We need to listen to what Trump and Vance are telling us.

The Transatlantic alliance is collapsing. This may have been the biggest moment for European security since 1991 if not 1945.

Hello from Hastings, and apologies for the radio silence for a couple of weeks. Or rather, the fact there’s been very little radio silence from me these last two weeks is why there’s been silence here. Filling in for the James O’Brien on his mid-morning LBC slot, alongside the Sunday show and News Agents has rather sapped my writing time. But the great man is back, so therefore are the etchings here.

As I say, I’m in Hastings on a long weekend with my wife, so for the sake of her gentle forbearance I shan’t take up too much of your time. But I did feel a compulsion to take to the page, having spent the morning watching and trying to internalise Vice President Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference. It comes alongside a triad of other remarks made over the course of the week by those at the top of the American state: Trump, Defense Secretary Hegseth, and Vance himself.

Inside Vance’s speech was a strangulated argument gasping for air, about the ability of democracies to maintain integrity in the face of mass migration, but it expired before entry, suffocated by the hypocrisy and cant which stuffed the Vice President’s mouth. Here was a sitting Vice President of the United States, giving a speech about the security of the European continent. Yet there was not a solitary word of critique for the murderous despot who has invaded Europe’s borders and the sovereignty and freedom of a proud European state. Instead, the Vice President, apparently with the President’s blessing and approval, chastised European leaders on “the threat from within”- a series of largely jaundiced half truths or irrelevancies about the primacy of freedom of speech, a contorted series of non sequiturs that would have made a sixth form debater blush.

“We gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many, many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine – and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defence – the threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.”- Vice President J.D. Vance, 14th February 2025

The Vice President made clear that the freedom he prises most is not actual freedom, the joy of self-determination: the real liberties that Ukrainian heroes die on the battlefront for every day and its citizens suffer to realise. No, the Vice President was more concerned with the ability of anti-abortion protesters to pray in closer proximity to abortion clinics. He was more concerned with attacking reasonable regulatory provisions which could shut down social media in moments of civil unrest. He was more concerned with making elliptical references to the jailed Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a jailed far-right thug the MAGA faithful have hailed as a political martyr. If these things were righted, if Europe were to return some fabled political ideals to which Trump is returning the American republic, hilariously the VP seemed to imply, the Russian bear at the gates might not matter so much.

If it weren’t so serious, it would genuinely be funny. Here was a Vice President whose administration has spent these last weeks lauding or at least cordially embracing a Russian regime where freedom of speech does not exist, whilst chastising and insulting democratic allies where it most certainly does. Here was a Vice President scolding European leaders for allowing the pillars of their democracy to fray, whose boss was the head of an actual insurrection in the American Congress. Here is a Vice President lecturing others about freedom of speech, who says he is concerned by the rise of relativism of truth, who does not even dare to say aloud the unalterable objective fact: that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. In Munich irony died, was exhumed, only for Vance to sever its head again.

Vance’s speech, alongside Hegseth’s comments on Ukraine earlier this week, remind us of several things. First, this is a government of the radicalised online right, for the radicalised online right, by the radicalised online right. It’s government by Breitbart. They don’t care about actual freedom and security, again, the sort Ukrainians are dying for- because there’s frenzied stuff to say about largely imagined attacks on freedom of speech which will get 100k likes on Elon’s Twitter. Second, this is the first US administration since before Roosevelt, probably ever, that not only makes no distinction between democracies and autocracies, but actually prefers the latter. The very things which make liberal democracies liberal democracies- division of power, protection of minority rights, laws which govern freedom of speech, adherence to international law, independent judiciaries- are disliked by the current US government, because they believe they are part of a liberal cosmopolitan plot. Thirdly, they combined this with a preference for great power politics. The sight of Trump saying that he and Putin would, bilaterally negotiate an outcome to the Ukraine war, was a sickening one, bypassing the very people who have spent so much blood for their democratic future, for their actual freedom of speech. In so doing, Trump gave what Putin wanted from the beginning: a Yalta type moment when the future of Europe would be decided by them, and themselves alone. This rejects precisely what this entire war is about: the right of Ukraine to choose its own path, to choose to be a liberal democracy in the European orbit, and not a Russian satellite: how much freedom of speech does JD Vance think Ukrainians held in the occupied Donbas enjoy right now? Any deal fashioned in the way Trump has talked this week would make America, man’s last best hope, an accessory to an imperial adventure. The transatlantic alliance is vanishing before our eyes: for the first time since 1945 the US is neutral about Europe, or worse. Here was Vance saying the only way a Trump White House might care again is if its governments were to Make Europe Great Again- ie adopt a MAGA type programme and philosophy. In the meantime, they have Russia, who already sits closer to MAGA in much of their cultural mores and therefore we have the nightmare scenario of an active compact between Washington and Moscow, with Europe caught in the middle. This is all strategically brand new. NATO no longer means much, if anything at all. It is the world order that Vladimir Putin always wanted to create, handed to him by an American president. It defies belief.

In this world view, the only thing which Trumps respects is strength. In that guise, it is time that Europe finally woke up and listened to what Trump and Vance are saying. American democracy is developing in a new and particular direction. Their world view is different to the European mainstream. And they view Europe as too weak to determine our own future. In a sense- they’re right. In 2016 Europeans comforted themselves in the belief that Trump was too incompetent to do anything. In 2020 Europeans comforted themselves in thinking Trump was a blip. In 2025 Europeans comfort themselves that Trump doesn’t mean what he says. This week may prove the most portentous for European security since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. If this week and Vance’s speech in Munich, the site of too many political betrayals, doesn’t wake Europe up- nothing will. It should have been a week where the veil is lifted: where Europe realises we are on our own. The American state has been captured by a group of people who do not see the world as we do, who are hostile to the world as we want it to be. We must see them for what they are- to their credit, they don’t pretend to be anything else. To our discredit, we lie to ourselves that they do.

PS We discussed some of these issues, before Vance’s speech, on Thursday’s News Agents. Do have a listen here. If you’re not a subscriber to the show or this blog, I’d be thrilled if you consider doing one or both. Each are free!