Representatives of 115 countries gathered over the weekend at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof for the 62nd Munich Security Conference—now also known as the “What the hell are the Americans going to say this time” John McCain Memorial Service. The forum for the discussion of international security policy typically it features debates about key foreign and security policy challenges. This year, the theme was “Please God, don’t let the Americans talk about Greenland again.”
Everyone heaved a great sigh of relief when JD Vance didn’t show up. Marco Rubio, sent in his stead, addressed the assembled Europeans in complete sentences and didn’t openly threaten to annex Bavaria, for which he received a standing ovation. But as Dan and I note in this episode, the much-anticipated address, billed in the press as a diplomatic olive branch after last year’s rhetorical mauling (courtesy of the vice-president), was not a reset so much as a velvet-gloved iteration of MAGA-inflected lunacy.
Europe, Rubio implied, must rediscover faith in the West, discipline its publics, suppress its decadent impulses, and rally once more behind Washington’s leadership, all while accepting that the US may or may not show up. He didn’t ask himself whether Europe actually suffered from the pathologies he attributes to it: Those in the audience were no doubt puzzled by his diagnosis. But he nonetheless met with the sort of generous applause typically reserved for debut novelists at MFA readings. Dan and I reckon this represented an outpouring of pure gratitude that he got through the whole thing without alluding to Biden stealing the 2024 election. Or windmills. (Maybe it was pity: He looked like hell. One look at him and you see that’s a man who fully appreciates that he left his soul in El Segundo.)
