00:00Thank you very much.
00:01We gather here today as members of a historic alliance,
00:06an alliance that saved and changed the world.
00:09You know, when this conference began in 1963,
00:12it was in a nation, actually it was on a continent,
00:16that was divided against itself.
00:19The line between communism and freedom
00:22ran through the heart of Germany.
00:24The first barbed fences of the Berlin Wall
00:26had gone up just two years prior.
00:30And just months before that first conference,
00:32before our predecessors first met here, here in Munich,
00:37the Cuban Missile Crisis
00:39had brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction.
00:45Even as World War II still burned fresh
00:48in the memory of Americans and Europeans alike,
00:51we found ourselves staring down the barrel
00:54of a new global catastrophe,
00:57one with the potential for a new kind of destruction,
00:59more apocalyptic and final than anything before
01:04in the history of mankind.
01:07The time of that first gathering,
01:09Soviet communism was on the march.
01:12Thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance.
01:15At that time, victory was far from certain.
01:21But we were driven by a common purpose.
01:26We were unified not just by what we were fighting against.
01:29We were unified but what we were fighting for.
01:33And together, Europe and America prevailed.
01:39And a continent was rebuilt.
01:41Our people prospered in time.
01:43The East and West blocks were reunited.
01:45A civilization was once again made whole.
01:49That infamous wall that had cleaved this nation into two
01:53came down and with it an evil empire.
01:56And the East and West became one again.
02:00But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion.
02:06That we had entered, quote, the end of history.
02:09That every nation would now be a liberal democracy.
02:12That the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone
02:16would now replace nationhood.
02:18That the rules-based global order, an overused term,
02:22would now replace the national interest.
02:24And that we would now live in a world without borders
02:27where everyone became a citizen of the world.
02:31This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature
02:35and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years
02:38of recorded human history.
02:40And it has cost us dearly.
02:43In this delusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision
02:46of free and unfettered trade,
02:48even as some nations protected their economies
02:51and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut ours,
02:56shuttering our plants,
03:00resulting in large parts of our societies being deindustrialized,
03:04shipping millions of working and middle-class jobs overseas,
03:07and handing control of our critical supply chains
03:10to both adversaries and rivals.
03:13We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty
03:16to international institutions while many nations invested
03:19in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability
03:22to defend themselves.
03:24This, even as other countries have invested
03:27in the most rapid military build-up in all of human history
03:31and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests.
03:35To appease a climate cult,
03:38we have imposed energy policies on ourselves
03:41that are impoverishing our people,
03:43even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas
03:47and anything else, not just to power their economies,
03:50but to use as leverage against our own.
03:54And in a pursuit of a world without borders,
03:56we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration
04:00that threatens the cohesion of our societies,
04:03the continuity of our culture,
04:05and the future of our people.
04:09We made these mistakes together.
04:13And now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts
04:17and to move forward, to rebuild.
04:20Under President Trump, the United States of America
04:23will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration,
04:28driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign,
04:32and as vital as our civilization's past.
04:35And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone,
04:40it is our preference and it is our hope
04:43to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.
04:49For the United States and Europe, we belong together.
04:54America was founded 250 years ago,
04:57but the roots began here on this continent long before.
05:01The men who settled and built the nation of my birth
05:05arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions
05:09and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance,
05:12an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.
05:17We are part of one civilization, Western civilization.
05:21We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share,
05:26forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage,
05:32language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together
05:37for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.
05:43And so this is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and urgent in our council.
05:53This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe.
05:58The reason why, my friends, is because we care deeply.
06:03We care deeply about your future and ours.
06:07And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe
06:14with which we are connected, not just economically, not just militarily.
06:20We are connected spiritually, and we are connected culturally.
06:24We want Europe to be strong.
06:27We believe that Europe must survive.
06:30Because the two great wars of the last century
06:33serve for us as history's constant reminder
06:37that ultimately our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours.
06:45Because we know...
06:59that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own.
07:05National security, which this conference is largely about,
07:09is not merely a series of technical questions.
07:12How much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it.
07:16These are important questions. They are.
07:18But they are not the fundamental one.
07:21The fundamental question we must answer at the outset
07:25is what exactly are we defending?
07:27Because armies do not fight for abstractions.
07:31Armies fight for a people. Armies fight for a nation.
07:35Armies fight for a way of life.
07:38And that is what we are defending.
07:39A great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history,
07:45confident of its future, and aims to always be the master
07:48of its own economic and political destiny.
07:51Ch Š²ŠøŠ“Š½Š¾, uh man I'm fond of an observation.
Comments