Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference was not a diplomatic reassurance to Europe. It was an ideological repositioning of what constitutes Western modernity delivered in the language of civilisational nostalgia.
It was designed to appear stabilising to an audience that clearly desired reassurance in the wake of a string of what can only be termed scandalous betrayals by the new US administration. It was measured, loaded with rhetorical flourish, historically adorned. It invoked 1963, the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, and the shared sacrifices that the US and Europe share. It assured Europe that the US wished to act “together” with Europe, but also made it clear that it was willing to go it alone.
But beneath that surface lay three claims that formed the backbone of Rubio’s rationale, all of which were tenuous assertions at best, and blatant misrepresentations at worst. First, that America’s productive decline was caused by cheap Chinese labour and liberal trade dogma. Second, that the post-1945 rules-based order precipitated Western civilisational erosion. Third, that Europe must now join the US in restoring Western dominance.
Each of these claims collapses under historical scrutiny. More importantly, each obscures what is actually transpiring: a deliberate dismantling of the institutional architecture that sustained Western influence for eight decades, while attempting to recast that dismantling as renewal. Europe is not confused about this. Europe is anxious – existentially anxious – because it understands that what is being unravelled is not simply policy continuity, but the foundation of its security and trade arrangements.
The China alibi and the self-inflicted hollowing of America
Rubio’s framing of deindustrialisation is politically convenient: the US, seduced by “free trade” ideology, allowed cheap Chinese labour to gut its manufacturing base. It is a narrative that absolves domestic elites of responsibility while locating blame in an external adversary.
But it is a profound distortion of history. Chinese labour ceased being “cheap” in any meaningful sense more than 20 years ago. Real wages in China have risen dramatically since the early 2000s. The country’s competitive advantage in advanced manufacturing today lies not in low wages but in scale, skill density, and industrial integration.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been explicit about this. Apple does not manufacture primarily in China because wages are low. It does so because of the unparalleled concentration of high-level tooling engineers and specialised production technicians. Modern hardware production depends on ecosystems – dense networks of suppliers, engineers, logistics chains, materials specialists and production managers that can efficiently produce at scale. The US no longer possesses those ecosystems at comparable density.
That erosion was not imposed by Beijing. It was cultivated domestically. From the late 1970s onward, the American political economy embraced hyperfinancialisation. Deregulation, capital mobility, and financial engineering displaced industrial policy. Corporations increasingly prioritised shareholder value and short-term returns over long-term productive investment. The manufacturing sector became subordinate to capital markets.
This transformation was reinforced by reserve currency privilege. The Bretton Woods system institutionalised the dollar as the anchor of global finance. Even after the gold standard was abandoned in 1971, the petro-dollar system ensured sustained global demand for US currency. Oil would be priced in dollars; surplus capital would recycle into US Treasuries; deficits could be financed without immediate constraint.
This arrangement allowed the US to run persistent trade deficits while maintaining financial dominance. Cheap imports lowered consumer prices. Debt-financed consumption substituted for wage growth. Asset inflation – in equities and real estate – substituted for productivity growth. US manufacturing was not outcompeted by cheap labour. It declined because the American system incentivised financial expansion over industrial resilience.
The educational system followed suit. University degrees were marketed as passports to prosperity – entry tickets into the financial and professional classes. Students were encouraged to incur debt on the assumption that high-skilled tertiary employment would guarantee upward mobility. Instead, many entered labour markets saturated with financial volatility and stagnant real wages. The result was structural indebtedness, precarity, and resentment.
When the global financial system collapsed in 2008, the fragility of this model was exposed. Alan Greenspan’s now-infamous admission before Congress – that the commitment to deregulated markets had been based on a “flaw” in the assumption that markets would self-regulate on the basis of mutual trust – was not a technical footnote. It was a confession of ideological miscalculation.
Speculative finance, easy liquidity and regulatory retreat had generated systemic corruption. The crisis was not imported from China. It was incubated in American financial institutions. To blame Chinese labour for the hollowing-out of American manufacturing is therefore not merely inaccurate. It is evasive. It displaces responsibility from domestic policy choices onto an external scapegoat.
