Marco Rubio Speaks to Europe in a Different Tone Than JD Vance (Transcript)

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Marco Rubio Speaks to Europe in a Different Tone Than JD Vance

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers some tough truths to Europe in a well-received speech at the Munich Security Conference, where AOC gets tripped up over Taiwan.

Meantime, the U.S. wraps more nuclear negotiations with Iran as the Pentagon sends more military hardware to the Middle East.

From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome — I’m Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal.

We’re joined for today’s global grand tour by my colleagues on the op-ed pages: editorial board member Kate O’Dell and Matt Continetti, a columnist for the Journal’s new Free Expression newsletter.

Let’s start in Europe at the annual Munich Security Conference this weekend, where Marco Rubio gave a speech praised in many corners, talking about a potential pivot point for the West — the U.S. and Europe.

Let’s listen to a piece of what he said:

“This is why we do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker. We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength.

This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization and who together with us are willing and able to defend it.

And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it. For we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.”

Kate, what did you make of Rubio’s speech and the message the Secretary of State is sending as a member of the Trump administration on his view of the world and U.S. foreign policy?

Well, Rubio offered an intense critique of Europe that we’ve heard before — on migration, on climate, on European failures to take security and deterrence seriously.

I think it actually was new in some ways because he rooted this critique in what I’m calling different intellectual soil than what we heard last year at the same security conference from Vice President J.D. Vance.

And what Marco essentially did was say that Western civilization, the creed behind it, needs to be renewed, and that the alliance is at another inflection point like it was during the Cold War, where it has to face some pretty tough threats around it and make different choices.

And that decline is a choice, and not something that the West has to necessarily choose.

So it’s being compared to the speech at Munich last year — and whether, you know, is this merely just a different tone? Is it the same critique of Europe, but just a different tone?

I think it’s more than that. I think it is substantively different from the Vance message.

But even if it’s just tone, I think this represents an improvement in our ability to persuade our European allies to go along with us.

I mean, in free societies, we rely on persuasion. We’re asking Europe to stop financing their global welfare states, to stop relying on adversaries for energy — difficult political trade-offs.

Then we’re going to need to inspire and encourage them to join us in that effort.

So I think it is an improvement on the U.S. leadership posture in relating to Europe.

But I also think — and we can get more into this — I think it represents some intellectual divides within the Trump administration.

The reception Rubio is getting suggests to me that the vision he’s offering — which I would say is from the Ronald Reagan grand strategic playbook — is compelling.

It’s unapologetic about the superiority of freedom. It’s rooted in defending America from material threats. It’s wary of the idea that the world’s problems can all go away if we just talk more or trade more.

So I think it’s a fascinating moment for the Trump administration, and it represents a possible different direction for the future of Trump’s movement.

On the point about the reception and the contrast analysts are drawing with J.D. Vance’s speech, let’s listen to one more clip from Marco Rubio:

“This is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and urgent in our counsel. This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe.

The reason why, my friends, is because we care deeply. We care deeply about your future and ours.

And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which we are connected, not just economically, not just militarily.

We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally. We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive.

Because the two great wars of the last century served for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours.”

Matt, the message there from Rubio: he’s not backing off at all from President Trump’s push to get Europe to spend more on its own defense, maybe to reform its welfare states in ways that would allow for increased military spending.

But he’s also suggesting the U.S. and Europe are kindred spirits with intertwined futures — a contrast to the message sometimes given off by J.D. Vance and some in his coterie, which is more like: Europe is the past, we are the future, Europe — who needs you?

Well, the first thing to be said is Marco Rubio is just good at this. He’s good at delivering a speech, and he’s always been good at it.

That’s why he’s had such a remarkable rise in politics. And he also has more experience than Vice President Vance, not just in electoral politics, but in addressing groups of diplomats like he encountered at Munich.

The second thing to say is his speech emphasized, as we’ve been discussing, the cultural similarities and shared values and shared history of the United States and Europe, while also critiquing Europe’s path — as Kate said — on climate, border, and defense.

Vance’s speech last year, coming less than a month after Trump’s inauguration, emphasized the differences — specifically European restrictions on free speech.

So Vance went in there trying to drive a wedge between the European elites he was talking to and the larger European populist movement.

I’d say also with Rubio, I’ve just been struck by the fact there’s an argument going on. I think people have a deep appetite for a logical, coherent narrative explaining one’s views and suggesting future policy directions.

That’s actually been in short supply in American politics for the past decade.

I think one reason people reacted so positively to Rubio’s address is that here we had a 30-minute speech where he explained where the United States is coming from. He set the policies in this civilizational context.

