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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shocked the audience at the annual security conference in Munich in 2007 by demanding the decline in dominant American influence and a new power balance in Europe more suited to Moscow.
He didn’t get what he wanted – then.
Almost two decades later, at the same conference, senior officials from President Trump clearly indicated one thing: Mr. Putin found an American administration that could help him realize his dream.
The comments of the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Vice-President JD Vance made participants who, according to the new administration, the United States. could align themselves with Russia and assailed Europe or abandon it completely.
Such a change, according to analysts, would give Mr. Putin an unthinkable victory that is much more important for him than all the objectives in Ukraine.
“Since the dawn of the Cold War at the end of the 1940s, the Kremlin dreamed of pushing America from its role of cornerstone of European security,” said Andrew S. Weiss, vice-president of studies at The Endowment of Carnegie for International Peace. “Putin is surely sufficiently warned to jump on all the openings provided by the new administration.”
The presence of American troops has been the foundation of 80 years of peace in Western Europe since the end of the Second World War. But in a speech in Warsaw on Friday, before his arrival at the conference, Mr. Hegseth warned European leaders that they should not assume that the United States will be there forever.
Later in the day, at the Munich conference, Mr. Vance transmitted an even more scary message for many European participants: the enemy he sees is not Russia or China, but Europe herself.
Mr. Vance began to attack the European nations for having used what he called undemocratic methods to restrict the far -right parties which, in some cases, were supported by Russia. He argued that the continent had to recognize the desires of his voters, stop trying to moderate disinformation in an anti -democratic way and allow such parties to prosper like the will of the people.
“If you run in the fear of your own voters, there is nothing that America can do for you,” said Mr. Vance. “Nor there’s nothing you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.”
Mr. Vance struck in particular Romania, where the country’s constitutional court in December canceled a presidential election that an ultra -nationalist supported by an apparent Russian influence campaign seemed ready to win. The election was postponed for May.
“If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars in digital advertising from a foreign country, then it was not very strong to start,” he said.
The Kremlin for years sought to weaken Europe by stimulating the parties which, according to Mr. Vance, were to be allowed to flourish. The same day as his remarks at the conference, Mr. Vance met the leader of the far right movement of Germany, who disputes the national elections this month, stimulating a party that Russia sought to legitimize .
Moscow has also sought to lead a gap between the United States and Europe, realizing that a destruction of the long-standing Euro-Atlantic Alliance of the Interior would lead to a world where Moscow can exercise much more power.
Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute of International Affairs of Rome, looked at Mr. Vance’s speech and interpreted the message as a direct threat from the United States to the European Union, that the extreme Europeans and the Kremlin both seek to dismantle. She called for a twist of the plot in the United States.
“The intrigue is that we are there to destroy you,” said Ms. Tocci.
“The fact is not even Ukraine,” she added. “The fact is that the deliberate weakening, if not destruction, of Europe, of which Ukraine is part.”
Ms. Tocci described Mr. Vance’s remarks as an attack on European democracy which perverse the language of democracy itself, as Russia often does when you seek to sow division in Europe.
A dramatic reorganization of power in Europe seemed to be a pipe dream for Mr. Putin when he articulated his vision in 2007 at the Munich Conference. Robert M. Gates, the US Secretary of Defense at the time, sat in the audience and then rejected the remarks as a return to the Cold War.
The Russian leader, however, stuck without fresh he said he omitted Moscow and put it at existential risks.
Mr. Putin threw his invasion of Ukraine as a wider battle against the West and the awakened values which he portrays as anathema, some of the same arguments as Mr. Trump and the leaders of the extreme right of Europe have made power in their own country.
Mr. Putin thought that in the end, the United States and Europe would fold him, Alexander Baunov, member of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote in a recent analysis.
The United States changes, wrote Mr. Baunov, and the current Washington “is close to Moscow not for the good of Europe, but for itself-and even a little to go to Europe”.
The challenge for Europe comes when Germany and France, the two largest countries in the European Union, suffer from leadership crises, partly due to the rise in political movements brandishing the same rhetoric as Mr. Trump. In 2015, Germany and France took the lead by negotiating an end to the first invasion of Mr. Putin of Ukraine.
The United Kingdom, which has left the European Union due to a publicly supported campaign of Trump, saw its influence on the continent considerably weakened.
How far will Mr. Trump’s agreement go with Mr. Putin, and the emerging rapprochement between Washington and Moscow could easily evaporate during negotiations on Ukraine, which should start with a meeting between American and Russian representatives in Saudi Arabia week.
But foreign leaders have succeeded in courting Mr. Trump in favorable posts before, and so far, Russia is reaping the new administration.
The Kremlin has accumulated a series of victories since Trump returned to the White House.
Less than a month after his second term, Mr. Trump has eviscerated USAID, the US affores Agency AID long unvarnished by Moscow. He crossed officials of the cabinet who circulate regularly in the discussion points of the Kremlin, in particular the new head of American intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. He exacerbated discord on Europe relations, threatening the closest allies to Washington with a trade war. He has empowered and raised Elon Musk, who propagates beneficial lies in Moscow on X and was publicly defended in favor of the extreme right movement of Germany.
Trump will now influence, perhaps without the European leaders present, how the greatest conflict on the continent since the Second World War is resolved, with implications that could go beyond Ukraine itself to affect the ‘broader safety balance in Europe.
The leaders, who see right -wing populist movements insurgent as a threat to the European Union and the freedom of the continent, are worried, in particular given the apparent alignment of Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin against them.
“This is the moment when we are the most vulnerable,” said Ms. Tocci.
“If what you are trying to do is destroy this project,” she added, referring to the EU, “it’s time to do it.”
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