And this displacement is politically useful. It transforms structural self-critique into civilisational grievance. This sleight of hand is intentional; in this revisionist casting of history the bogeyman is outside – not inside – the house, so there’s no need for accountability from the US political and economic establishments.
The rules-based order: from instrument of power to scapegoat
Rubio’s second claim – that the post-war rules-based order contributed to Western decline – is historically inverted. The architecture built after 1945 was not a concession to weakness. It was an instrument of dominance.
The Bretton Woods institutions – the IMF and World Bank – entrenched Western control over global finance. The dollar’s reserve status conferred extraordinary advantages. Nato institutionalised American military primacy in Europe. The United Nations Security Council ensured permanent Western veto power. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) structured global commerce around Western economic norms.
Paul Collier devotes much of the first part of his book – The Future of Capitalism (2018) – to explaining the evolution of these global institutions and the role they played in stabilising international relations, and global trade and commerce, yielding one of the most stable periods of abundance and growth in the countries of the Global North.
These institutions stabilised a world in which the US emerged from war economically intact and militarily pre-eminent. More than that, they translated power into legitimacy. The US did not need a formal empire to exert influence. It embedded its power in these institutions. It shaped rules. It anchored markets. It set regulatory standards. It trained foreign elites in its universities. It exported culture at scale – music, film, fashion, technology, legal frameworks, managerial models and models for the bureaucratic arrangements of nation states.
The American subculture became aspirational globally. Democratic transitions in Southern Europe, Latin America, and Eastern Europe were shaped in part by the gravitational pull of Western institutions and values. This was not accidental. It was strategic statecraft. The rules-based order allowed the US and its European allies to shape the global environment without direct colonial rule. It was an evolution from formal empire to institutional hegemony.
Rubio’s narrative reframes decolonisation as civilisational retreat. It conflates the loss of colonial dominion with the erosion of Western vitality. But the collapse of European colonial empires was not caused by the United Nations. It was driven by anti-colonial movements, by the moral delegitimisation of imperialism after two catastrophic world wars, and by the economic unsustainability of colonial administration.
The post-war order did not diminish Western influence. It reconfigured it. By casting this architecture as the source of decline, Rubio is engaging in an act of civilisational amnesia. He invites Europeans to believe that the very system that anchored their prosperity and security is now their burden. This is an historically untenable version of reality.
Ukraine and the fracturing of trust
The most consequential dimension of Rubio’s speech, however, was not economic theory or civilisational rhetoric. It was the attempt to persuade Europe that the US remains a reliable partner, particularly with respect to security. This is where the rupture is most visible. Europe does not merely feel “unease”. It feels betrayal.
Ukraine is not an abstract theatre of geopolitical competition. For Europe, it is an existential frontier. It is a sovereign European state resisting invasion. Its defence is bound up with the credibility of European security guarantees, the sanctity of borders, and the deterrence of further Russian aggression.
When the US delayed critical aid packages for months while Ukrainian forces were rationing ammunition, when military assistance became hostage to domestic partisan bargaining, when senior American figures publicly questioned the value of continued support, and when proposals surfaced that effectively pressured Kyiv toward premature territorial concessions, European capitals did not see procedural disagreement. They saw the possible abandonment of a sovereign state defending itself against aggression.
For Europe – particularly Poland, the Baltic states, and the Nordic countries – this was not a theoretical dispute over burden-sharing. It was a warning signal. If Ukraine could be treated as negotiable, what of other frontline states? If American commitment could fluctuate with electoral winds, what was the durability of the broader security guarantee?
The anxiety was amplified by the rhetoric emanating from Washington suggesting that support for Ukraine was an act of charity rather than a strategic imperative. To frame Ukraine’s defence as optional generosity rather than as central to European security architecture is to fundamentally misunderstand how Europeans perceive the war. For them, Ukraine is not peripheral. It is the line between a rules-based Europe and a return to spheres of influence.
