MUNICH — U.S. President Donald Trump is a longtime fan of Winston Churchill. But what would Britain’s iconic wartime leader make of the Munich Security Conference in 2025?
“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Those are the words Churchill thundered when then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain left this Bavarian city 87 years ago, clutching a piece of paper that turned out to be meaningless.
Would that be Churchill’s reaction to Trump’s drive to end the war in Ukraine, with terms that Kyiv and its European allies fear will be favorable to Moscow and only mean another bigger war down the road?
The word “appeasement” is on European lips here, and for the more historically sensitive — like Britain’s former Defense Minister Ben Wallace — the echo of Munich circa 1938 seems an obvious reference point.
As they gathered for the summit today, European officials were still reeling from the readout of Trump’s 90-minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as U.S. Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth’s mid-week remarks in Brussels. For former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, the most overlooked and chilling line that came from Hegseth was his warning that “realities” will prevent the U.S. from being Europe’s security guarantor.
In other words — no U.S. backstop.
Like others, Landsbergis senses an end of an era. “It may well mark the advent of the twilight of NATO,” he said. “Especially when you combine it with what I think Washington will soon announce — the withdrawal of 20,000 U.S. troops from Europe.”
As the Lithuanian spoke with POLITICO in Munich, Hegseth was in Warsaw, foreshadowing a troop draw down and warning already frazzled Europeans that “now is the time to invest because you can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever.”
Much like it’s been in the U.S., the Trump administration’s nonstop, fast-moving shock-and-awe announcements have been overwhelming and disorienting in Europe too — as the strategy is, no doubt, designed to be. Wrong-footing opponents and critics, giving them little time to draw breath and reorient.
And U.S. lawmakers attending the summit have been trying to offer some reassurance to an anxious Europe — though not to much avail.
Among them was Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the powerful Senate armed services panel, who told POLITICO that Hegseth made “a rookie’s mistake” in Brussels: “I don’t know who wrote the speech — but it could have been written by Tucker Carlson. Carlson is a fool,” he said, soothingly reassuring that there are plenty of serious people around Trump who he heeds.
Wicker also noted that Hegseth had already walked back some of his harsher remarks, but admitted he hadn’t yet done so when it comes to Europe losing the U.S. security guarantee — which undermines NATO’s Article 5 committing alliance members to collective defense.
And it is that line, more than any other, that’s setting European teeth on edge — along with harsh lines like: “Make no mistake, President Trump will not allow anyone to turn Uncle Sam into ‘Uncle Sucker.’“
“Trump’s direct approach to Putin, combined with Secretary of Defense Hegseth informing allies in Brussels that the U.S. is preemptively acquiescing to some of Russia’s core demands before talks have even begun is a double blow — not only to Ukraine but to the future of Europe,” remarked Chatham House’s Keir Giles.
“[Accepting] that the aggressor can retain the territory it has seized in exchange for a plea for peace — the parallels with 1938 could only be clearer if Trump had held up a note and said Mr Putin had assured him he had no further territorial ambitions in Europe.”
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech, focused on criticizing democratic practice in Europe, is doing nothing to ease European qualms — nor those of pro-NATO Americans.
It was received stonily, with only occasional smatterings of applause and a few politely shaking heads, when he started talking about migration as a threat to European civilization. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within,” he said.
“Consider the audacity of someone who ran on a ticket with a man who inspired a riot against our Congress in 2020, to come to Europe and say, ‘You guys have got problems with democracy,’” said academic and former U.S. diplomat Michael McFaul. “And we’ve got a constitutional crisis going on right now with executive overreach and the health of American democracy.”
Vance also ignored the elephant in the room — the Ukraine war. “He could have used the speech to clarify their negotiating position and he chose not to. This speech was for people back home, not for people at the summit,” McFaul added. Not that McFaul gives European democracy a clean bill of health — but this was neither the time nor the place for the considerable chutzpah on display, he said.
Three years ago, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seemed to make NATO more relevant than it had been — gone was the search for a raison d’être in a post-Cold War world. But it was hard here, on the summit’s first day, to shake the feeling that we’re witnessing the start of a cleaving. Sure, the summits during Trump’s first term also had a “U.S. vs. Europe” feel, but his former national security team would smooth things out. Feathers would be ruffled — not plucked.
And for Europe, the U.S. remains the exceptional nation, the indispensable one to summon in times of trouble. Who else is there to turn to now?
Maybe oneself.
Former German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger told POLITICO that “maybe Europe needed to be tasered,” to be shocked into being more forward-leaning and self-reliant.
His position is that European leaders are partly to blame for the situation they’re now bemoaning. They had ample warning about what the U.S. president’s second term might entail, and yet moved far too slow to increase their own defense spending and share of the transatlantic burden.
Landsbergis’s successor Kęstutis Budrys agrees that Europe has been laggardly. “We are late, really. We have to speed up and show that we have real defense, and that we are ready and capable and trained to fight,” he told POLITICO.
But Budrys hopes this isn’t a “Munich moment” like 87 years ago. “The fact we mention 1938 shows we have an awareness and it is a sign we are seeking to avoid that. Yes, there’s the risk that some elements might be repeated, but we can also see how to avoid it,” he said. And that will require all the allies to share “the seriousness of the situation we are facing,” if they want to preserve NATO.
But others wonder if this is all too late and fear the Trump administration isn’t a friend but a foe. One senior EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said: “We’ve now got an alliance between a Russian president who wants to destroy Europe and an American president who also wants to destroy Europe.”
“The transatlantic alliance is over.”