U.S. and European interests are ‘intertwined,’ Secretary of State Rubio says

The U.S. has no intention of abandoning its deep alliance with Europe and wants the region to succeed, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday.

“We care deeply about your future and ours,” Rubio told the Munich Security Conference (MSC).

“We want Europe to be strong,” he said. “We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve, for us, as history’s great reminder, that ultimately, our destiny is, and will always be, intertwined with yours.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently criticized Europe for being too reliant on the U.S. for its security and has pushed NATO allies to boost defense spending. His pursuit of ownership of Greenland, a Danish territory, has also rattled European leaders in recent months.

“We do not need to abandon the system of international cooperation we authored, and we don’t need to dismantle the global institutions of the old order that together we built. But these must be reformed. These must be rebuilt,” Rubio said.

The U.S.’s top diplomat told the gathering of European leaders that American leadership has succeeded in resolving thorny issues such as the Israel-Gaza conflict and made progress in ending Russia’s war with Ukraine which multilateral organizations including the U.N. have so far failed to.

“The United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world, but we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role. It could not solve the war in Gaza,” Rubio said. “Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce. It has not solved the war in Ukraine.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed his gratitude to the U.S. for its help in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

“I am grateful to every American heart that was helping us no matter what. Thank you. Without you, Americans, Europeans and everyone who stands with us, it would have been very, very difficult to hold on,” Zelenskyy said to applause.

But he criticized the administration of Trump’s predecessor for being slow to ramp up military aid to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy also had harsh words for Iran’s government, which he accused of supplying the drones Russia uses to attack Ukrainian territory.

“Ukraine does not share a border with Iran and we have never had a conflict of interests with the Iranian regime,” Zelenskyy said. “But the Iranian Shahed drones they sold to Russia are killing, especially, our people, Ukrainians, and destroying our infrastructure.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, speaking next to Zelenskyy, urged member countries to step up military support for Ukraine under the alliance’s Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative.

“Keep (Ukraine) strong in the fight. They will do it, but they need our support,” Rutte said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking after Rubio at the conference, said the region faces “the very distinct threat of outside forces trying to weaken our union from within, the return of overtly hostile competition and power relations.”

Von der Leyen said Europe needs to become more independent “in every dimension that affects our security and prosperity, defense and energy, economy and trade, raw materials and digital tech.”

But she emphasized that that does not mean weakening the trans-Atlantic bond.

“The opposite is true and we’ve just heard it from State Secretary Rubio. An independent Europe is a strong Europe and a strong Europe makes for a stronger transatlantic alliance.”

On Friday, the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, urged European leaders to stand up to Russian aggression.

“The lesson learned is that appeasement always brings new wars,” Kallas told CNBC in an interview. “That’s very clear. If you think that, okay, let them have this territory. … We will have peace that is actually never going to work. It actually increases the appetite. They walked away with more territory, more valuables, than they had before.”

Also speaking to CNBC on Friday ahead of the conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, the organization’s chairman, said it was Europe’s “own fault” that its power on the global stage has been diminished.

“Europe has failed to speak with one voice to China and about China, Europe has failed with one voice, to come up with a clear concept about the future of the Middle East, including about how to deal or not to deal with the Iranian nuclear question,” said Ischinger, who is a former German ambassador to the U.S.

Earlier this week, the MSC published its 2026 report, for which Ischinger wrote the foreword. It warned that “the world has entered a period of wrecking-ball politics,” where “sweeping destruction … is the order of the day.”

The report said that Trump was “at the forefront of those who promise to free their countries from the existing order’s constraints and rebuild stronger, more prosperous nations,” arguing he was just one movement “driven by resentment and regret over the liberal trajectory their societies have embarked on.”

Ischinger said that Europeans were “totally on the sidelines” on negotiations around Gaza and Ukraine.

Rubio said the U.S. sought a “reinvigorated alliance” with Europe, “one that does not maintain the polite pretense that our way of life is just one among many and that asks for permission before it acts.”

In a wide-ranging speech, Rubio criticized past policies that encouraged mass migration, outsourced supply chains and contributed to “deindustrialization,” which he said was “not inevitable.”

“It was a conscious policy choice, a decades-long economic undertaking that stripped our nations of their wealth, of their productive capacity, and of their independence. And the loss of our supply chain sovereignty was not a function of a prosperous and healthy system of global trade. It was foolish,” Rubio said.

Rubio also discussed how greater trans-Atlantic cooperation could reposition the West to lead in 21st-Century industries.

“Together, we can reindustrialize our economies and rebuild our capacity to defend our people,” he said.

“Commercial space travel and cutting-edge artificial intelligence, industrial automation and flex manufacturing, creating a Western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers, and a unified effort to compete for market share in the economies of the global South.”