JD Vance stuns Munich conference with blistering attack on Europe’s leaders

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/jd-vance-stuns-munich-conference-with-blistering-attack-on-europes-leaders

In a chastising speech on Friday that openly questioned whether current European values warranted defence by the US, he painted a picture of European politics infected by media censorship, cancelled elections and political correctness.

Arguing that the true threat to Europe stemmed not from external actors such as Russia or China, but Europe’s own internal retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”, he repeatedly questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda. “What I worry about is the threat from within,” Vance said.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the vice-president had been expected to address the critical question of the Ukraine war and security differences between Washington and Europe. Instead, he widely skated over these to give a lecture on what he claimed was the continent’s failure to listen to the populist concerns of voters.

His attack on mainstream European politicians drew a stern response from German and EU officials. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said he could not let the speech go without comment. “If I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes,” Pistorius said. “That is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said allies should be focusing on bigger threats such as Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. “Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to a pick a fight with our friends,” Kallas said at the Munich event.

The speech drew effusive praise on Russian state TV, where a correspondent, Asya Emelyanova, said on Rossiya 1: “It was very nice to hear Vance’s very strong speech. It was a public caning, I can’t call it anything else.”

In remarks that will delight the German far right days before elections there, Vance said: “Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration.”