JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference: A Speech by Gaslight
How Vance unsettled the Europeans
While Musk was ripping through the US government like a 10 tonne toddler on cocaine, Vice President JD Vance was dispatched to the Munich Security Conference last week to tell Europeans how to run their democracies. His 19 minute speech, coupled with Trumps’ announcement that peace in Ukraine would be decided in a meeting between the US and Russia only, has swept the legs out from under Europe, NATO, and the post-war transatlantic consensus.
The speech itself was deeply weird, and breathtakingly hypocritical. Who was it for? It’s inscrutable. It wasn’t the people in the room, Vance even joked that the room would hate it. Much of it, like talk of abortion clinic perimeters, Christians burning Qurans, and weird inaccurate anecdotes about prayers didn’t make sense for a Defense crowd. The talk couldn’t have been for the base back home; they’ll never see it, and wouldn’t get the references if they did.
Could the Europeans be the audience? Unlikely. It misunderstood European coalition politics to the point of embarrassment. I doubt it was for his boss, who isn’t particularly interested in European details, and anyway is busy destroying the state back home with Elon Musk and Elon’s emotional support human. Perhaps it was for the Heritage-Leonard Leo-Peter Thiel crowd, but then it doesn’t accomplish much more than meeting up with them and complaining about the unmanliness of Europeans over scotch.
Vance opened with talking about an Afghan man who had driven his car into a market and killed two people recently in Munich. He segued smoothly from a convincing show of human sympathy to unconvincing and suddenly icky attempt to link migration and violence. Mass violence in Europe is an issue, but it isn’t anywhere close to how prevalent it is in America. And the common factor of mass violence events isn’t migration status, it’s men.
For me, as an American who has made the EU my home, the most disturbing aspect was the pure hit by hit gaslighting Vance delivered to his audience. Based on the faces of the mostly silent crowd, they were disturbed too. He took what could have been a strong list of America’s political flaws, and scolded the Europeans for them. It was manipulative and shameless, but at least is was also transparently manipulative. No one in the room was buying it.
Not particularly into this nonsense.
Vance’s speech was a scold, talking about a number of fairly niche European issues that wouldn’t read to the regime’s American supporters back home. But he also spoke as if Germany, and indeed all of Europe, was failing to meet some obligation to the US Constitution. He seemed unable to distinguish between the legal systems of the many nations of Europe, and our Constitution. He criticized the German firewall policy to keep Nazi-adjacent parties out of the German government. But he seemed to mistake it for some formal legal mechanism, rather than just rejecting associating with someone during negotiations. Coming from the American winner-take-all system, he didn’t seem to understand the many methods of how governments are formed and fall in Europe.
It was like the geopolitical version of Americans traveling abroad who are shocked to find that local laws do apply to them, and that you can’t pay in dollars.
Perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the speech was one of his most fervent, about the Romanian election. He was outraged that the Romanian supreme court ordered a re-run of an election because of credible allegations of Russian interference. But, of course, this was a constitutional choice made by the empowered body in Romania, which importantly here, is not subject to the US Constitution.
Vance doesn’t have a lower division polysci major’s understanding of European political realities. About Romania’s troubles, he said “But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.” Here I have to give a long, deep sigh. That is correct, Mr. Vance.
Part of the project of the European Union is to help politically weakened former eastern bloc European democracies strengthen their institutions with the goal of becoming robust democracies, one day. After decades of Soviet oppression and exploitation, institutions are weak and corruption is endemic in many of these countries. They are not strong democracies right now, and we all know that over here. It’s part of the grand conversation of the European Union. Even the former Soviet block countries’ institutions generally countenance that fact. That’s why you might want to have a method of re-running an election in an unstable situation.
Honestly though, the US could take a hint or two from some of these “not strong to begin with” democracies. Having a mechanism to re-run the 2000 election would have done this country a good turn and saved a lot of trouble, however the re-run went.
It’s hard to overemphasize how much Vance didn’t understand, or even care to understand, the nations he was speaking to and about. He misunderstood perimeter laws in the UK, coalitions in Germany, speech law everywhere, and what the European Union exists for.
But Also, Rank Hypocrisy
He pounded out the words “If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” this, from a country that purges its own voter rolls along ethnic and political lines regularly. Politically motivated voter purges are uncommon in the EU, whereas they are an expected piece of electioneering in America. We even have to tell people to check and recheck they have’t been caught up in partisan voter purges every election. That’s so uncommon in Europe as to be a sign of political crisis, rather than business as usual.
