Which Forefathers, Mr. Rubio?

What was the mood at Munich Security Conference?

On the morning of February 13, a few minutes’ walk from the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich, where the world’s security establishment was gathering for its annual pilgrimage, Greenpeace activists were inflating something considerably less polite and diplomatic. On Marienplatz, only a stone’s throw from the conference site, activists inflated 10-metre-long representations of Russian President Vladamir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump sitting on a gas tanker, to symbolise Europe’s dependence on fossil fuel imports from men Greenpeace described as tyrants.

Simultaneously, other activists unfurled a 15×6 metre banner reading “Break free from tyrants” atop a tower crane and on the ground.

Ordinary Munich residents stopped. They shook hands with the activists. They photographed the giant inflatable figures. The mood on the street was not the careful, calibrated one being assembled inside the venue. It was something far more raw, more impatient, and entirely uninterested in diplomatic nuance. Inside the conference its own chosen 2026 motto was Under Destruction. Outside, at least, folks were not being subtle about who they thought were doing the destroying.

Inside though, many European leaders were quietly congratulating themselves. After a year of being publicly lectured and threatened by Washington, many felt they had finally begun to find their footing. The Greenland crisis had produced, unexpectedly, a moment of collective European solidarity. Or at least they thought it had. The question was whether that solidarity would survive contact with the man who had landed in Munich.

Then came Marco Rubio.

What did Marco Rubio Really Say To Europe?

The U.S. Secretary of State arrived on February 14 with a softer touch than JD Vance had managed a year earlier. But the premise of his speech was a familiar one to anyone who has grown up in a country, once on the receiving end of Western civilisation’s expansion. For five centuries, Rubio told the assembled leaders, the West had been “expanding.” He proudly talked about its “missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.” Then, without flinching, he had the audacity to lament how the “great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world.”

My grandfather spent years in and out of British prisons in India, fighting for the freedom of the press and his country. He was one of those uprisings. And the U.S. Secretary of State, speaking from the official State Department transcript, had just described his struggle. And the struggles of every colonised person who has ever demanded their freedom, as a cause of Western civilisational decline.

Rubio told European leaders they must stop being ashamed of their colonial histories and declared that “we are both heirs to the same civilisation, and it’s a great civilisation, and it’s one we should be proud of.” He cited the contributions of Italians, French, and Spanish to the formation of the United States. But glaringly neglected to mention the Native Americans those colonists devastated. Or how these groups exploited African slaves. Or the Chinese who helped build the railways in the American West.

As Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez observed pointedly from the conference floor: “I believe that Mexicans and the descendants of African enslaved peoples would like to have a word on that.”

When Rubio finished, the European leaders assembled inside the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, followed the American generals in the first row, rewarding him with a standing ovation (that’s now playing on a loop on social media). Munich Security Conference Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger took to the stage and in response claimed, Europe was “breathing a sigh of relief.” What Ichinger, a former German Ambassador to the United States took from that speech, is a question for Ichinger.

How did Women Leaders Shape The Response To Rubio?

EU High Representative Kaja Kallas on the other hand wore a look of incredulous horror through the Rubio speech. She was also one of the few people in the room who did not immediately stand. And she had her answer to Rubio ready the following morning and the mood in the room wasn’t as conciliatory (probably because the Americans had left).

“Contrary to what some may say, woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilisational erasure,” she said. “Coming from a country that is number 2 in the Press Freedom Index, hearing criticism from a country that is 58 in the same index; it’s interesting.”

Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, speaking on the sidelines to Politico, framed the Greenland crisis in terms that went beyond one small country’s territorial integrity.

“I don’t think we will be doing business as usual,” she said of the relationship with Washington. “When we showed our unanimity in supporting Greenland and Denmark, I think (the relationship) shifted a little bit. We have to be taken seriously as collective European countries.”

For a prime minister whose country shares a border with Russia and joined NATO precisely because small nations require collective protection, the point is not abstract.

Moldova’s President Maia Sandu, whose country has lived the threats others were theorising about, offered the conference’s most grounded warning:

“Moldova has experienced probably all the elements of hybrid war, but the most difficult is the cognitive war, which is difficult to see and can have a significant impact.”

Ursula von der Leyen European Commission President, still trying to hold a peace pipe for the Americans, offered something more structural than a rebuttal. She offered a budget, as one does from the high halls of Brussels.

