If Anything, J.D. Vance Was Polite To Europe

Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent speech to the Munich Security Conference is receiving such a frenzied response in Europe that one can only assume that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words could never hurt me” must not translate into German.

Vance’s core argument was simple: It’s hypocritical to rally the free world around defending democracy if Western democracies themselves abandon democratic values, from ignoring voters’ concerns about mass migration, to fining citizens for silently praying, to jailing activists for expressing controversial opinions, to even annulling the results of a presidential election.

In response to Vance’s remarks, one unnamed European diplomat told the Financial Times he now views the United States as an “adversary,” while a Democrat congressman compared Vance’s rhetoric to Adolf Hitler.

But what no one has done is refute the examples Vance cited, choosing instead to justify them by essentially saying the only way to preserve democracy is to abandon democratic values that aren’t politically convenient.

Exposing this logical fallacy is why Vance’s speech was so necessary.

Since the end of World War II, the bedrock of the transatlantic relationship has been the shared democratic values of Western nations. They formed the basis of our efforts to defeat Soviet communism and remain the driving force of the coalition to reject the emerging so-called Axis of Autocracy.

At its core, the justification for the Western alliance has been that it is in the interest of democratic nations to form a collective barrier to the spread of authoritarianism, thereby defending free peoples against their liberty and sovereignty being eroded by any foreign power.

But Vance revealed an uncomfortable reality: It all falls apart when the more acute threat to liberty emanates from within democratic nations. In short, the entire foundation of the transatlantic relationship will erode if European nations abandon the fundamental values that bound them to the United States.

“We must do more than talk about democratic values; we must live them,” Vance said while warning that free speech is under attack throughout Europe. This assertion left Munich Security Conference Chairman Christoph Heusgen crying at the podium as his European colleagues applauded in empathetic support.

But it took just days for the vice president to be vindicated.

On Sunday, “60 Minutes” aired a shocking report in which a German prosecutor proudly declared that, “yes,” it is a crime to insult someone in Germany, while another said that “reposting” something that seemed to be untrue is a “crime as well.”

German prosecutors gleefully talking about raiding homes and arresting their citizens for thought crimes makes it seem like Vance might have actually sugarcoated the issues at hand. 

American taxpayers have spent billions subsidizing the European Union’s defense, even as the EU aggressively fined American companies billions of dollars every year. This sense of entitlement is all the more shocking when you consider that Germany’s military has been assessed to “not be able to hold its own in high-intensity combat,” and a former British military leader said the U.K. doesn’t even possess the capability to send troops to Ukraine.

In 2018, when President Trump warned that Germany would become dependent on Russian energy, the same German diplomat who wept on stage in Munich laughed in Trump’s face. President Trump was proven right, of course. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, The New York Times reported, “Russia supplied more than half of the natural gas and about a third of all the oil that Germany burned to heat homes, power factories and fuel cars, buses and trucks.”

And still, nothing has changed. 

Following Vance’s speech, many European politicians spoke about the need to untangle from the United States’ security shield, even while key EU states have stated they don’t intend to send a peacekeeping force to Europe.

What should hurt European leaders’ feelings more than Vance’s words is that their lack of commitment to their own defense and security has left them utterly dependent on the goodwill of the United States.

Vance’s speech is already historic for its boldness, but if it results in our European allies recommitting themselves to democratic values and the virtue of self-sufficiency, it could prove to be one of the most important speeches of the early 21st century.

Europe should embrace the challenge of supporting free speech and spending more on defense. They should not only talk about defending democracy from abroad; they should exemplify it within their own borders. These values should have a home outside the United States.

Cliff Sims served as special assistant to President Trump, 2017-2018, and deputy director of national intelligence for strategy and communications, 2020-2021.