The Daily Populous Monday February 17th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by lemonde.fr and submitted by LeMonde_en

US Vice President JD Vance at the Munich (Germany) Security Conference, February 14, 2025. WOLFGANG RATTAY / REUTERS

Shaken, worried and sometimes outraged, the hundreds of representatives of Europe's diplomatic and military elite who gathered at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend left the snow-covered Bavarian capital on Sunday, February 16, with the impression that they had lived through three days that had shaken the world. Or at least their world, that of an ironclad transatlantic relationship, a pillar of the international system since WWII, which suddenly appears deeply fractured. The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, tried to sum up this feeling with a nod to Lenin, to whom he attributed this phrase: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."

To say that history between Europe and the United States has accelerated over the past week would be an understatement. On Monday, February 10, in an atmosphere that had already been electric since President Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, Vice President JD Vance, invited to Paris, lectured the European Union on its "over-regulation" of artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, February 12, Washington fired its first salvo with the announcement of a most cordial telephone conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin with the aim of putting an end to the war Putin is waging against Ukraine. The American leader then called his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to inform him of this.

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the_real_orange_joe on February 17th, 2025 at 15:00 UTC »

an honest accounting of the situation will acknowledge that Europe’s importance to America has changed since the Cold War. Europe is no longer an industrial heartland critical to America’s economy, Nor is it a consumer base that America and its businesses rely upon. The Russians no longer represent America’s primary adversary, and the Europeans do not fully participate in NATO usually missing their 2% minimum. The broad perception of Americans leading up to the war in Ukraine was that Germany acted as Russia’s primary advocate to the west. In essence, Europe could not be trusted to look after itself, even as America’s focus shifted towards the pacific. Europe continued to act as a free rider— while the conditions for American tolerance of it dwindled. This change brought about by the Trump administration would have come regardless, but has been accelerated by Trump’s isolationism.

boomerintown on February 17th, 2025 at 12:43 UTC »

I think it is a slightly missleading take that he "shook Europes world".

What he did is equally surprising, if not more, to the previous political establishment in USA.

Basically what JD Vance did was to break one of the most crucial taboos making the trans-Atlantic alliance working. Do not meddle in others internal politics.

USA and Europe is much more culturally diverse than people imagine, and cant really understand eachother when it comes to national policy. People have this picture of "west" as something.

USA is extremely shaped by a very specific part of European thinking, John Locke, Adam Smith, JS Mill, both in how its constitution and political institutions is shaped, and how they reason around values.

Since this is ofcourse European aswell, it is easy to think that "its west", but what about everything else in Europe? Platos and Rosseaus idealism, Socrates and Descartes scepticism towards any form of certainty, Hobbes "realism", Hegels dualism, Marx class conciousness, and perhaps most of all, Immanuel Kants epistemology and ethics. Note that the whole concept of something like "universal principles" in regards to how you ought to act is completly absent in USA. As long as you follow the law, anything else is just a bonus. Compared to Europe, the idea that there is a collective responsibility towards people who dont do well, or in regards to using bikes for the environment is almost completely absent.

This is when this divide was exposed in daylight, and therefore marks the end of the translantic Alliance, even though it might happen gradually depending on Trumps mood.

LeMonde_en on February 17th, 2025 at 11:19 UTC »

The Munich Security Conference, held from February 14 to 16, saw a fracturing of the transatlantic relationship. European leaders will hold an emergency meeting at the Elysée Palace on Monday.

Shaken, worried and sometimes outraged, the hundreds of representatives of Europe's diplomatic and military elite who gathered at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend left the snow-covered Bavarian capital on Sunday, February 16, with the impression that they had lived through three days that had shaken the world. Or at least their world, that of an ironclad transatlantic relationship, a pillar of the international system since WWII, which suddenly appears deeply fractured. The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, tried to sum up this feeling with a nod to Lenin, to whom he attributed this phrase: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."

To say that history between Europe and the United States has accelerated over the past week would be an understatement. On Monday, February 10, in an atmosphere that had already been electric since President Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, Vice President JD Vance, invited to Paris, lectured the European Union on its "over-regulation" of artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, February 12, Washington fired its first salvo with the announcement of a most cordial telephone conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin with the aim of putting an end to the war Putin is waging against Ukraine. The American leader then called his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to inform him of this.

Unsettled, the European defense ministers left Brussels for Munich. The worst was yet to come. On Friday, Vance delivered a virulent diatribe on the way Europe manages its democracy and stifles freedom. "A fascist, anti-European speech," said one of the diplomats present. Without providing the slightest answer to the audience's main question, namely how the Trump administration intends to make peace in Ukraine, the vice president refused to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, preferring instead to meet the candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, as the country's in the middle of an election campaign. An unprecedented interference tinged with provocation: clearly, ideological war has been declared. "They want to kill us and divide Europe," said German Christian Democrat MP Norbert Röttgen, a long-time Atlanticist.

Read the full article here: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/02/17/the-week-the-us-shook-europe-s-world_6738249_4.html