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Front Burner Transcript for February 19, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hey, I'm Jayme Poisson.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

J.D. VANCE: 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.

[smattering of applause]

JP: So that was U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance speaking at the Munich Security Conference last week. The conference is this kind of high-level bureaucratic forum that doesn't traditionally make a ton of news. But as the U.S. vice president took the stage with Europe's most powerful bureaucrats in the audience, he delivered a 20-minute address that felt more like a confrontation than a speech. Many had expected Vance to talk about Ukraine. President Trump had just spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin for 90 minutes, and his administration announced that neither Europe nor Ukraine were likely to have a seat at the table in an eventual peace deal. But it was hardly mentioned. Instead, the vice president began a 20-minute haranguing of Europe and its leadership class in a speech that ranged from censorship to social control, election meddling, so-called thought crimes, and the Swedish youth activist Greta Thunberg.

SOUNDCLIP

J.D. VANCE: And trust me, I say this with all humour. If American democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg's scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.

JP: Much of his comments were met with complete silence, and very quickly disavowals from European leaders, including the German chancellor and defence minister.

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[German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius speaking German]

TRANSLATOR: He spoke of the annulment of democracy. And if I understood him correctly, he compares the condition of Europe with the condition [applause for Pistorius] that prevails in some authoritarian regimes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not acceptable.

JP: Vance's address sent shockwaves through Europe, and is part of what appears to be a broader foreign policy effort from the Trump administration, which begs the question of whether all of this represents a broader American withdrawal from Europe, functionally ending a transatlantic alliance which saw through two world wars and around 80 years of foreign policy. For more on the crumbling Western front, a new American-European relationship and Europe's Marshall Plan for Trump, we're joined today by DW's Chief International Editor Richard Walker. You can also find him on DW's podcast, Berlin Briefing.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Richard, thank you so much for making the time today.

RICHARD WALKER: Thank you. It's great to be with you.

JP: So this appearance from Vance, let's start there. It has been described as history-making by many who were in attendance. And to someone who was in the room, what did you make of it, and what did people in the room make of it?

RICHARD WALKER: Yeah, so, I was not actually in the room. I was standing with a lot of the other media cameras kind of just around the corner in this hotel, just to set the scene. So you have a kind of like a ballroom, yeah, which is where these speeches happen. And for the speeches by J.D. Vance and also the Chinese foreign minister who'd followed on from him, there was virtually very, very little media inside the room. It was virtually just the great and the good who were in there. And those of us who were reporting on it live, you know, so I had to be in front of the camera live to kind of pick up instantly after it. So, I was just outside the room. But even despite that, following it on the video feeds, you could really get a palpable sense of the atmosphere going through this kind of pretty dramatic shift as his speech got underway. And he even kind of transmitted that near the beginning. He had a line that got him a kind of a bit of applause. And I forget what the, what the line exactly was, but just after that, he said:

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J.D. VANCE: I hope that's not the last bit of applause that I get, but...

[some laughter]

RICHARD WALKER: There was [JP: Huh.] a kind of a sense of, 'Uh-oh,' among everybody that, you know, so all right, what's coming now? And it had been kind of transmitted beforehand that Vance was going to, going to pick up on some of these issues of free speech; you know, kind of mounting a little bit of an attack on what, you know, the kind of MAGA, new American right sees as, you know, censorship taking place in Europe. But nobody was prepared for it to be virtually the entire speech. And that's [JP: Right.] what it was.

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J.D. VANCE: 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. And 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.

RICHARD WALKER: That was incredibly unusual. I mean, especially coming from the last administration, where... You know, Kamala Harris would be there for the last administration, and she would be there always giving a very kind of classic transatlantic speech about shared values and... You know, one year I remember she particularly really strongly attacked the Russians for... you know, after the horrendous crimes in Bucha that took place in Ukraine, and [said]:

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KAMALA HARRIS: We have examined the evidence. We know the legal standards. And there is no doubt these are crimes against humanity.

RICHARD WALKER: Totally in the mode of kind of, you know, the Western view of international affairs that had been, you know, established over decades as something that has, you know, a certain amount of kind of legalism around it. You know, following norms, international law, stuff like that. Instead, J.D. Vance made a really highly politically charged speech, and very-- it was taken as extremely provocative by the Europeans there. And especially in Germany, where there's an election just coming up now, just in a few days’ time. I mean, this was barely over a week before the election when he made this speech.

SOUNDCLIP

J.D. VANCE: I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process, protects nothing.

J.D. VANCE: Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.

