A major transatlantic political storm is brewing after Marco Rubio issued a blunt warning to European allies, accusing them of making what he called “foolish” strategic mistakes on security, defense spending, and global power competition. Rubio’s remarks reportedly centered on concerns over Russia policy, China’s rising influence, and what some U.S. lawmakers see as weakening Western unity.
The comments have intensified debate across the European Union and NATO circles, with supporters arguing Washington is demanding stronger burden-sharing, while critics say such rhetoric risks deepening divisions between long-time allies. The statement comes amid rising geopolitical tensions, ongoing Ukraine war fallout, and shifting global power dynamics, making U.S.–Europe relations a key focus area in 2026 global diplomacy.MarcoRubioEuropeWarningSpeech #RubioEuropeCriticismLatest #USEuropeTensions2026 #TransatlanticRelationsCrisisNews #USEUPoliticalTensionsLatest #NATOUnityDebate2026 #RubioForeignPolicySpeechEurope #USEuropeGeopoliticalConflictAnalysis #WesternAllianceTensionsNews #USEuropeSecurityDisagreement #GlobalPowerShiftUSEuropeChinaRussia #RubioEuropeWarningLatest #USEuropeTransatlanticCrisis #NATODebateUSEuropeTensions #USEuropeAllianceCrisis2026
The comments have intensified debate across the European Union and NATO circles, with supporters arguing Washington is demanding stronger burden-sharing, while critics say such rhetoric risks deepening divisions between long-time allies. The statement comes amid rising geopolitical tensions, ongoing Ukraine war fallout, and shifting global power dynamics, making U.S.–Europe relations a key focus area in 2026 global diplomacy.MarcoRubioEuropeWarningSpeech #RubioEuropeCriticismLatest #USEuropeTensions2026 #TransatlanticRelationsCrisisNews #USEUPoliticalTensionsLatest #NATOUnityDebate2026 #RubioForeignPolicySpeechEurope #USEuropeGeopoliticalConflictAnalysis #WesternAllianceTensionsNews #USEuropeSecurityDisagreement #GlobalPowerShiftUSEuropeChinaRussia #RubioEuropeWarningLatest #USEuropeTransatlanticCrisis #NATODebateUSEuropeTensions #USEuropeAllianceCrisis2026
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00:00But we do not live in a perfect world.
00:02And we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens
00:07and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international
00:12law which they themselves routinely violate.
00:16This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon.
00:21It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on.
00:24It is a path we have walked together before.
00:27Thank you very much.
00:29We gather here today as members of a historic alliance, an alliance that saved and changed
00:36the world.
00:37You know, when this conference began in 1963, it was in a nation, actually it was on a continent,
00:44that was divided against itself.
00:47The line between communism and freedom ran through the heart of Germany.
00:52The first barbed fences of the Berlin Wall had gone up just two years prior.
00:58And just months before that first conference, before our predecessors first met here, here
01:04in Munich, the Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction.
01:13Even as World War II still burned fresh in the memory of Americans and Europeans alike, we
01:20found ourselves staring down the barrel of a new global catastrophe, one with the potential
01:26for a new kind of destruction, more apocalyptic and final than anything before in the history
01:33of mankind.
01:35The time of that first gathering, Soviet communism was on the march.
01:40Thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance.
01:44At that time, victory was far from certain.
01:50But we were driven by a common purpose.
01:54We were unified, not just by what we were fighting against, we were unified, but what we were fighting
02:00for.
02:02And together, Europe and America prevailed.
02:07And a continent was rebuilt.
02:09Our people prospered in time.
02:11The East and West Blocks were reunited.
02:13A civilization was once again made whole.
02:17That infamous wall that had cleaved this nation into two came down, and with it, an evil empire.
02:24And the East and West became one again.
02:28But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion.
02:34That we had entered, quote, the end of history.
02:37That every nation would now be a liberal democracy.
02:39That the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood.
02:46That the rules-based global order, an overused term, would now replace the national interests.
02:52And that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.
02:59This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years
03:06of recorded human history.
03:09And it has cost us dearly.
03:10In this delusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade, even as some nations protected their economies
03:19and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut ours.
03:24Shuttering our plants, resulting in large parts of our societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of working and middle class jobs
03:34overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.
03:40We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions while many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of
03:49maintaining the ability to defend themselves.
03:51This, even as other countries have invested in the most rapid military buildup in all of human history and have
04:00not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests.
04:04To appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our
04:12competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else, not just to power their economies, but to use
04:20as leverage against our own.
04:22And in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration
04:28that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.