“Defence spending in 2025 in Europe was up close to 80% since before the war in Ukraine. The EU is mobilising up to €800 billion,” she said, before making the most constitutionally significant call of the three days: “I believe the time has come to bring Europe’s mutual defence clause to life. Mutual defence is not optional for the EU. It is an obligation within our own Treaty. Article 42(7).” Her bottom line was: “Europe must become more independent, there is no other choice.”

Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, captured the strange new reality of the presence of a central banker at a security forum with characteristic directness:

“The kick in the butt we all received as a result of President Trump’s change of attitude towards Europe is effectively bringing the leaders of Europe, the policymakers, much closer together.”

But beyond the U.S.-Europe “situationship” back and forth, Senegal’s former Prime Minister Aminata Touré pointed to the room’s persistent blind spot. The global governance architecture that everyone is debating was under strain and partly broken by design. She noted no African country holds a permanent UN Security Council seat. The Global South she highlighted had been offered participation without power for decades. The cracks now showing, she suggested quietly, were not a surprise to everyone.

Which brings us to Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s Prime Minister and what happened to her in a private meeting on the same afternoon Rubio delivered his address about civilisation and shared heritage.

Frederiksen and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen sat down with a U.S. congressional delegation led by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. According to multiple sources cited by Puck News, the Daily Beast, and Danish newspaper Berlingske, Graham went completely off the rails at both prime ministers. Graham’s point? That if President Trump wanted Greenland, he would take it, and there wasn’t much they could do about it.

Per reports, the gist conversation? “Lots of F-bombs,” Puck News reported as one attendee’s recollection. Another said, “Picture Graham on his worst TV day.” Graham allegedly addressed Frederiksen as “little lady” and, according to Berlingske’s reporting, yawned directly in Nielsen’s face in a way those present read as deliberate mockery.

Frederiksen did not flinch (And that reads quite accurately from the times I have met her). Per sources cited in these outlets, she waited until Graham was done and then told him: “When you’re done with that, the meeting can continue.”

The angry pushback came, unexpectedly, from within Graham’s own party. Republican Senator Thom Tillis (who is not standing in the upcoming mid-term elections in the U.S.) responded publicly to Graham’s now much circulated Politico quip that “who gives a s*** who owns Greenland.” Tillis did not let it pass: “The 55,000 indigenous people of Greenland give a s*** about who owns Greenland. And at the end of the day, we need to show them respect.”

That same afternoon, Frederiksen stood before the conference cameras and delivered her answer to both the private insult and the broader pressure campaign. When asked whether tensions over Greenland had eased, her flat response?

“No, unfortunately not. I think the desire from the US President is exactly the same.” She added, “no price can be set for any other sovereign territory. This is a matter of basic democratic values.”

But by then, the Americans had moved on. Rubio was already on his way to Budapest.

What Was Rubio Up To?

His post-Munich itinerary said more than the speech had. He flew first to Bratislava to meet Robert Fico. Slovakia’s pro-Moscow prime minister has blocked EU weapons packages for Ukraine.

Then off he went to Budapest, where Viktor Orbán faces a serious electoral challenge from opposition leader Péter Magyar in April. “President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success,” Rubio told Orbán at their joint press conference.

The parallel story unfolding at Munich itself was almost comedic. While Rubio was in Budapest, Magyar was in Munich meeting Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on the Munich conference sidelines, alongside his candidate for the future foreign minister: a woman named Anita Orbán. No relation.

Magyar introduced her to Tusk with a dry smile: “This is Anita Orbán, it’s just a coincidence.” Tusk replied: “And my name is Donald.”

Then there was Giorgia Meloni, conspicuously absent from Munich, navigating her own path. To Trump’s Board of Peace, launched at Davos on January 22, with Trump named chairman for life and permanent membership priced at $1 billion. It presented Italy with a constitutional problem if they wanted to join (unlike other EU nations who show signs).

Meloni then cited Article 11 of the Italian Constitution, which permits sovereignty transfers only under conditions of equality among states. She asked Trump to restructure the board. He declined. So on February 15 she found a loophole allowing her to announce Italy would attend the Board of Peace as an observer. Present enough to please Trump, distant enough (just barely) to satisfy her government’s lawyers.

As she did, On Marienplatz, the giant inflatables labelled tyrants swayed gently in the February wind, ready to be dismantled. Inside the conference venue the world’s most powerful diplomats who had given them a standing ovation, packed to return home. But the women who chose to be in that venue, seemed to know exactly which side they are on as they returned to their offices.

My grandfather would have recognised each of them, for what they truly stand for, in 2026.

The 62nd Munich Security Conference ran February 13–15, 2026.

Italy attended Trump’s inaugural Board of Peace meeting as an observer on February 19, 2026.

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