Vice President JD Vance addressing the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2025

By Peter M. Boehm

February 16, 2025

I have attended the Munich Security Conference (MSC) many times, first accompanying participating Canadian ministers during my tenure as ambassador to Germany, and more recently as a full participant. What began as the “Internationale Wehrkunde-Begegnung” (a mouthful even in German) in 1963 as a platform for Germany to engage with the United States and NATO allies in a Cold War setting has evolved into the largest and most significant gathering of foreign/security policymakers and experts in the world.

Every year, government leaders have used the MSC to signal their foreign policy priorities. It was here where President Vladimir Putin set forth the early principles of Russian revanchist thought in 2007, here where then US Vice-President Joe Biden elucidated aspects of the US “pivot to Asia”, and here in the bilateral meeting rooms of the Bayerischer Hof Hotel where treaties and accords have been negotiated and frank positions exchanged. (I wrote a Policy Dispatch two years ago about returning to Munich to attend the conference and taking an extra day to ramble through the city).

This year is, and was, different. The new Trump administration’s “shock and awe” show came to town. In terms of the shock, it did not disappoint. Vice President JD Vance delivered what CNN described as “a bombastic rejection of liberal orthodoxies that have prevailed in Western Europe since the Second World War, in a speech that downplayed the threats to the continent posed by Russia and China.” Indeed, it was a hectoring lecture seemingly designed to belittle his hosts, suggesting that the Europeans had somehow lost their way since the fall of the Berlin Wall, had stifled free speech and assembly, not allowing other voices to speak up. It was clear that Vance had no intention of “reading the room”, and instead was laying down a marker, that, as he put it, “There’s a new sheriff in town”, and, apparently, he’s not here to maintain the status-quo order.

To prove his point while in Munich, he met with Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right anti-immigrant anti-EU Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, with the German federal election only ten days away. The Germans were furious, other Europeans and participants appalled and reactions were swift. From the podium, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz decried the comments (Vance had also snubbed the Chancellor by not meeting with him) as did leading chancellor opposition candidate Friedrich Merz and in particular German defence minister Boris Pistorius.

The American vice-president’s remarks essentially amounted to propaganda, reflecting a new-world-order tactical airbrushing of history particularly egregious at a time when the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was being commemorated. Vance also criticized Romania, whose constitutional court had nullified last year’s presidential elections where Russian electoral interference had boosted an unknown far-right candidate. As a Yale Law grad and bestselling author, Vance is surely aware of what 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the removal of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania and revolutionary change in the other former Warsaw Pact countries meant, but he certainly didn’t show it. In a Substack piece from the MSC, Timothy Snyder, the brilliant American historian (On Tyranny, Bloodlands), referred to this stunning reversal in American foreign policy as “Affirmative Action for Dictators”.

While other leaders gave statements on the main stage, it was Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky who made the most sense and brought the house to its feet. In stating that he understood the frustrations that some people and the political parties that represented their views had with the centralization of EU policy and bureaucracy in Brussels, the alternative was simply to bow to Moscow’s influence. With an apparent eye to NATO implosion, (despite insisting on the goal of membership for Ukraine), he placed emphasis on the need to establish an “armed forces of Europe”. Reflecting on his phone conversation with President Trump, forthcoming meetings between Russia and the US in Saudi Arabia, he emphasized that no peace deal could be negotiated without Ukraine or the Europeans at the table.

These two speeches set the tone, the debate and the mood among participants at the conference. All other interventions, including that by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi (“a multipolar world is inevitable and is becoming a reality”) tended to be predictable and non-controversial. Not surprisingly, given the recent Artificial Intelligence Summit in Paris, AI was high on the agenda, with tech giant representatives, experts and policymakers in abundance. I participated in a closed discussion of the topic noting that the status of AI as a common good, the need for international regulation and unfettered private sector development are three opposing tension points requiring finessed and balanced resolution. I said that while the technology had developed at an astounding pace, the Chinese release of “DeepSeek” might very well be a game changer, and could not resist pointing out that the G7 had identified these concerns in 2018 in the Charlevoix Common Vision for the Future of Artificial Intelligence. In an interview conducted in German with Deutsche Welle (video above), we discussed the MSC, and also Canada’s current targeting by Donald Trump’s economic war and expansionist designs, in which I pointed out the irony that, on Valentine’s Day, we were not feeling the love from our erstwhile closest ally.

I also participated in a discussion hosted by the Eisenhower Institute and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Aussenpolitik (the leading German think tank on foreign policy) on strengthening democracies and security through collective economic transformation. This gave me the opportunity to raise the threat and imposition of arbitrary tariffs as being a retrograde action to any such strengthening; I used Canada’s critical minerals strategy as an example of creativity in furthering resource development and broadening markets.

As always, the Canadian delegate presence at the MSC was light compared to other countries, with Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly, National Defence Minister Bill Blair, MP Ali Ehsassi and me participating. Joly had a very charged program that also included chairing an informal meeting of the G7 foreign ministers, joined for the first time by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Blair moved among his NATO portfolio colleagues, had his own bilateral meetings and was engaged throughout. Full credit should go to Minister Joly for managing to secure — against many expectations to the contrary — an agreed Chair’s Statement out of the discussions. Her rapport with Secretary Rubio was evident, which gets us off to a good start for Canada’s G-7 presidency this year with leadership changes in Canada, a probable election as well as ongoing disruptive and convulsive proclamations emanating from the White House.

The formal meeting of foreign ministers will take place in Charlevoix (a venue indelibly etched in my mind) next month. But it was Joly’s presence on a panel on international trade that caught much attention. With conference participants still dealing with the cold-shower impact of Vance’s remarks, Joly, in referring to tariffs and other US measures against Canada, warned that the Europeans and others were next, and that they should observe Canada as the “canary in the coal mine”.  I bumped into Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen later who quipped “make that two canaries”.

I know well many of the “hardy perennial” experts, advocates and practitioners who attend conferences like the MSC and our own Halifax International Security Forum, which is smaller, more intimate and less Europe-focused. Much as I usually love a good foreign policy joke, I found it increasingly tiresome to be greeted with cracks about Canada becoming a 51st state. To the question of that threat being funny, I replied that some may have thought so at first but that repeated references by President Trump to our prime minister being a governor, the accusations that Canada was acting unfairly, taking advantage of the US and the like went beyond humour and were both disrespectful and derogatory to an historic friend, neighbour and ally and yes, a sovereign country.

Canadians are angry, and that is not our natural disposition. For the Europeans, the results of this year’s conference are beginning to sink into policy thinking both in Brussels and national capitals. The United States is turning its back on the conventional norms that have existed in international institutions — that its leadership had created with our help — and has decided to walk less softly but carry an even bigger stick going beyond military might to economic weaponry, notably against its democratic allies.

Now, there is an urgent need for those allies, including Canada, to work together to counter Donald Trump’s role as an asset of global autocracy and defend our own democratic institutions — representative democracy and the rule of law — as America now seems bent on devouring its own.

Senator Peter M Boehm is a former ambassador and deputy minister.