Disturbing JD vance: Europe needs a plan B (opinion) immediately

The mood was freezing in the hall when a top German politician opposed the Course of the American government – at that time, in February 2003, at the Munich Security Conference. “Excuse Me, I am Not Convinced”, the then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called to the US defense minister Donald Rumsfeld present. With US President George W. Bush, he prepared an invasion of Iraq in parallel and was looking for allies in Europe. Because Germany and other states did not want to participate, he spoke publicly of “old” and “new Europe”, threatened consequences.

A month later, the United States marched into Iraq. The result: a fallen dictator for the price of tens of thousands of deaths and an Iraq that became the day care center of the terrorist group “Islamic State” and is still unstable today.

22 years later, the Munich security conference experienced a similar moment. Only this time it was a German Defense Minister who opposed the US government. Boris Pistorius actually wanted to speak about Ukraine and the challenges for transatlantic security policy when he appeared in Munich. Instead, he spontaneously deviated from the manuscript and dismissed US Vice President JD Vance. He called “not acceptable” what Vance had given before.

He used his speech almost exclusively to question Europe’s democracies, complained of a lack of freedom of expression and threatened that the United States would also refuse to support Europe, even if one could not accept that people disagree and thus even have elections.

It was an unabashed advertising for the AfD, a week before the Bundestag election. The representative of a government that banishes journalists from the White House because this bizarre does not want to obey new language regulations. A government that pardoned and dismissed over the crowds and people who attacked police officers and releases them from prisons.

Vance ‘disturbing appearance left many Europeans stunned. Boris Pistorius found the right words for this. He exposed the false claims of Trump’s Vice, referred to the appearances of the allegedly supposedly suppressed AfD boss Alice Weidel in public service broadcasting and the fact that the federal government was responding to those media representatives that the Russian propaganda spent.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz also banned any interference at his appearance in Munich on Friday morning. One will “not accept it if outsiders intervene in our democracy, in our elections, in democratic opinion formation,” he said. “That doesn’t belong – certainly not among friends and allies, and we definitely reject that.”

JD vance will not impress all of this. In Munich he met not only with the presumably future Chancellor Friedrich Merz, but also with Weidel. He didn’t want to meet the incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz. An affront. And another example of the fact that the new US government does not matter any form of diplomatic customs. One remembers: In 2008, the then Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out against a appearance by the US presidential candidate of the Democrats, Barack Obama, because she thought it was incorrect interference in the American election campaign.

Vance’s words, which is nothing more than Trump’s mouthpiece, should be taken seriously. Europe now needs a plan B. immediately. And because the EU, in which some heads of government is already making the Bückling towards Washington, will never be able to agree on a common attitude, a “coalition of the willing” is needed, which with an independent European strategy for the USA and security policy Forms counterweight. The next Chancellor should seek the shoulder with France, Poland and Great Britain as soon as possible.

The great Wolfgang Schäuble once demanded a “core Europe” in a position paper together with his party friend Karl Lamers. Joschka Fischer called it a “Europe of two speeds”. The idea, related to European integration at the time, was the same: a group of European leaders must go for Europe together. If you want to participate, you can participate. Those who hesitate or prefer to adjoin themselves are left out.