He had some humor in there, and he talked about the stakes in the future.

So when I think about what this might mean for the future of the GOP, I’m not thinking so much about personalities.

I’m thinking: let’s just have more arguments. It’d be helpful for everybody.

Kate, how much does this speech and the contrast we’re talking about suggest to you the idea that there’s kind of a tug of war inside the Trump administration sometimes on these foreign policy questions?

Even the president himself speaks in ways that are broad and maybe often over-read by some of his biggest supporters when he talks about bringing U.S. forces home, or “I end wars, I don’t start wars.”

Some of his supporters in 2024, I think, have been surprised at how he has governed — those decisive U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, his swift raid into Venezuela to capture Nicolas Maduro, the dictator at the time.

How do you read the Rubio speech in the context of thinking about how the White House is approaching these foreign policy problems and what the debate inside the Oval Office must be like?

Well, there are at least three, maybe four fundamental foreign policy camps represented in the Trump administration alone, presenting their positions in different contexts.

And we know the president is not fundamentally constrained by any of these worldviews. But he does listen to arguments.

And he does pay attention to reception. I’m sure the president has noticed how well received the Rubio address has been.

Different elements of his domestic coalition liked the Rubio speech for different reasons — whether for being candid with Europe or having a larger creedal view of Western civilization.

There were a lot of different pieces of the Trump coalition represented there.

I will say, lurking in the background of the Rubio speech are a couple of things.

Rubio did not present Ukraine as the current dividing line for Western civilization, which it is. So not mentioning Ukraine as the test our adversaries are presenting is an oversight.

And it speaks to the larger lack of coherent theory the administration has on negotiations in Ukraine.

Then the Ukraine question exists as a Russian nesting doll inside the larger challenge from the Chinese Communist Party.

And Rubio did not present the CCP as the animating threat — he did not make a new Cold War case.

So those are leftover questions from that speech.

But it certainly represented a different approach from the Vance critique, which — like Matt was saying — kind of asked what there is left to preserve if Europeans can’t allow free speech and their democracies are fragile.

So it is a change in that.

For now, this debate is contained within Donald Trump’s Oval Office.

Donald Trump is not constrained, I think Kate is right about that, by any of these visions.

But where this really might break out is after President Trump leaves office — real questions about the future of the Republican Party, and what figures might be vying to replace him.

What do you make of that question in the light of this Rubio speech?

Rubio has said, I believe, if J.D. Vance is going to run to be the nominee, I will not.

But that kind of promise made in 2025 or 2026 — I’m not sure the public would really hold him to it once we get to primaries in 2027 or 2028.

It’s still very early.

President Trump himself has asked this question after Rubio’s speech. He said: look, I have three years left in office, I don’t really need to make a decision now about who I’m going to endorse.

It’s notable that President Trump never mentions either Vance or Rubio in isolation. He always groups the two names together.

When asked about his potential successor, he’ll often lead with Rubio. He’ll often start by saying Marco’s great.

And then he’ll say, of course, J.D. Vance is great too.

J.D. Vance himself was asked about this by Martha McCallum on Fox and he tried to laugh it off. He dodged the question.

I think there’s no question that right now Vance is the presumptive front-runner for the 2028 Republican nomination.

He has a huge lead in public polling. He’s amassed an extensive fundraising network. And of course he has support from key figures within the Trump coalition.

That said, Trump’s unpredictability on the world stage also extends to his unpredictability in electoral politics.

He often finds clever ways to endorse everybody or avoid a hard decision.

And I expect his background as a television producer will lead him to play out this endorsement process for as long as he can.

Speaking of future national figures, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist congresswoman from New York, was also in Munich and is getting attention for getting tripped up on a question about Taiwan.

Let’s listen:

“Would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?”

“You know, I think that this is such a… you know… I think that this is… this is, of course, a very longstanding policy of the United States.

And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point.

And we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.”

Kate, how do you grade that response? Maybe we need to pull out the pain scale.

Yeah. I mean, it’s at least a seven. It’s painful to listen to.

The obvious point is that she has clearly not given much thought to what is increasingly one of the most pressing questions in the world: would and should the United States defend Taiwan?

It’s also notable because most politicians would take an out to this question, because the U.S. maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity.

The U.S. declines to say exactly how it would handle a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. It says it would treat any unilateral change in the status quo as a grave concern, but doesn’t get more specific.

So she could have just reiterated that.

If I’m looking for a pony in here somewhere, given the progressive wing she comes from, I was surprised she even said it would be nice to avoid getting to that point.

