A behind-the-scenes note from FP’s editor in chief

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| Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy and host of FP Live.

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| Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy and host of FP Live.

| | Dear FP Insiders, When it was all done, you could actually hear the sighs of relief in the room. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio got through an entire speech at the Munich Security Conference without a single threat of invasion, à la Trump in Davos, or flirty references to Germany’s far right (ahem, Vance in Munich last year). So strong was the sense of solace that the great former German diplomat and master of ceremonies Wolfgang Ischinger immediately told Rubio that he interpreted his speech as “a message of reassurance about our partnership.” A short while later, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed those words, saying that “it was very reassuring to listen to him.” David van Weel , the Dutch foreign minister, said a version of that in an interview with me onstage, confirming just how low expectations were of the United States: “It wasn’t a goodbye to Europe,” he said, comparing what he had just heard to Vance’s 2025 speech. “It was a wake-up to Europe. Tough love helps sometimes.” That’s not what people were saying off-camera, however. One European national security advisor told me Rubio’s speech wasn’t all that different from Vance’s last year after all: “Same message, nicer tone,” he said. Another said: “Come on. If we were bigger and stronger, there’s no way we’d listen to an ally tell us to send out missionaries and pilgrims and soldiers to settle new continents!” (You really should read the whole speech, which our team has published in full with the headline “Rubio to Europe: ‘We Care Deeply.’”) “Did you HEAR that?!?” exclaimed one former foreign minister from Europe , now safely ensconced in a tenured professorship, as they grabbed my shoulders later that day. “From Iran to Venezuela to God-knows-where-else, it’s basically America saying we’ll do what we want—and our leadership says it’s relieved it’s not worse!” That’s certainly a sentiment that viewers in the global south must have been feeling. “This is effectively a declaration of war against the non-West,” wrote Kanwal Sibal , a former Indian foreign secretary, on X. “What Rubio is saying is that the world’s pressing matters will be identified by the US, the US will use its power to deal with them, and the outcomes will be determined by US national interest.” The historian Stephen Wertheim told me it was like watching the White House “beat everyone down and then being told it can do it some more.”There’s a description for this, of course: Stockholm syndrome, a coping mechanism where a hostage or abuse victim rationalizes the abuser’s actions. To be fair, Europe was bracing for worse after Vance last year. And from that nadir, Rubio’s speech seems to have done no further harm. Beyond the flecks of red meat on colonialism, race, Western civilization, and Trump’s use of force in Venezuela and Iran, there was nothing new to say. The trans-Atlantic relationship is what it is. The old rules-based world order “no longer exists,” as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz put it on Friday. And no matter how much Europe wants strategic autonomy, that goal is still several years and many trillions of dollars out of reach.

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Insider Access: What We Learned at the Munich Security Conference

TUESDAY: Foreign Policy’s reporters have kept some of the best details for FP’s Insiders. Join in on a special Insider Access call with FP’s Rishi Iyengar and John Haltiwanger to debrief on the Munich Security Conference. Register now.

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| | European leaders are talking a better game this year than they did for much of 2025. Von der Leyen, the top leader in Brussels, repeatedly referred to Article 42.7, the EU’s mutual defense treaty akin to NATO’s Article 5. It’s a refrain I’ve heard from several other leaders recently, including Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on FP Live last week. And what about Article 5? Will the United States actually come to a European NATO member’s aid if they invoke the clause? Elbridge Colby refused to say a clear yes or no when I sat down with him on the main stage on Saturday, although the Pentagon’s top policymaker did say: “The United States is committed to NATO. It is committed to Article 5.” When I pressed him further on the hypothetical, he refused to be drawn in. “We don’t engage in speculation. … We train, we ready our forces, we think intimately, and we have discussions about these practicalities.” (Read a transcript or watch the full interview.) As you’d expect, the conference had a heavy NATO and Ukraine feel to it. At a special Ukrainian dinner one night, Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen ,* apologized for how Trump’s spotlight on Greenland had taken attention away from the real fight over Ukraine. “Russia insists they hold a strategic initiative,” said *Petr Pavel , the president of the Czech Republic. “But the costs for every square kilometer of Ukrainian territory are extremely high. It exceeded last month the capacity for recruitment.” (Read FP’s Sam Skove for more analysis on this dynamic.) That’s a theme that was repeated in another interview on the main stage on Friday, when Finnish President Alexander Stubb —very much a conference circuit star with his ready soundbites and international relations Ph.D.—told me, to much applause, that Russian President Vladimir “Putin has failed strategically. He wanted to make Ukraine Russian, it became European; he wanted to prevent the enlargement of NATO, he got Finland and Sweden; and he wanted to keep our defense spending down, he got 5 percent.” Another big topic of conversation was tariffs. One of the panelists onstage with me in that Stubb session was Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala , the World Trade Organization (WTO) chief. “I may not agree with the United States’ unilateral actions or approach to dealing with the issues,” she said, “but I do agree with a lot of their criticisms of the system. The system has not evolved and has not been quick to respond to the changing world.” She added: “In spite of the massive disruption of the system and the undermining of the global trade rules, the system is proving resilient. I will keep saying it: 72 percent of the world’s goods trade is still on WTO terms. Battered, bruised, but not broken.” __ I was struck by the number of tech and defense investors in town—a showing that gave Munich a bit of a Davos feel to it. Everyone sees the euro signs as countries look to spend more on defense. Time and again, tech leaders reminded me: “Oh, the money’s not the problem. … The problem is the bureaucracy.” Which is strange, because every political leader I spoke with lamented how difficult it was to raise the money they needed for defense infrastructure—the ticket to relative freedom from Washington—while keeping their welfare states. The other bit of cognitive dissonance that the Europeans were undoubtedly feeling came from listening to Wang Yi speak right after Rubio in Saturday morning’s primetime slot. “We should work for an equal and orderly multipolar world,” said the Chinese foreign minister. “Unequal orders are bound to meet their demise. … China advocates equality among all countries regardless of size and calls for increasing the representation and say of developing countries in the international system.” Was he trolling Rubio, who had just spoken dismissively about the “rules-based global order”? Unlikely, because Chinese officials rarely deviate from the script. More likely, he was describing what Europe itself has increasingly realized is the only way to balance against a bullying White House. “If we want multilateralism to win,” Finland’s Stubb told me, “we need to give agency and power to the global south.” But in a Thucydidean world where might is right and bigger countries can have their way, what happens to the smallest states? Here, Finland’s 5.6 million people have an easy out. “Join the European Union,” joked Stubb. Tell that to Bangladesh or Burundi. One leader of a smaller country was rather nice about the Trump administration’s approach, perhaps because she was onstage with me and, more importantly, the Pentagon’s Colby. “They’re very direct,” said New Zealand’s defense minister, Judith Collins. “And I love that. We know where we are. Which is that we have to step up. The tough love is making us grow up.” An unlikely Valentine’s Day message, but that’s the world in 2026.As ever,Ravi Agrawal

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