Rubio’s ‘Reassuring’ Speech to Europe at the Munich Security Conference

Welcome to the second pop-up edition of Foreign Policy’s Situation Report at the 2026 Munich Security Conference. It’s been an action-packed day dominated by conversations about whether the United States and Europe can hug it out and save their historic alliance.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offers Europe a softer touch (but stays on message), NATO chief Mark Rutte denies that there’s a disconnect with the U.S. on the Russia-Ukraine war, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham makes the case for regime change in Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio marked Valentine’s Day by trying to kiss and make up with Europe, exactly a year (almost to the minute) after U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance left many across the continent questioning their relationship with Washington.

The venue for both speeches was the same—the main stage at the Munich Security Conference in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel—but the response from the room couldn’t have been more different.

Where Vance gobsmacked the audience in 2025 with a lecture about Europe’s retreat from “shared values,” Rubio spent much of his speech appealing to the United States’ and Europe’s shared history, culture, and heritage (including three mentions of Christianity) and telling Europeans that Washington wants to work together with them to “renew the greatest civilization in human history.”

At the first-ever Munich Security Conference in 1963, held against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis, the United States and Europe “were unified not just by what we were fighting against; we were unified by what we were fighting for,” Rubio said. “And together, Europe and America prevailed and a continent was rebuilt.”

It was a message Europe really wanted to hear after spending two days in Munich (and hundreds more before) fretting about the trans-Atlantic alliance. “In a time of headlines heralding the end of the trans-Atlantic 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 added, in one of the biggest applause lines of his speech.

Many, including conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, who introduced Rubio, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who spoke shortly after him, said they felt “reassured” by the speech.

But Rubio also dedicated much of his address to reiterating points Vance made a year earlier, including warnings about the “crisis” of “mass migration” and the “climate cult” that has imposed “impoverishing” energy policies on Western countries. He also underlined the Trump administration’s retreat from multilateralism, calling the rules-based global order that Washington put in place an “overused term” and a “delusion.”

Much of it was old wine in a new bottle, slightly more chilled—a fact not lost on European officials we spoke to.

“When you talk about content, what Mr. Vance said and what Mr. Rubio said an hour ago was pretty much the same,” Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken told SitRep in an interview shortly after Rubio’s speech. Though Francken added that Rubio’s message was delivered “in a very diplomatic way” and was “more about our heritage, our bonds, so it was a very emotional speech, and it touched a lot of people in the room—and in Europe—really to the heart.”

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide also recognized “the MAGA program” running through Rubio’s speech. “But [Rubio was] also basically saying: ‘We’re still here, and it’s not really America alone.’ So that’s my reading, but some damage has been done,” Eide added.

Rupture or rebuilding? In assessing the extent of that damage, Francken and Eide both pointed not to the speeches by Vance or Rubio, but to the one U.S. President Donald Trump gave in Davos last month in which he mused about a U.S. takeover of Greenland. That “was quite the shock to the trans-Atlantic family,” said Eide, who was in the room for that speech.

But Eide said that Europe’s assertiveness, which got Trump to back down from the Greenland threats, set a tone for the relationship that better prepared the continent to hear Rubio’s message this week. “The Europeans and Canada came to the position that now we have to say, ‘Enough is enough,’ and there was actually quite a lot of pride in finally saying that we’re allies, we want to remain allies, but there are certain things you simply don’t do,” the Norwegian minister added.

There also appears to be a desire in Europe to move forward from lamenting the breakdown of the global order, as illustrated by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday. “Instead of a moment of rupture, we must make it one of radical renewal,” Starmer said, somewhat subtweeting the words of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s own viral Davos speech. “I’m talking about a vision of European security and greater European autonomy that does not herald U.S. withdrawal but answers the call for more burden sharing in full and remakes the ties that have served us so well,” Starmer added.