It would have been imaginable that she might have said the real war is for free college or expressed sympathy with the Marxist-Leninist project in Beijing.

But I think anyone listening to that clip should conclude she’s not ready for the primetime scrutiny a presidential campaign would bring.

Meantime, the U.S. is wrapping new nuclear negotiations with Iran in Geneva.

Let’s listen to a clip of J.D. Vance on Fox News explaining his view of these talks:

“One thing about the negotiation I will say this morning is, in some ways it went well. They agreed to meet afterwards.

But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.

So we’re going to keep on working it. But of course the president reserves the ability to say when he thinks diplomacy has reached its natural end.

We hope we don’t get to that point. But if we do, that’ll be the president’s call.”

Matt, mixed reads of this negotiation in Geneva.

Iran’s foreign minister says “good progress” was made, for what that’s worth. Others suggest it’s progress toward identifying common goals — one of those classic agreements to meet to figure out an agreement later.

But it’s notable the serious U.S. military firepower also moving toward the Middle East — a second carrier strike group, reports the U.S. is moving fighter jets into the region.

What’s your view of Trump’s decision point here?

Former Mideast official Brett McGurk said it well when he told CNN: whenever you hear diplomats say there’s agreement in principle, it means there’s disagreement in practice.

What we heard from the Iranian foreign minister was agreement in principle. Translated: no agreement. Not at all.

In the end, there’s nothing the Iranians are willing to give Donald Trump.

Trump has been very clear: there should be no enrichment of uranium in Iran.

It’s not clear there’s any happening now because of Operation Midnight Hammer last year.

But Trump has also demanded Iran scale back — if not eliminate — its missile program and its support for terrorist proxies, and stop killing protesters like we saw after last month’s uprising.

The Iranian regime is not going to accede to any of these demands.

So I think what we’re seeing is diplomatic support kabuki.

The real show is this massive buildup of U.S. forces in the region.

A second carrier strike group — the Ford strike group. The USS Gerald Ford is the largest U.S. aircraft carrier, the largest aircraft carrier in the world.

It’s headed to the region.

There were two carrier strike groups before Operation Midnight Hammer last year.

The movement of airplanes isn’t just “some airplanes.” Over four dozen fighter aircraft have been moving into the region.

Some defense analysts describe this as the largest buildup of U.S. forces in the Middle East since Iraq and Afghanistan.

It begs the imagination that negotiations are going to produce a result that avoids conflict.

Kate, what’s your view of that question — the assets being moved in?

It does seem like a strange moment to imagine a deal between the U.S. and Iran.

As Matt laid out, the U.S. strikes dealt a heavy blow to Iran’s nuclear program.

So you’d need a deal that goes beyond that — maybe Iran agreeing to stop supporting terrorism or to give up its missile program.

Those are things the regime in Tehran has not been willing to do.

I’m not sure what optimism there would be that those things would ever be in the cards given the nature of the regime.

Maybe this is another attempt by Iran to buy more time, drag out negotiations — a classic tactic Tehran has used.

But the military buildup suggests Trump might have something else in mind.

I agree it’s in the DNA of the Iranian regime to spread terror throughout the region.

So I wouldn’t be optimistic they’re going to offer real concessions.

It’s notable so far they seem to be offering non-concessions, such as maybe a pause in enrichment — which they’re not in a position to do anyway because of the visit they were paid by U.S. B-2 bombers.

So it does not look like there’s really any deal to be had.

I’d put a couple more points on the bulletin board about this military buildup.

A few specific types of assets have been moving into the region, including airborne control and command platforms that help coordinate strikes.

Also, fifth-generation F-22 fighters.

These are not assets we move into theater capriciously or without a plan.

It suggests to me a strike might be happening soon.

Also, the types of assets moved suggest we are preparing not just for retaliation after a one-time strike, but for a much larger campaign — or at least something lasting longer than a pinprick strike.

There’s just too much force.

We’re taking a big percentage of our fighter fleet, including specialized F-16s that suppress enemy air defenses.

It looks urgent and potentially protracted beyond merely responding to an Iranian response.

Given the available deals on offer, that is the president’s best option at this point.

He’s not going to change the DNA of a revolutionary regime.

He’s given them ample opportunity to do that.

He has armed his diplomacy to show he is serious about using force if they don’t negotiate.

And it looks like — to borrow something former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said recently — it looks like this time the Iranian regime is willing to go down with the ship.

And I think that’s accurate.

Thank you, Kate and Matt.

Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast@wsj.com.

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