Observations From The Munich Security Conference

It took a World War and eight decades to build the strongest alliance that this world had ever seen. It took less than a year to practically destroy it. When Secretary Rubio said the “old world order was dead” during his speech in Munich he was right. It’s dead because Donald Trump blew it up.

It wasn’t perfect, and there were opportunities missed to improve it, but Donald Trump only knows how to break things, not fix them.

He thinks this somehow benefits us. He is wrong. Our allies no longer trust us. It was obvious in the more than a dozen meetings I had with Presidents, Prime Ministers and Defense and Foreign Ministers. And if you’re Denmark and Greenland, a “loss of trust” is a generous characterization of our new relationship. China is now more popular in Denmark than the United States. In Poland, the U.S. is 21 percent less popular than it used to be.

This means these countries are looking elsewhere for trade and security — that makes you poorer and less safe.

It will be incredibly hard to build what comes next, but we have to figure out a better path forward. Make no mistake, China is rising. Our ability to keep up with them and prevent a conflict depends on trusted, reliable alliances. So does ending the war in Ukraine in a way that keeps Putin from moving on to his next target. And so does growing our economy and protecting American workers in the age of AI.

I know there was celebration at the end of the Munich Security Conference. Unfortunately the champagne corks were popping in Beijing and Moscow.