THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S two representatives at the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, gave very different remarks, but the underlying substance was the same: This administration does not understand, does not value, and will not invest in America’s European alliances. Although the two men struck different tones and used different words, the unified message was conveyed as much by what they said as by who they were and what they didn’t say. Those in the room likely understood what they were being told in the subtle language of diplomacy, but for the rest of us, it’s worth translating into plain English.
The Munich Security Conference is not a traditional diplomatic summit. It produces no communiqués or treaties, and few concrete decisions. Instead, it’s more like a diplomatic trade show—an annual gathering where heads of state, ministers, military leaders, intelligence officials, industry executives, and civil society voices confront the world’s (and especially Europe’s) most pressing security challenges.
For more than a decade, the conference’s former chairman, Amb. Wolfgang Ischinger, curated an agenda designed to provoke candid, sometimes uncomfortable exchanges. He once explained to me that his aim was never consensus for its own sake, but clarity: to expose differences, test assumptions, and force participants to hear how allies and adversaries interpret risk, resolve, and commitment. In Munich, words are not mere rhetoric; they are signals parsed in capitals around the world.
The conference itself has long been a reflection of the transatlantic alliance. When I commanded U.S. Army Europe, our forces—alongside our German hosts and other allied militaries—provided aviation, logistics, communications, and security support, long before the first speakers took the stage at the packed conference room of the Bayerischer Hof, all to ensure that delegations could meet safely. It’s an unglamorous mission, largely invisible to the public, but emblematic of how alliances function: shared burdens, mutual trust, and capabilities woven together in ways no nation could replicate alone.
The last conference I attended as the commander of U.S. Army Europe was in 2012, and the American delegation reflected the bipartisan weight the United States once brought to the table. Sen. John McCain was there with other senators and representatives from both parties, as were then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and senior national security leaders from across the administration. Their messages differed in emphasis but were unified in tone: The United States viewed NATO not as a burden to be managed but as a strategic advantage to be strengthened.
THIS YEAR, RUBIO AND COLBY used Munich’s stage to defend the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. As a senator and presidential candidate, Rubio used to champion a muscular foreign policy that emphasized solidarity with democratic allies and standing up to authoritarian adversaries. In Munich, he tried to couch the administration’s hostility to Europe in terms of tough love while emphasizing a common historical and cultural identity and destiny.
Rubio’s counterpart, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, was surprisingly absent from Munich, as he has been from other recent diplomatic engagements, especially those in Europe. While secretaries of defense have traditionally played central roles in reassuring allies and shaping defense cooperation, that mantle appears to now fall elsewhere. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that America’s European allies see in Hegseth what many Americans do—a polarizing figure who emphasizes confrontation over cooperation and performance over policy clarity. Whether sidelined by design or circumstance, his diminished role in Munich’s diplomatic choreography speaks volumes about alliance perceptions and the premium placed on credibility. Allies do not merely listen to what American officials say. They weigh who says it—and what that choice signals.
Apparently standing in for Hegseth was Colby, who has previously annoyed and discomfited America’s closest European allies, and who favors a foreign policy in which all considerations are subordinated to competition with China, even to the point of ignoring them altogether. He described a transatlantic relationship rooted in “pragmatic realism” and “shared interests” and focused on “nuts-and-bolts kind of stuff,” though what he considers “real,” what those “interests” are, and what the “nuts and bolts” would build remain unclear. Unsurprisingly, he argued that Europe must assume primary responsibility for its defense while the United States concentrates on the Indo-Pacific. Burden-sharing, he and Rubio insisted, is an overdue correction to an unsustainable imbalance.
On its face, that argument is not unreasonable. The United States cannot be strong everywhere, and Europe must continue to invest in its own defense. But in Munich—where tone and phrasing carry strategic weight—Rubio’s and Colby’s framing signaled something far more consequential: a transactional view of alliances that undermines deterrence, fractures NATO cohesion, and is weakening the United States’ geostrategic position.
THE U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN EUROPE is often framed as a favor to allies. In reality, it’s one of the most advantageous force postures the United States maintains anywhere in the world—a relatively small footprint that delivers outsized strategic returns.
From bases in Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, American forces sit an ocean closer to potential crises in the Middle East, North Africa, and Eurasia. In Germany alone, Ramstein Air Base serves as a global air mobility hub and power projection platform; Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, home to a critical Level III trauma center, anchors combat casualty care for multiple theaters as well as health care for all the U.S. embassies in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; the logistics enterprise centered in Kaiserslautern sustains operations across continents; and in Wiesbaden, U.S. Army Europe and Africa’s technologically advanced command-and-control headquarters integrates intelligence collection, planning, and multinational coordination at a scale unmatched elsewhere. Naval forces in Rota, Spain provide access to the Mediterranean and West Africa. And in Vicenza, Italy, the U.S. Army’s airborne forces—including the paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade—provide rapid deployment options that strengthen not only military posture but diplomatic credibility. Prepositioned equipment across Europe allows American units to deploy combat power in days rather than months.
