This year’s Munich Security Conference attracted as much attention as he did 18 years ago. At that time, it was Vladimir Putin who caused a urarro; This time, he was the Vice President of the United States. Uu. JD Vance. Thought separate for almost two decades, these two speeches share a critical issue: both challenged the transatlantic order based on the legacy of the cold war. And in both cases, the western establishment could not offer a substantive response.
In 2007, Putin’s warning about NATO’s expansion and Western overreach was largely dismissed as the complaints of a decline power. Some voices urged caution, but the predominant feeling in Washington and Brussels was complacency: Russia, they believed, would finally align. The consequences of that calculation error are now simple for everyone to see.
Today, the American vice president has shed a different child or glove. His speech pointed out a deep ideological gap within west, one that the leaders of Western Europe do not seem to face. In response, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has asked for an emergency summit to establish a common position. But is the EU really understanding the scale of the challenge? The early reactions suggest no. There is hope, even if wrong, that this storm can simply be expected.
Reprisals, ideology and a changing world order
There are several explanations for Vance comments in Munich. The most immediate is recovery. The leaders of Western Europe have spent years openly by Trump and his allies, assuming they can do it without consequence. Now that Trump has returned, they face the reality that his words have not forgotten the leg.
But there is a deeper ideological divergence in the game.
In many ways, Vance’s criticism echoes the complaints that led the New World settlers to break the Old World: tyranny, hypocrisy and parasitism.
He and others, such as Elon Musk, do not apologize in interfering with European affairs, something that liberal ideologues have long justified in the name of the democracy of promotion. Now, the debate about what democracy really means has expanded beyond the United States to the entire transatlantic alliance. This ideological struggle will shape the trajectory of the West in the coming decades.
The third and most significant factor behind Vance’s speech is the broader transformation of the dynamics of global power. The world has changed. While it is still too early to define the new order completely, one thing is clear: the old ways no longer work. Demography, economic changes, technological competition and military realignments are restructuring global balance.
In the heart of this transformation there is a key question for the West: Should I finally end the cold war as defined in the twentieth century, or should the fight in new conditions continue? The response of Western Europe, until now, has been Cing to the confrontation, in large part because it has not been able to integrate the ancient adversaries in a way ensures their own future. However, the United States is increasingly pointing out the will to move forward. This change is not exclusive to Trump; Each US president from George W. Bush has, in varying degrees, depressed Europe in favor of other regions. Trump has simply been the most explicit of it.
The Dilemma of Western Europe: cling to the past or face the future
What will Western Europe do in response? For now, it seems committed to preserving the ideological and geopolitical framework of the Cold War. It is not just security; It is about preserving your own relevance. The EU is a product of the liberal world order, and requires a defined adversary to justify its cohesion. A family enemy, Russia, has much better purpose than an unknown as China.
From this perspective, it is logical to assume that some can even see the tensions to climb to a point where the United States has no choice but to intervene. If the block is really capable or causes such a crisis, it is another question completely.
For the United States, the situation is more complex. A handGoing beyond the old frame of the Cold War, Washington would allow Washington to concentrate on what he sees as the true challenges of the future: China, the Pacific, North America, the Arctic and, to a minor extension, the Middle East. Western Europe has little to sacrifice in cinemas. On the other handFully abandoning the continent is not in the letters. Trump is not an isolationist; Simply imagine a different empire model, one where the United States extracts more benefits and assumes less loads.
The call of Vance for Western Europe “Fix the democracy on your part” It must be understood in this context. It is not about disseminating democracy in the traditional sense, but about improving governance in what the United States sees more and more as a dysfunctional province. In fact, Vance’s position on European sovereignty, possibly equally more derogatory than that of his liberal predecessors, than at least service to the transatlantic unit.
Europe: an irrelevance spectrum
Yakov M. Rabkin
Europe is now at a crossroads: will ideological rigidity and your own justice abandon to claim influence, or persist on the road initiated by the previous US administration, which Washington has abandoned since then? If Europe chooses the latter, it runs the risk of becoming political and relegating economically to the periphery of Eurasia.
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The last battle of the Cold War?
Vance’s speech in Munich was not just another rhetoric save in the European American dispute. It was a milestone in the evolution of Atlantic thought. For decades, the transatlantic alliance has operated with the assumption that the cold war never really ended.
Now, the central question is whether to finally put an end to it and start a new one in different terms.
The current EU strategy, which preserves confrontation with Russia as a means to ensure its own coherence, may not be sustainable in the long term. If the United States goes back and prioritizes its own interests in other places, Brussels will have to reassess its position. Will it continue to trust a framework of the Cold War era that no longer fits the modern world, or will it finally recognize change and adapt accordingly?
For now, the transatlantic division is extended. The options carried out in the coming months will determine whether this crack leads to a permanent fracture, or at the beginning of a new geopolitical order where Western Europe finally learns to stay on its own.
This article was first published by the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta and has been translated and edited by the RT team.
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