our part, wants to see the first prospect, and I believe you share the same way, but China is well prepared to address all kinds of risks.”

Slow start to defence investment

Von der Leyen specifically outlined plans to remake European economies and build up the military industrial sector, “tearing down the barriers between the civilian and military industries.”

These calls for beefing up the defence sector are long overdue and should have been put in place at the outbreak of the conflict in Europe’s backyard that will mark its fourth year on February 24. As bne IntelliNews reported at the time, Europe, comfortably nestled under the US security umbrella, failed to sign off on the defence sector procurement contracts needed for its private sector defence companies to make the necessary investments to beef up production. That failure led to a crisis of supply. bne IntelliNews ran a cover story reporting that Ukraine was running out of ammunition already at the end of the first year of war in January 2023.

Nothing was done about it. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell promised the EU would produce one million artillery shells, the workhorse of the war, by March 2024. It failed, delivering only 270,000 and six months late. In the meantime, Germany’s leading defence company Rheinmetall has finally produced 1.5mn shells in 2025, but it did so at its own initiative with its own investment.

Belatedly the EU began to address its chronic underinvestment into defence last March when von der Leyen launched the ReArm programme (video) on March 4 that commits Brussels to spending €800bn on modernising its military.

At the same time European Nato has started the painful process of remaking Europe’s defence without the US backing. One of the biggest issues is Nato forces logistics