04:37We made these mistakes together.
04:41And now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.
04:48Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven
04:56by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization's past.
05:03And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope
05:11to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.
05:17For the United States and Europe, we belong together.
05:22America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before.
05:29The men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the
05:36traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and
05:44the new.
05:44We are part of one civilization, we are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share,
05:54forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for
06:06the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.
06:11And so this is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and urgent in our council.
06:21This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe.
06:26The reason why, my friends, is because we care deeply.
06:31We care deeply about your future and ours.
06:35And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which
06:43we are connected.
06:44Not just economically, not just militarily, not just militarily, we are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally.
06:53We want Europe to be strong.
06:55We believe that Europe must survive.
06:57Because the two great wars of the last century served for us as history's constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny
07:08is and will always be intertwined with yours.
07:12Because we know because we know because we know that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our
07:31own national security, which this conference is largely about.
07:37What we know about is not merely a series of technical questions, how much we spend on defense or where,
07:43how we deploy it.
07:44These are important questions.
07:45They are.
07:46But they are not the fundamental one.
07:49The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending?
07:55Because armies do not fight for abstractions.
07:59Armies fight for a people.
08:01Armies fight for a nation.
08:03Armies fight for a way of life.
08:05Armies fight for a way of life.
08:06And that is what we are defending.
08:08A great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to
08:15always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.
08:20It was here, in Europe, where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born.
08:26It was here, in Europe, which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution.
08:36It was this continent that produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and da
08:45Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
08:50And this is the place where the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel and the towering spires of the great
08:58cathedral in Cologne, they testify not just to the greatness of our past or to a faith in God that
09:04inspired these marvels.
09:06They foreshadow the wonders that await us in our future.
09:11But only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we together begin the
09:19work of envisioning and shaping our economic and our political future.
09:25Deindustrialization was not inevitable.
09:27It was a conscious policy choice, a decades-long economic undertaking that stripped our nations of their wealth, of their
09:34productive capacity, and of their independence.
09:37And the loss of our supply chain sovereignty was not a function of a prosperous and healthy system of global
09:43trade.
09:43It was foolish.
09:45It was a foolish but voluntary transformation of our economy that left us dependent on others for our needs and
09:52dangerously vulnerable to crisis.
09:55Mass migration is not, was not, is some fringe concern of little consequence.
10:01It was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West.
10:09Together we can re-industrialize our economies and rebuild our capacity to defend our people.
10:15But the work of this new alliance should not be focused just on military cooperation and reclaiming the industries of
10:21the past.
10:22It should also be focused on together advancing our mutual interests and new frontiers, unshackling our ingenuity, our creativity, and
10:32the dynamic spirit to build a new Western century.
10:36Commercial space travel and cutting-edge artificial intelligence, industrial automation and flex manufacturing, creating a Western supply chain for critical
10:45minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers,
10:49and a unified effort to compete for market share in the economies of the global South.
10:55Together we cannot only take back control of our own industries and supply chains, we can prosper in the areas
11:02that will define the 21st century.
11:05But we must also gain control of our national borders.
11:09Controlling who and how many people enter our countries, this is not an expression of xenophobia.
11:15It is not hate, it is a fundamental act of national sovereignty.
11:20And the failure to do so is not just an abdication of one of our most basic duties owed to
11:26our people.
11:27It is an urgent threat to the fabric of our societies and the survival of our civilization itself.
11:35And finally, we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and
11:42our nations.
11:43We do not need to abandon the system of international cooperation we authored.
11:48And we don't need to dismantle the global institutions of the old order that together we built.
11:53But these must be reformed.
11:56These must be rebuilt.
11:58For example, the United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world.
12:04But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played
12:11virtually no role.
12:13It could not solve the war in Gaza.
12:15Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce.
12:21It has not solved the war in Ukraine.
12:24It took American leadership in partnership with many of the countries here today just to bring the two sides to
12:30the table in search of a still elusive peace.
12:33It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran.
12:40That required 14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers.
12:45And it was unable to address the threat to our security from a narco-terrorist dictator in Venezuela.
12:51Instead, it took American special forces to bring this fugitive to justice.
12:55In a perfect world, all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats and strongly worded resolutions.
13:04But we do not live in a perfect world.
13:06And we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability
13:13to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate.
13:21This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon.
13:26It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on.
13:29It is a path we have walked together before and hope to walk together again.
13:35For five centuries before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding.
13:42Its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans,
13:48settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.
13:54But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting.
14:02Europe was in ruins.
14:03Half of it lived behind an iron curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow.
