Officials gather on Friday for Europe’s biggest annual security summit, where a speech by Vice President JD Vance last year started an unraveling of trans-Atlantic relations.
By Steven Erlanger and Jim Tankersley
Reporting from Munich
When Vice President JD Vance told the Munich Security Conference last year that America’s European allies were destroying themselves with immigration and unfairly barring the far-right from power, it was a shock to the trans-Atlantic alliance.
There was much more to come.
In the year that followed, President Trump imposed tariffs on European goods. He pushed to end the war in Ukraine on terms largely favorable to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and threatened to pry Greenland from Denmark by any means necessary. He mocked European leaders in a bullying speech in Switzerland, declaring Europe would be nothing without the United States.
It has been a dizzying unraveling of the friendship that bound the West together for three-quarters of a century, since World War II. That has left European leaders more wary — and in some cases, more defiant — toward America, as they prepare to meet again in Munich, starting Friday, for Europe’s largest annual gathering of politicians and security officials.
Diplomats and heads of state across the continent say they no longer expect relations with America to revert to a pre-Trump normal, even after Mr. Trump leaves office. They have accelerated efforts to reduce their military and economic dependence on the United States, even as they continue to court the president with flattery in an effort to maintain influence with him on Ukraine and other global issues.