Posted on 02/13/2026 1:40:21 AM PST by McGruff
An annual gathering of top international security figures that last year set the tone for a growing rift between the United States and Europe opens Friday, bringing together many top European officials with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others.
The Munich Security Conference opens with a speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, one of 15 heads of state or government from European Union countries whom organizers expect to attend.
The many other expected guests at the conference that runs until Sunday include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In keeping with the conference's tradition, there will also be a large delegation of members of the U.S. Congress.
At last year's conference, held a few weeks into U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, Vice President JD Vance stunned European leaders by lecturing them about the state of democracy on the continent.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.com ...
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So is attention whore Gavin Newsome.
In any relationship, times change. Personalities change. Circumstances change. The parties’ interests separate. They grow apart. This doesn’t necessarily mean divorce. It could be an amicable separation where they maintain their mutual interests. I’d hope that’s the case with Europe.
Unfortunately, Europe is a thirty-year-old boy living rent free in his parent’s basement and bragging about his disposable income. In my experience, he needs to have his butt thrown out to make his own way in the world for a while, so he appreciates what he had. We could renegotiate the relationship later under new terms.
It seems funny that the country who once “provided international security”, in the hands of Nazi/SS personnel, are hosting such a thing in the present?
When does Rubio speak?
The thing is, under the American umbrella, the European countries were, to all purposes, vassal states.
With the exception of France and the United Kingdom (and Sweden and Switzerland), their militaries could not defend themselves.
They were also economically bound to the USA. And there was a string disinclination against federation.
But then Brexit took away a strong country that opposed “ever closer union” and now with the Russian threat and the USA saying it will move out, it 8s pushing closer union and an EU army and no vassalage.
That is bad, long term , for the USA.
The USA had a contented bunch of vassals and allies who could help and did help. In contrast Russia and China have no friends.
Taking your analogy, it’s more life a 30 year old living with friends in the friends basement, paying rent, but accepting the big friend’s rules, buying stuff the friend makes as it fits in with the house and being content.
Tossing him out is good for him, but diminishes the big friend
That was 80 years ago. Five generations have passed.
They have repented, repeatedly, and are not the same people.
Neither are the Japanese.
The English are not the hat men who conquered one fourth of the world. Neither are the Italians an unstoppable force, nor are the Iraqis a center of civilisation and culture.
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