14:09The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline,
14:13accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings
14:19that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle
14:23across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.
14:28Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance had come to an
14:34end
14:34and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past.
14:42But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.
14:53This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to
14:59do again now, together with you.
15:03And this is why we do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker.
15:09We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength.
15:16This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame.
15:20We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage,
15:24who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization,
15:28and who together with us are willing and able to defend it.
15:34And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo,
15:38rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it.
15:42For we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West's managed decline.
15:52We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship
15:56and renew the greatest civilization in human history.
16:00What we want is a reinvigorated alliance that recognizes that what has ailed our societies
16:05is not just a set of bad policies, but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency.
16:12The alliance that we want is one that is not paralyzed into an action by fear.
16:17Fear of climate change, fear of war, fear of technology.
16:20Instead, we want an alliance that boldly races into the future.
16:24And the only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger, and
16:31wealthier for our children.
16:33An alliance ready to defend our people, to safeguard our interests, and to preserve the freedom of action that allows
16:40us to shape our own destiny.
16:42Not one that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations.
16:49An alliance that does not allow its power to be outsourced, constrained, or subordinated to systems beyond its control.
16:56One that does not depend on others for the critical necessities of its national life.
17:01And one that does not maintain the polite pretense that our way of life is just one among many and
17:08that asks for permission before it acts.
17:12And above all, an alliance based on the recognition that we, the West, have inherited together.
17:19What we have inherited together is something that is unique and distinctive and irreplaceable.
17:26Because this, after all, is the very foundation of the transatlantic bond.
17:32Acting together in this way, we will not just help recover a sane foreign policy.
17:37It will restore to us a clear sense of ourselves.
17:42It will restore a place in the world.
17:45And in so doing, it will rebuke and deter the forces of civilizational erasure that today menace both America and
17:53Europe alike.
17:55So in a time of headlines heralding the end of the transatlantic era, let it be known and clear to
18:02all that this is neither our goal nor our wish.
18:08Because for us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of
18:15Europe.
18:27Our story began with an Italian explorer whose adventure into the great unknown to discover a new world brought Christianity
18:35to the Americas
18:36and became the legend that defined the imagination of our pioneer nation.
18:40Our first colonies were built by English settlers, to whom we owe not just the language we speak, but the
18:47whole of our political and legal system.
18:50Our frontiers were shaped by Scots-Irish, that proud hardy clan from the hills of Ulster that gave us Davy
18:57Crockett and Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong.
19:01Our great Midwestern heartland was built by German farmers and craftsmen who transformed empty plains into a global agricultural powerhouse.
19:12And by the way, dramatically upgraded the quality of American beer.
19:20Our expansion into the interior followed the footsteps of French fur traders and explorers whose names, by the way, still
19:27adorned the street signs and towns' names all across the Mississippi Valley.
19:32Our horses, our ranches, our rodeos, the entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American West.
19:41These were born in Spain.
19:43And our largest and most iconic city was named New Amsterdam before it was named New York.
19:52And you know that in the year that my country was founded, Lorenzo and Catalina Giraldi lived in Casal Monferrato
19:59in the kingdom of Piedmont, Sardinia.
20:01And Jose and Manuela Reyna lived in Sevilla, Spain.
20:05I don't know what, if anything, they knew about the 13 colonies which had gained their independence from the British
20:12Empire.
20:12But here's what I'm certain of.
20:15They could have never imagined that 250 years later, one of their direct descendants would be back here today on
20:23this continent as the chief diplomat of that infant nation.
20:28And yet here I am, reminded by my own story that both our histories and our fates will always be
20:37linked.
20:38Together we rebuilt the shattered continent in the wake of two devastating world wars.
20:44When we found ourselves divided once again by the Iron Curtain, the Free West linked arms with the courageous dissidents
20:50struggling against tyranny in the East to defeat Soviet communism.
20:56We have fought against each other, then reconciled, then fought, then reconciled again.
21:01And we have bled and died side by side on battlefields from Kapyong to Kandahar.
21:10And I am here today to leave it clear that America is charting the path for a new century of
21:17prosperity.
21:19And that once again, we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends.
21:39We want to do it together with you.
21:41With a Europe that is proud of its heritage and of its history.
21:45With a Europe that has the spirit of creation and liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed
21:52our civilization.
21:53With a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive.
22:00We should be proud of what we achieved together in the last century.
22:04But now we must confront and embrace the opportunities of a new one.
22:11Because yesterday is over.
22:14The future is inevitable.
22:16And our destiny together awaits.
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