The Munich Security Conference opened Friday with a clear message from Europe to the US: We still need you, but we're finished being bystanders. "The international order based on rights and rules is currently being destroyed," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the gathering, saying that, in fact, the postwar system "no longer exists in that form." Speaking in English to address Americans directly as "friends," the New York Times reports—though the US was lightly represented—he said the Trump administration's foreign policy had put America's claim to global leadership "in question, and possibly squandered."
In an era of great-power rivalry, Merz cautioned, even the US "will not be powerful enough to go it alone." He called for tighter cooperation through NATO. French President Emmanuel Macron later used his speech to push for a more muscular, geopolitical Europe. He argued that a stronger, more assertive EU would actually be a better partner for the US, even as he complained that Europe had been caricatured as a land of uncontrolled migration and stifled speech. Europe, he said, is rearming and must now "go beyond," insisting that others should stop trying to divide the continent and see it as a model, per
Le Monde.
In a possible reflection of the tensions between other nations and the US, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the highest-ranking US official in attendance; House Speaker Mike Johnson had canceled a large congressional delegation, per the Times. "The culture war of the MAGA movement in the US is not ours," Merz said, per the AP, adding that "we don't believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade." He also pledged that Europe would stand by climate agreements and the World Health Organization, a contrast with the Trump administration. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are among the other speakers scheduled at the weekend conference.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