Vance bellowed out at the crowd that “Thin mandates produce unstable results…” without the slightest sign of self-awareness. I have to agree with him in principle, but coalitions and alternatives to FPTP voting means that unclear and close results are rarer in Europe than America. He also conveniently omitted that his ticket won by 1.5% of the vote, but everyone in that room knew it.
One of the points he seemed very confident of was that “…there’s no more urgent issue than mass migration.” Migration is a complex issue in Europe, but most urgent? No, the data simply doesn’t support that. In fact Europeans largely agree on the need for migration, but the details are devilish. Many of us in Europe put inflation, inequality, and even climate change above migration. EU wide, the relevance of migration has been dropping steadily since the crisis a decade ago. Migration is there, but it doesn’t approach the rolling crises of consumer prices, inequality, and energy costs the truly plague Europe.
Americans don’t really worry about energy and resources the same way Europe does. Most of America’s inflation problems are more or less self-inflicted, but Europe has to rely on trade with the rest of the world to meet many of its existential needs. If Vance only talked to the AfD, Le Pen, and maybe Orban, he can definitely construct an ersatz man-child Europe, terrified of brown families crossing the Mediterranean looking for a better life. But that’s not all of Europe, and not even most of it these days.
But being an American talking about mass violence events in Europe is a tricky proposition. Being from a country where the most common cause of death in child is a bullet, Vance’s sentiment of “tak(ing) our shared civilization in a new direction” misses that a lot of Europeans don’t consider America very civilized, largely because of peculiar cultural norms like gun violence.
At one point, out of nowhere, Vance said “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunburg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.” I have no clue what this means. I think it was meant to be a laugh line. Maybe it just sounded good in his head.
Vance mainly spoke of an America that doesn’t exist. There is no broad consensus in America, no easy confidence about a bright future. The nation is checked out, divided, and struggling to survive. He wouldn’t dare try to give a ‘Morning in America’ speech any further west than Munich. He couldn’t even do it in Munich. No one was buying what he was selling.
The Europeans saw Vance as meddling, interfering in the ways that he was accusing them of doing, because he doesn’t understand European decorum around speech. Decorum is taken seriously in a way that American’s don’t understand, and a serious person is expected to watch their words in a way that Trump’s people don’t get, or care to get.
Vance often seems like the smart grownup in an administration of weirdos and troglodytes, but he’s not. He just cleans up ok. Give him some runway, and he shows he’s just as regressive and weird as the rest of the bunch. Vance is just another one of the idiot wrecking crew tearing their way through America, and now the world.
The Response
The consequences of this political clown show were immediate.
The one-two punch of Vance in Munich and Trump cutting everyone but Putin out of negotiating the Ukraine war has shocked Europe, possibly into action. Macron has hosted a meeting of leaders in Paris, including the largest states in the EU and the UK’s Keir Starmer, who is something of a self-appointed American whisperer.
It doesn’t mean the EU is springing into action. Springing is not a thing the EU does, but meetings are. It does point to the EU waking up to how dangerous the Americans really are right now, and also how delusional. Settling the Ukraine war without Ukraine at the table is insane, and both Zelensky and European leaders have pointed that out. If the Ukrainians don’t stop fighting, and they won’t, the war doesn’t end. It just turns into Russia’s Vietnam, or Algeria, or Afghanistan, again. And Ukraine becomes a field of bones and blood and hate.
There’s talk in Europe of peace keepers in Ukraine. Not serious talk, and peacekeepers are a terrible idea, but at least they’ve started throwing spaghetti at the wall.
NATO head Mark Rutte is out pounding the pavement with leaders and press about the need to get military spending in Europe up to 5% of Everyone’s GDP. It’s a transparent call to be able to cut the Americans out and take on threats like Russia and Iran on their own. But it’s also a hard lift, at a time when economics and climate change are pressing Europe. The countries most at risk — Poland, Finland, and the Baltics, are already ramping up to resist Russian invasion. This isn’t paranoia, Russian political elites have promised to come get them after Ukraine for years.
The US, and its power to bind things together geopolitically is gone, possibly for good. But the old European terrors, mainly Russia and in-fighting, persist.
Terrifying and prescient
Good discussion. Only one quibble: how does JD Vance look like the smart grown-up in the room? I think the Onion has had him pegged from the beginning.
https://theonion.com/jd-vance-forced-to-dress-as-elf-at-mar-a-lago-christmas-party/
I mean, the (US Administration) room though… He at least managed to not foul himself in the debates. That’s better than the rest of that crew did. It’s a low bar.