That European assertiveness, bookended by the Vance and Rubio speeches and pushed into overdrive by Trump’s, appears here to stay and a baseline for the trans-Atlantic future. “Europeans went from a state of shock to a state of action, and the coalition of the willing was basically formed in the days after Vance’s speech,” said Eide, referring to a coalition of countries committed to supporting Ukraine. A year after that shock, “there is now a much more united Europe,” he added.

Or, as Francken put it more bluntly: “We need to step up in Europe. We can do it. We’re not a bunch of losers.”

Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy and the second-most-watched U.S. official in Munich, made his own attempt to reassure the Europeans in an onstage interview with FP editor in chief Ravi Agrawal later on Saturday afternoon. Trump “has shown in places like Venezuela and in Operation Midnight Hammer that he is prepared to use military force decisively to back up his pledges to work with our allies,” Colby said, when asked if the United States would come to the aid of a NATO ally who was attacked. (Operation Midnight Hammer is the code name for the U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025.) “But we’re putting things on a more sustainable basis,” Colby added.

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Rutte backs Trump on Russia-Ukraine. There’s been an evident disconnect between Trump and NATO allies when it comes to the Ukraine peace negotiations. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for example, told the conference on Friday that Moscow “is not yet willing to talk seriously.” That same day, Trump told reporters in Washington that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to make a deal.

But NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, during a roundtable discussion with journalists here in Munich on Saturday, insisted there is no such disconnect.

When asked by SitRep whether NATO was working to get the White House on the same page as the alliance, Rutte said, “I think we’re on the same page. The issue is this, that it is the Americans who have to lead this—there’s no other way. And when you are leading peace negotiations, it’s only logical that you put pressure on everybody.”

“But at the same time, it is also clear, in all my talks with the American administration, that this is also a test. It is a test of the Russians—are they serious, is Putin really willing to play ball or not? Ukraine is, we know,” Rutte said. (It should be noted that in Trump’s Friday comments, the U.S. president appeared to accuse Kyiv of not being willing to play ball, saying that “[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s gonna have to get moving. Otherwise, he’s going to miss a great opportunity.”)

The NATO chief pointed to the sanctions Trump placed on Russia’s two largest oil companies last October as “evidence he is really putting the pressure where it is needed,” adding that Trump’s efforts to continue “encouraging the Ukrainians” are also “logical.”

“That’s his [Trump’s] role as the one who is with his team leading this process. And he’s the only one who can do that,” Rutte said. “Europeans are completely kept informed of what is happening. NATO is being kept informed. So I think that’s in a good place in the sense of the process, but we are clearly not yet at a peace deal.”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham gave a full-throated endorsement of regime change in Iran during a press conference at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, as the Trump administration weighs conducting fresh strikes amid ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

“If you don’t want regime change, then move to Iran and live a year and call me back,” Graham told reporters, while referring to the Iranian regime as the “mothership of terrorism” and “religious Nazis.”

Graham criticized questions about what would happen after the regime falls as “boring,” and in response to a question from a reporter on whether the U.S. bombing Iran could potentially lead Iranians to rally around the flag, he said, “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. You think these people out in the streets would object to us bombing their oppressor?” He was referencing the recent mass anti-government protests in Iran that led to a brutal crackdown that’s estimated to have killed thousands of demonstrators.

While conceding that he doesn’t know “what’s going to happen next” if the regime falls, Graham said it would be a “good thing, not a bad thing” and that the “payoffs” of “helping the Iranian people take the Ayatollah [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] down, who’s incredibly weak,” outweigh the risks.

Graham also pushed back on the notion that U.S.-led regime change in Iran could turn into a situation similar to the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which resulted in a protracted and costly war that also catalyzed the rise of the Islamic State. “We’ve learned a lot,” Graham said, suggesting that what would be different this time is that there would be no need for U.S. boots on the ground in Iran. “Will there be problems? Yeah, but I’m telling you right now, the worst problem is to do nothing.”

Graham also had a lot to say about Russia and Ukraine during the press conference, which you can read more about here.

“The Ukrainian army is the strongest army in Europe. … I think it is simply not smart to keep this army outside NATO.”

—Zelensky in his speech to the Munich Security Conference.