This was not bureaucratic drift. It was strategic equivocation; the use of ambiguous language to avoid genuine commitment. To European policymakers – particularly in Eastern and Central Europe – this equivocation was a breach of trust. It suggested that American commitments could be subordinated to domestic political expediency. It implied that European security might become a bargaining chip in partisan contestation. The anxiety this generated cannot be overstated.
Nato’s credibility rests on the assumption that Article 5 commitments are inviolable. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is the alliance’s core clause: an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all. It is not merely symbolic language. It is the legal and political foundation of collective defence. It was invoked for the first and only time after the attacks of 11 September 2001, when European allies rallied to the US. For decades, European security planning has operated on the assumption that this mutual defence guarantee is automatic, credible and beyond partisan bargaining.
If doubt creeps in – if the commitment becomes conditional, transactional, or rhetorically negotiable – the entire deterrent structure weakens. The strength of Article 5 lies not in its wording, but in the absolute confidence that it will be honoured without hesitation. Once that confidence erodes, deterrence erodes with it.
If European governments begin to suspect that Article 5 depends on electoral cycles in Washington, the alliance ceases to function as a stabilising force and becomes a source of uncertainty. That is not a marginal shift. It is structural.
At the same time, elements within the American political sphere have openly courted European far-right parties that seek to weaken the European Union itself. Encouraging nationalist movements that aim to fragment the EU while simultaneously calling for transatlantic unity is not a minor contradiction. It is a destabilising of European politics, and that could well end the EU as a political and economic project.
The EU is not merely a bureaucratic project. It is a peace architecture. It was constructed to prevent the recurrence of intra-European conflict. To undermine it from within is to reopen historical fault lines that Europe has spent 70 years attempting to seal.
European leaders are acutely aware of this history. A continent that endured two world wars within a generation does not treat fragmentation lightly. Rubio’s appeal for renewed Western dominance therefore collides with a strategic reality: trust has been eroded. And trust, once fractured, is not restored by rhetoric alone.
Institutional erosion and the illusion of coercive renewal
The American right’s critique of the rules-based order rests on an implicit assumption: that the US can shed institutional constraints and still command loyalty through raw power and civilisational affinity. This assumption mirrors the flawed belief that deregulated markets would self-regulate because rational actors would preserve stability.
International order does not sustain itself through sentiment. It requires institutions that create predictability. If the US withdraws from its role as the guarantor of norms and security commitments while escalating coercive bilateralism, allies will hedge. They will diversify partnerships. They will accelerate strategic autonomy. They will not simply comply.
Europe is already acting on this recalibration. Strategic autonomy – once dismissed as French rhetoric – has moved from aspirational language to active planning. The European Defence Fund has been expanded. Joint procurement initiatives are accelerating.
Germany’s Zeitenwende in 2022 marked not just a spending shift, but a conceptual one: the recognition that Europe cannot indefinitely outsource its hard security to Washington.
Read more: Zeitenwende speech
Several European states are reassessing arms procurement decisions. Debates have emerged over whether future fighter programmes, missile systems and air defence platforms should prioritise European manufacturers over American suppliers.
Read more: Pentagon aggressively lobbies EU against Buy European weapons push
There are active discussions about scaling up indigenous defence industries to reduce long-term dependency. In parallel, conversations are underway about reducing reliance on US-controlled digital infrastructure in sensitive state sectors.
Questions are being asked about cloud services, cybersecurity frameworks, satellite systems, and the strategic vulnerability created by technological dependence. These are not anti-American gestures. They are hedging strategies. When a security guarantor appears politically volatile, prudent actors diversify risk.
Read more: The EU must enable its defence industry to boost capabilities and reduce dependence on US systems
Even in the corporate sector, European firms are reassessing exposure to US regulatory unpredictability. The weaponisation of trade, sanctions, and financial infrastructure over the past decade has underscored how deeply interwoven geopolitics and economic systems have become. Europe has learned that dependence is leverage — and leverage can be used. The existential angst in European capitals is not melodrama. It is strategic recalculation.
