US Secretary of State Marco Rubio needs a reality check and a history lesson

In one crucial sense, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference got it right. Indeed, the year 1945 marked a rupture, the beginning of the end of European imperialism. What he did not say was, however, that it was also a moment of reckoning — of facing up to the horrors of the Holocaust and the nuclear devastation wrought at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and acknowledging the crisis, both moral and mortal, that the West had unleashed on the world. The global order that emerged in the aftermath of World War II, and later, with the fall of the Soviet Union, saw an unprecedented strengthening of American power and wealth. At the heart of this success, however, was not just its military might, but adaptability, openness, and the ability to make common cause with others. In practice, the US under Donald Trump — for all its bombast and bullying — appears to be agnostic in its deal-making. But in Rubio’s framing, the Western, Christian “civilisation” is not one among others, flawed and imperfect — for him, it is the only one worth protecting and promoting.

Rubio’s speech, a sequel of sorts to the one delivered by J D Vance on the same stage last year, may appeal to the MAGA base as a projection of American power. But for much of the world, it sounds like a superpower’s anachronistic fantasy. Vance’s speech was a blistering attack on Europe and the liberal values championed by many leaders and governments on the continent. Attacking migration policies and accusing governments of stifling free speech, he framed the “threat from within” as the greatest challenge for the West. Rubio’s tone was different. He reached out to Europe, in order to paint an airbrushed and touched-up picture of the “Western” whole. By being apologetic for its “heritage” and the Christian faith that unites it, the West, he said, is sowing the seeds of its own demise. Trump, in this reading, is fighting a civilisational battle to protect White Christendom, from a range of its enemies, including migrants and former colonies.

Even from a purely “Western” lens, the mercantilist and colonial era was marked by war, conflict and uncertainty in Europe. There is no going back to the order that began to end in 1945: There will be no return to Apartheid in South Africa, no colonial ruler in India, mercifully. Rubio’s speech is likely meant as much for a domestic political audience as it was for Munich. The message it sends out is that his administration’s vision of the future is framed by both a past that never was, and one that will thankfully never be.