Even US will not be powerful enough ‘to go alone’, says Merz – Munich Security Conference live | Europe
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‘In era of great power rivalry, even US will not be powerful to go alone’, Merz says
Merz then turns to English and addresses the US delegation directly with a very powerful rebuke to the US.
He says that for generations, “the trust among allies, partners, and friends made Nato the strongest alliance of all times. “Europe knows deeply how precious this is,” he adds.
But he then warns:
In the era of great power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone.
He adds:
“Dear friends, being a part of Nato is not only Europe’s competitive advantage, it’s also the United States competitive advantage. So let’s repair and revive transatlantic trust together. We, the Europeans, are doing our part.”
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Opening Summary
There is lots of smaller sessions coming up now, involving California governon Gavin Newsom, Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson, and EU tech commissioner’s Henna Virkunnen (11:32).
And then, obviously, Emmanuel Macron is on at 7pm local time (6pm UK).
Jakub Krupa
in Munich
Stubb is such a standout public speaker. You can feel that the room is following his contributions very closely (and that’s not always a given at this sort of conferences).
Despite coming from a relatively small country, he has established in recent months as one of Europe’s key leaders on a number of issues, from trade to US ties.
It probably helps that he has genuinely deep understanding of the US as he completed part of his education there and, oh yes, he sometimes plays golf with Trump giving him the nickname of “Trump whisperer”.
In between giving serious, thoughtful answers on serious topics, he is effortlessly plugging in Finland’s Nokia as a potential replacement for Huawei and joking about his birthday in a way that is rare – and so refreshing – at this level of politics.
One has to wonder if there is a scenario in which he gets picked for a senior EU or international job in the future.
But his presidential term only ends in 2030, so let’s hope there will be some international organisations left by then.
Back on the conference stage they are still broadly discussing trade issues, but Stubb has just been essentially asked by a Ukrainian journalist along the lines of “based on Finland’s experience, how to sort Russia out.”
He offers a strong answer as he says:
“I’m not going to give you advice, but I think you’re winning this war, and the reason I say this is that Putin has failed strategically.
He wanted to make Ukraine Russian; it became European. He wanted to prevent the enlargement of Nato; he got Finland and Sweden, and he wanted to keep our defence expenditure down, and it’s now going up to 5%.
Secondly, he’s losing on the military front. Remember that when the war began, Russia acquired 12% of Ukrainian territory. That’s 12 years ago. Since then, 8% in the past two years, 1% in December, Ukraine was able to kill 34,000 Russian soldiers they were not able to recruit back.
So my answer is, just keep on what you’re doing, and at the end of the day, you will prevail and win this war.”
He gets very good reception in the room with a round of applause from the attendees.
Europe needs strength to face new global ‘disorder,’ Denmark’s Frederiksen says in diplomacy push
Away from the conference hall, a lot of focus is on Denmark and their strong presence here in Munich.
It’s no coincidence that Merz pointedly mentioned the Danish PM Mette Frederiksen and the European support for her in his speech.
Frederiksen is here, joined by her foreign and defence ministers, and it’s their first big event of this sort where they can engage with the US and other partners since the Greenland crisis.
As mentioned earlier, she is due to host talks with Rubio over Greenland (11:41), among others.
Remember: the Danes skipped Davos last month altogether, so they are now very active here – and hit very similar tones to those expressed by Merz earlier.
For her part, Frederiksen spoke with the FT earlier today (£), warning that Europe needs an “emergency mindset” to face the new world order focused on sheer power.
She warned that “a Europe that is not able and willing to protect itself is going to die at some point”.
“Unfortunately, strength is one of the weapons that is useful in this new world disorder and therefore Europe has to be strong enough.”
We will hear from her on the main stage tomorrow twice: once on transatlantic relations, and then on Arctic security.
Discussing trade, Finland’s Stubb gets asked on his advice for other countries to secure their future in this new, emerging world order.
He semi-jokes saying “join the European Union, it gives you protection.”
He says that became even clearer after Trump’s threat on Greenland, as he couldn’t just impose tariffs on some EU countries, “because it’s then 25% for the European Union.”
