When Vance took the stage in Munich, most people were expecting him to hold forth on the topics that had animated the huddles and discussions around the venue leading up to his speech: European defence spending and the fate of Ukraine.
But those subjects only got a passing sentence each. Instead, Vance spent the bulk of his 20 minutes on stage criticising what he characterised as a European retreat from the West’s “shared democratic values” driven by excessive censorship of free speech.
“The Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. Consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, closed churches, and cancelled elections—were they the good guys? Certainly not, and thank God they lost,” Vance said.
“Unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners,” he added before rattling off a list of examples aimed at illustrating his point: European Union officials’ threats to shut down social media “the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful’ content,” Germany’s raids on people posting misogynistic speech online, Sweden’s jailing of an activist who burned the Quran in public, and “safe access zones” around abortion clinics established in the United Kingdom.
For Europeans and others watching, Vance had a MAGA message: “In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under (US President) Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square,” he said, to scattered and hesitant applause—one of the few times he got any.
“Utterly, utterly frightening.” Several times in his speech, Vance singled out Romania, which late last year annulled its elections due to alleged Russian interference uncovered by Romania’s security services and is scheduled to hold them again.
“You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections—we certainly do—you can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with,” he said.
The US vice president also spoke at length about the alleged threat posed by immigration, a major right-wing talking point on both sides of the Atlantic that he described as the most “urgent” challenge the nations represented in Munich face. “In England, they voted for Brexit—agree or disagree, they voted for it,” he said. “And more and more all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration.”
Most of the speech was met with stunned silence. “Gobsmacked” was a word used repeatedly in the aftermath, and SitRep overheard one attendee walking out of the Bayerischer Hof describe the speech as “utterly, utterly frightening.”
One senior European official, who spoke to SitRep on the condition of anonymity, said Vance “did something whilst being in Germany that Germans are pretty good at: Teaching lessons to others.”
Another official had far stronger words. “It was total bullsh*t. We don’t know what planet he is on,” the official said. “At least when we met Keith Kellogg, we could talk geopolitics,” they added, referring to Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine. “With Vance, we can’t even agree on what a democracy is.”
Whither Europe? While Vance told Europe early on in his speech that “we are on the same team,” the more lasting impression appears to have been left by his final words: “Good luck to all of you; God bless you.”
Conversations we’ve been having with European officials in Munich over the last two days have betrayed deep concerns about the United States' status as a reliable partner, even amid a recognition that Europe must do more for its own defence.
“A stronger Europe works with the United States to deter the threats we have in common as partners, and this is why we believe that trade wars and punitive tariffs make no sense,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said onstage to loud applause earlier in the day, a veiled swipe at Trump’s Thursday move to slap reciprocal tariffs on all US trading partners.
Vance, who took the stage right after her, didn’t mention trade at all. But his speech drove home a key message for former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. “If that wasn’t a wake-up call for Europe, I don’t know what is,” Landsbergis told Foreign Policy. “We have to get our act together and figure out how to manage our problems on our own.”