Who was the speech for? You left Russia off your list of possibilities.
It was to tell Russia that the rehash of Molotov-Ribbentrop was in motion with Ukraine as the victim du jour. Shortly after, the Baltics will go next. Fun fact, the USA never recognized the USSR’s takeover of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania at the start of WWII, alone among the Western powers.
Elon’s 14th kid aka Trump was busy winning the Daytona 500. Go ahead and laugh but his limo crossed the finish line first.
The race is 500 miles. Trump and his car finished dead last.
“I won that race but it was rigged. I just need you to find me 499 more laps. Give me a break.”
How can *anyone* put “peace keepers” in Ukraine? There’s no “peace” to keep. What would those so-called peace keepers actually be keeping?
The phrase reminds me of Reagan’s “freedom fighters.” That one always sounded like a confession: they *were* in fact fighting freedom–against it, not for it. I don’t suspect similar doublespeak here, but I also confess I don’t know what to make of the Europeans’ notion.
I suspect these troops are more like trip wires as the 8th Army is in Korea. Russia needs to understand that both Sweden and Finland are quite capable militarily, and have an axe or two to grind as well. They could support the Baltics in the least time.
George Carlin remarked on this in his monologue on euphemistic language: If crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?
Let a European albeit one isolated by Brexit help you. Try, “We are here and it’s our patch you idiots!”. We all know there has to be a peace to keep and that nothing in the US plan (stop pretending it is anything else, your country elected Trump even if only by 1.5%) is going to achieve a peace. Anyone here who is clear thinking is scared that the USA, in whom we stupidly trusted, has betrayed us all. We need to start telling it like it is. Vance’s deeply insulting speech simply confirms our fears.
First I trespass on your property. Then I torch your shed. I say your property belongs to me now. Nice family you got there, would be a shame if something happened to them.
If you want peace then you’ll sign your deed over to me.
You should thank me for negotiating this peace deal, in fact, I deserve the Nobel Prize.
And that’s why I can’t stand to watch the Godfather films when they come on TV; evil people, who suffer no consequences. Why do I need that in my life? Not so different here, except that we need to fight.
Don’t eat the cannolis
For JD Vance to mention the Romanian election and scold Europe is a power flex, because he knows since Brexit, European societies have been susceptible to outside campaign interference. Fascists always have the game theory advantage in propaganda because everything can be propaganda to a fascist. AI programmed social social interference is coming to every open society, anyway, and I don’t know how online discussions continue outside of tightly moderated spaces like emptywheel. We are all already individually profiled and targeted for life-cycle marketing in streaming and social media. The same social media that united open societies now provides global oligarchical fascism a turn-key propaganda apparatus to depict any society as a crisis to itself.
The point of the US (Mr Sykes) and Russia (M. Picot) sitting around a table and declaring peace is transparently obvious: it’s to cut Ukraine off from any US military aid. Trump was always going to do that anyway, but this way, he has a line of schtick for Fox News and the GOP as in, “Hey, we tried. Now it’s up to them.”
Sadly your snark is very much to the point.
The ignorant Ugly American figure is nothing new. That JD Vance had no good intentions isn’t either. But it’s remarkable how confident a shill he is that none of your observations mattered to him. He seemed to be delivering a script he would never question, because that’s not a part of his job.
The crack about Greta Thunberg must have hit his audience with a cold thud. In smoke-filled fossil fuel-funded private clubs, she might be thought of as a deranged teen. But unlike in the US, nearly everyone in Europe is aware of the urgency of the Climate Crisis. Vance’s attempt to normalize Elon Musk by making him seem as if he were no more dangerous than a teen gadfly must have made half the room speechless and the other half mad.
“The crack about Greta Thunberg must have hit his audience with a cold thud.”
So that line from the speech is what the American audience will hear? I will let you know as the right wing talk show host broadcast across Wyoming mentions her every week. He parrots all the lies and it is constant.
A tad over your skis, if you think that one comment describes “what the American audience will hear.” Besides, I was referring to the European audience that attended his speech in Europe about Europeans. But thanks for letting me know. /s
From what I’ve read, the EU, especially the Germans, also recognize Russia’s war on Ukraine as a carbon war, a point Timothy Snyder makes often although he’s the only USAmerican voice for that point that I’ve encountered.
Vance’s audience wasn’t the folks in the room. He was speaking to Nigel Farage in the UK, the AfD in Germany, France’s National Rally party, and the authoritarians in Romania and elsewhere in the East. Every one of Vance’s barbs voiced the grievances of folks like these, and was designed to embolden them while discomforting the “ruling elites.”