He says smaller countries or middle powers should “lean in and support the multilateral trade organisations” to give them some protection.
Earlier, WTO’s chief Ngozi said that while she “may not agree with the US [on unilateral actions],” she agreed “with a lot of their criticism of the system.”
“I would like to say is that the system has not evolved, has not been quick to change and respond to the changing world, and some of those criticisms about it not functioning well, are good,” she said.
She said more needs to be done, but also stressed that “in spite of the massive disruption of the system, the biggest [undermining of global trade rules] we’ve seen in the past 80 years, … the system is proving resilient.”
The next main stage conference is on “tariff-ying times” we are facing – eye-roll for that awfully cheesy pun – amid the weaponisation of trade for other purposes.
German finance minister Lars Klingbeil and Finnish president Alexander Stubb are among the panellists.
They are joined by WTO director general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and US senator Thomas Roland Tillis.
I will keep an eye out for main news lines for you.
Palpable US-EU tension on how new world order could look like – snap analysis
Jakub Krupa
in Munich
It was a very interesting panel, and in a certain way it perfectly captured the key issue of the new world order emerging from chaos as you could genuinely feel some tension between Waltz and Kallas there.
It’s pretty rare too see that in public events at this level.
The key question is whether the Saudi minister’s optimistic prediction will come true or will things unravel first before they get better (or not).
Both Merz’s speech earlier and this panel will only raise the interest in Rubio’s speech tomorrow.
Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud seeks to put a positive spin on the debate so far as he says that “finally, we are being, all of us, honest with each other.”
“We don’t agree yet, but we’re actually having the conversation,” he says.
“Everybody is saying how they really feel about the system and how it didn’t work from their perspective,” he says.
He neatly (and optimistically) sums it up:
“It will take us some time to actually get to a point where we agree on what the future system is going to look like, and how the burden sharing is going to work, and how [to preserve] equality of states, even though there is a disparity in interests and in capacity, is going to be addressed.
But I think over time, with some pain – as I mentioned, there will be some pain in the process of getting there – I think we will be in a better world.”
And that ends this panel.
In the Q&A, Waltz gets asked whether the US is still committed to European defence amid reports of possible US troop reductions.
Waltz says that’s “absolutely” the case.
But he says that “the American people have underwritten, with their hard earned dollar, the global multilateral rules based order since the second world war,” but growing issues caused by debt mean “it is fair on their behalf to ask 450 million Europeans with the same size economy as the United States to be more self sustaining in their own defence.”
He says:
“When I go to people in Indiana and Georgia and North Florida that I represented, and it is their money paying more than 180 countries combined into the UN system. I have to look at them honestly and say it’s being well spent, and it’s not.”
He then repeats the progress made on Nato’s funding arrangements in the last decade, and points to Trump’s expansive foreign policy agenda as a proof that the US still believes in multilateralism.
As he explains, “we’re asking the rest of the world to be there with us in a fair way financially, because there is a cost to the status quo, and the status quo was not sustainable any more.”
Kallas comes in and says that she rejects Europe is not doing its bit, as it massively contributes financially.
She then spells out another element of “multilateralism” means, stressing that difference between Russia and the US is that “when Russia goes to war, they go alone because they don’t have allies,” and “when America goes to wars, then a lot of us go with you and we lose our people on the way.”
“So, that means that you also need us in your you know to be this superpower,” she says.
EU’s Kallas slightly pushes back on that brag from Waltz, as she says that “it is very good that you want to reform the international order,” but points out that international organisations should be operating based on equality of states.
She also points out that, despite what Waltz claimed, Trump’s Board of Peace is only UN-backed in its narrower, Gaza-focused and time-limited mission.
Waltz kind of takes some of these points, but expresses his frustration with the lack of action as “the US has historically paid more than 180 countries combined” when it comes to the UN, and “I have to look at mechanics, doctors, nurses, firefighters … struggling to get their kids to school, and yet I have UN officials flying business class around the world.”
He says “no one was doing it” when it comes to reforming international bodies, but “talked about it endlessly, [with] strongly worded letters.”
He repeats his earlier line saying that “what I’m hearing outside forums like this, privately, is thank you for American leadership.”