When American leaders speak with allies or adversaries, knowing that responsive forces are forward-positioned lends weight to every word and is certainly more credible than a social media-posted threat.
This posture is not charity. It is strategic leverage.
The unstated assumption embedded in the second Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy is that America can accomplish whatever goals it sets for itself, with military force if necessary, even when allies hesitate and we have few forces positioned in critical areas. In reality, it’s America’s rock-solid alliances and forward-based forces in Europe that have enabled crisis response, reinforcement of embassies, noncombatant evacuation operations, targeted strikes, and even full-scale combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, and Syria.
U.S. forces in Europe enable American power projection and political influence on three continents. For missions like embassy evacuations to disaster and conflict response, European-based units provide the nearest, most capable forces for reinforcement. These missions rarely make headlines, but they represent the daily utility of alliance infrastructure. Without our European allies, response times lengthen, risks increase, and options narrow. When Americans must be protected or evacuated, geography matters. Europe’s forward posture saves time—and lives.
But the claim that America’s European alliances are all charity isn’t just wrong in the sense that we get nothing out of it. It’s also wrong in the sense that we’re just giving and our allies are just receiving.
ONE CLAIM BOTH RUBIO AND COLBY repeated in Munich—that President Trump forced European allies toward dramatically higher defense spending targets—reinforces a fable the administration likes to tell that isn’t based in reality. European defense spending began rising after Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and surged following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Tanks crossing borders, not tweets crossing timelines, drove European parliaments to act.
The commitment to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP was formalized at the 2014 Wales Summit, during the Obama administration. Then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other allied defense ministers pursued and agreed upon a measured, collective approach that recognized both fiscal realities and the evolving threat from Russia. It was a strategy of steady alignment and increased defense spending, not irascible demands.
President Trump’s repeated comments that he has forced European nations to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense are also false. Only one NATO member has even come close: Poland spent about 4.5 percent of GDP on defense last year, falling slightly short of its goal of 4.7 percent. Interestingly, the United States will spend approximately 3.2 percent of GDP on defense for our global force in 2025–2026, so even we aren’t matching the demands we’re imposing on others. Our European allies have increased defense budgets not because of American hectoring—whether from the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or Joe Biden—but because of the Russia threat, which we are no longer addressing with vigor. To suggest otherwise risks misreading both European motivations and actions and the strategic environment that produced them.
American policymakers often hear calls for burden-sharing as common sense. Europeans hear them as conditional commitment. In Munich, that distinction matters. When key U.S. leaders suggest Europe must “stand on its own,” they hear us announcing: We will not stand with you.
FRAMING ALLIANCES AS COST CENTERS ignores their strategic returns. NATO is not a charitable enterprise but a force multiplier for American power. Forward presence in Europe prevents wars we would otherwise have to fight and enables operations far beyond the continent. During my time commanding U.S. Army Europe, we partnered with the armed forces of 49 nations. Those relationships were not symbolic. They enabled multinational operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and several other hot zones, provided integrated logistics networks, shared intelligence, and incorporated interoperability that no unilateral force could replicate.
Alliances are not acts of generosity. They are the ways and means of strategy.
NATO does not distract from the Indo-Pacific; it enables it. A stable European theater allows the United States to allocate attention and resources elsewhere. A fractured alliance would force the opposite. History offers a clear lesson: Instability in Europe consumes American bandwidth. Stability there expands it.
In Munich, language is policy. Allies parse every phrase and personality for signs of continuity or retreat. Adversaries do the same. When American representatives suggest that alliances are negotiable, they may intend to convey “realism.” But what allies hear is conditionality, and what adversaries hear is opportunity. Russia probes alliance seams. China courts European capitals with economic inducements and diplomatic alternatives. Deterrence erodes not through dramatic rupture, but through gradual doubt and distrust.
Again, Wolfgang Ischinger’s vision for the Munich Security Conference was not to produce agreement, but always to deepen understanding. By bringing together elected leaders, military commanders, business executives, and civil society voices, he created a forum where strategic assumptions are exposed and tested. When American representatives use that stage to suggest alliances are transactional, the reverberations extend far beyond the Bayerischer Hof’s walls.
Alliances are sustained by trust—collected in drops, lost in buckets. If we treat them as transactions, we will discover too late that what some considered a drag was, in fact, our greatest strategic advantage. The United States does not lead alliances out of charity. We lead them because no nation in history has ever secured its interests alone.
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