Going after the Romanian courts for overturning their election is also aimed squarely at Trump and the MAGA folks here in the US. “This is what the Dems wanted to do here, but we stopped them! This is what happens when you have activist judges!”
Does Vance have a clue about the politics in Germany or (more broadly) the EU? Not really, but that’s not the point. He’s doing internationally what he and Trump did here, and (from their POV) look how well that worked!
Trump and Vance won in 2024 by gaslighting the US, and now they’re looking to gaslight the world.
Maybe it will export as effectively as Jan 6 exported to Brazil
I initially thought the target audience was in the United States, but you are probably right that Vance was also targetting right wingers in Europe.
Most people in the United States won’t see or read the speech. However, people at places like Fox News will. So will some people on the right who have more curiosity about the world than the typical MAGA follower.
Some takeaways Vance may be hoping for:
1) “Vance stands up for America by telling hard truths to Europeans.” This relies on the target audience not being able to distinguish between “hard truths” and nonsense.
2) “Vance stands up for freedom and democracy against European backsliders.” This is pure gaslighting, pretending that Trump isn’t trying to destroy a 250 year old democracy.
3) “Vance tried to strengthen American/European relations by pointing to shared valued.” So it’s the Europeans’ fault if US/EU relations deteriorate.
I would add that it was important for Quinn Norton to write this piece because Americans know a lot less about European politics than Europeans know about American politics, making it hard for Americans to identify Vance’s speech as bullshit.
Overused but still accurate: “Because his lips were moving”.
Quinn, thank you.
How about we trade the EU Trump, Vance, Musk and throw in the entire Trump Administration AND his entire family including Melania gratis for an EU player to be named later. EU soccer player that is. Any EU soccer player. He – or she preferably – has to have their own soccer ball though.
New York Times has a good piece by Peter Baker, scorching Trump for his recent antics trying to lay the blame for Russia’s illegal war of aggression in Ukraine on …Ukraine.
Since the election, I’ve been somewhat expecting Trump’s regime to throw Ukraine under the bus, but I didn’t expect them to shit all over the transatlantic alliance. Does the U.S. expect to still have allies to help it confront China? (because it won’t)
That’s a good question. It’s hard to know what they expect. Do they just think they will get maga millions, a breakup with all our allies, leading to what exactly? A bigger grift and con or a big war?
Unfortunately, Peter Baker – in a transparent attempt to turn Canadians against the Dem Party along with Trump – also released an article suggesting that the Dems would gladly push for Canada to join as the 51st state, because it’d give them an election advantage.
There are seven posts here tagged with “Peter Baker” outlining a pattern of fuckery, I mean, behavior on Baker’s part. I’m sure there are more posts here offering yet more evidence of this pattern, just not tagged with his name.
I will never see his name on a byline without immediately being deeply skeptical of that article.
Only if there were to be more not completely corrupt “elections”,,,
Vance embarrasses himself appearing on the world stage that was set for him by true statespersons as nothing more than Trump’s stooge, assured of his own brilliance as he lays bare his utter lack of seriousness as a thinker and as a leader.
He spoke crisply, with a good cadence and no speech tics. It was well performed. It is his writer who should be keel hauled. And then the visit to the AfD candidate. Hegseth was in Europe too and it was as if Vance and Hegseth were competing to see who could do the greater damage to trust in judgment. It was a Trump echo chamber but nobody wearing Great Again caps to lap it up.
Thanks for this discussion, Quinn.
I’d like to add something that Timothy Snyder said to Laurence O’Donnell last night:
‘It’s morally disgusting’: Trump torched for lying Ukraine ‘should have never started’ Putin’s war MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is joined by Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder to discuss Donald Trump saying Ukraine ‘should have never started it’ about Vladimir Putin’s war on the same day that U.S. officials met in Saudia Arabia with a Russian delegation — without NATO, EU or Ukrainian envoys — to discuss the conflict. https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/-it-s-morally-disgusting-trump-torched-for-lying-ukraine-should-have-never-started-putin-s-war-232343621697 Feb. 18, 2025
[There’s a comment with a partial transcript in the pokey]
Partial Transcript:
It’s definitely WORTH watching the whole interview.
As is so very often the case, you beat me to the punch.
Tim Snyder is remarkable, particularly for his moral clarity, succinctly expressed yet profound.
I saw this interview in real time and commend it, in its entirety, to all.