Read more: France to ditch US platforms Microsoft Teams, Zoom for ‘sovereign platform’ citing security concerns
What is transpiring
What is transpiring is not a routine policy shift. It is an attempt to recast institutional retrenchment as civilisational renewal. It is the externalisation of domestic economic miscalculations onto foreign adversaries. It is the narrowing of Western identity from universal principles to cultural inheritance. It is the erosion of multilateral architecture in favour of personalised power politics.
Read more: Digital sovereignty: Can Europe’s businesses survive without US Big Tech?
Rubio’s speech was not careless. It was deliberate. It sought to reassure Europe while signalling to a transnational right-wing constituency that the age of liberal institutionalism is over. European elites understood the subtext. They applauded diplomatically. But they are not deceived.
They are calculating how to navigate a world in which the US – long the architect and guarantor of the post-war order – now questions the very system that sustained its own primacy. The stakes are not abstract. They are existential. And Europe knows it.
Throughout the address, Rubio sought to place himself and the Trump administration in continuity with the alliance that defeated Soviet communism. But the speech he delivered was not merely a reaffirmation of the transatlantic bond. It was a manifesto for something more ambitious – and more unsettling.
Rubio did not simply argue for higher defence spending or supply-chain resilience. He posed what he called the “fundamental question”: What exactly are we defending? His answer was clear and emphatic. Not abstractions. Not procedures. Not “rules-based orders”. What must be defended, he argued, is a distinct civilization – Western civilization – bound by Christian faith, ancestry, heritage, culture and shared blood sacrifice.
This is a profound shift in register. For decades, American presidents speaking in Europe emphasised democracy, human rights and universal principles. Rubio instead emphasised inheritance. The West, in his telling, is not primarily a set of institutions or ideals open to adoption. It is an inheritance – unique, distinctive, irreplaceable – under existential threat from mass migration, deindustrialisation, climate policy and what he called the outsourcing of sovereignty to global institutions.
The speech was framed as a rejection of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”. The idea that liberal democracy had triumphed permanently, Rubio argued, was a delusion. But what replaces that delusion in his account is not realism in the narrow strategic sense. It is civilisational nationalism in a civilisational pact between predominantly white, Western, Christian nations.
Rubio’s invocation of a civilisational pact rooted in Christian heritage and cultural continuity carries an unspoken contradiction. By his own criteria – civilisational Christianity, historical depth, white European lineage – Russia fits comfortably within the imagined West. The Kremlin has, in fact, spent the past decade deliberately positioning itself as the defender of “traditional values” against liberal decadence.
If Western civilisation is defined primarily by religious-cultural inheritance rather than by constitutional norms, the boundary between Nato and Moscow becomes conceptually blurred.
This exposes the incoherence at the heart of the civilisational framing. The post-war West was not defined by Christianity alone, nor by ethnicity, nor by heritage. It was defined by institutional commitments – democratic accountability, rule of law, constrained executive power. Remove those from the definition, and “the West” becomes a cultural category rather than a political one. And cultural categories are far easier to weaponise.
The choice for Europe now is whether it embraces civilisational nostalgia or whether it invests in belonging to a global planetary civilisation that can tackle the grand challenges of the 21st Century in partnership with the broader globe. While Rubio’s speech was dripping with nostalgia for a bygone age where Western“civilisation” unquestioningly sets the global agenda, the fact remains that mobilising a misplaced nostalgia as a unifying means to secure a new future is to move both backwards and forwards at the same time. In reality, this agenda is likely to “go slowly, nowhere fast”; very much as the new US administration’s efforts have proven to be thus far.
A civilisation defined by exclusionary nostalgia is defensive by design. It defines itself against perceived dilution. A civilisation defined by institutional confidence is expansive – capable of partnership, capable of reform, capable of adaptation.
The post-war West was powerful not because it was white or Christian, but because it institutionalised power in ways that others could buy into. It made its norms exportable. To abandon that universalisable architecture in favour of ethnocultural consolidation is not strategic renewal. It is contraction disguised as strength. DM
Camaren Peter (PhD) is an Associate Professor at the Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based Leadership at the Graduate School of Business, Cape Town. He is also the founder of the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC). He writes in his personal capacity.