RICHARD WALKER: The fact that he gave what came across as almost an implicit endorsement of this right-wing populist party, the AfD, the Alternative for Germany here, which is running second in the polls and which is seen as absolutely kind of don't-touch-it taboo among the mainstream parties in Germany, that was seen as really provocative and a kind of a major kind of crossing a line, an intervention into German and European politics.

[music]

JP: This deterioration -- I think it's fair to say deterioration -- of the U.S.-Europe relationship, what does it mean for the thing that people in the West refer to as the rules-based order?

RICHARD WALKER: I mean, it's not just the deterioration in the transatlantic relationship that affects that. I think people look at the Trump administration and they really worry about that. That the Trump administration, all the signs of it so far are that it's less interested in rules, and more interested in... they would probably say it's sort of decisiveness and clarity and realism. Others would probably say it's more like just the power of the strong -- you know, ‘Might makes right.’ And you're beginning to see that -- and this was another discussion in Munich among Europeans. You're beginning to see that within the U.S. itself, with the role of Elon Musk and, you know, the kind of, you know, pulling the rug under a lot of, you know, American bureaucracy with little concern about, you know, the role of the judiciary.

SOUNDCLIP

NEWS HOST: Trump this weekend posting a quote to social media often attributed to Napoleon that reads: "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."

RICHARD WALKER: And that you also see it with respect to, you know, what's going on now vis-a-vis negotiations with Russia over Ukraine. And these negotiations have just started today in Saudi Arabia. We've seen Marco Rubio and Sergei Lavrov reporting to the media about these conversations.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the two countries would appoint representatives before holding regular talks. However, he said their positions were not necessarily closer together.

RICHARD WALKER: And, you know, it looks very much like both sides want to just kind of get relations back to something profitable. And that... You know, it feels like sort of shrugging off an illegal invasion that has caused devastation to Ukraine. It's caused global disruption to supply chains, it's completely sort of upended the last three years in international affairs. And, you know, to European eyes and to many international eyes it's like, eh, what the hell, let's get back to business. I mean, that's the kind of impression coming from that.

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DONALD TRUMP: But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years, you should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land. Everything.

RICHARD WALKER: But I should add, I mean, you know, I spent quite a bit of time in India in recent years. Also, you know, I've been in China quite a bit and, you know, other parts of the world, you know, away from the West, and they look at this rules-based order and sort of say, well, you know, is the United States this paragon of international respect for rules that it sort of has claimed to be under the Biden administration? And a lot of those countries would say it simply isn't. That this is a sort of charade, you know? And, um. [JP: Right.] So I think there are countries out there that look at this from Trump and they think, well, at least, at least he's being honest in saying that he doesn't particularly care about these rules.

JP: Just coming back to Ukraine for a moment. Trump's special envoy for Ukraine and Russia appeared to confirm that Europe will not have a seat at this negotiating table to end the war, which is really quite remarkable when you consider that Europe defended Ukraine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

SOUNDCLIP

CONFERENCE MODERATOR: Can you assure this audience that Ukrainians will be at the table and Europeans will be at the table?

KEITH KELLOG: The answer to that last question, just as you framed it, the answer's no.

JP: Worse, it seems that Ukraine might not even have a seat at this table. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited to the talks in Riyadh that you mentioned.

SOUNDCLIP

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaking Ukrainian]

TRANSLATOR: It was a surprise for us as well as for many. It is fundamental that any negotiations on ending the war do not take place behind the backs of the key actors affected by the consequences of Russian aggression.

JP: What do you make of the idea that Russia and the U.S. alone, like ostensibly Trump and Putin alone, could unilaterally negotiate an end to this war?

RICHARD WALKER: In a way, they can't. Because, I mean, the Ukrainians, they don't necessarily have to respect any deal that comes out of this, at least at the very start, you know? And if the Europeans want to keep giving the Ukrainians weapons, and they potentially can -- and I think that's part of the message from the Americans, is they're saying, look, you guys, if you want to keep going, knock yourselves out, but I think you probably depend on us for this. You know? Also, there are mixed messages coming out of the U.S. administration: Marco Rubio, speaking in Saudi Arabia today, did say, look, the Europeans will have a seat in the table at this-- at some point.

SOUNDCLIP

MARCO RUBIO: European Union is going to have to be at the table at some point because they have sanctions as well that have been imposed. So, um. But I guess the point here is the goal is, and we agreed on what the goal is, the goal is to bring an end to this conflict in a way that's fair, enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all parties involved.

RICHARD WALKER: So, you know, if you take members such as Marco Rubio at their word, then this is just an exploratory stage between the U.S. and Russia. And there will be a time and a place for the inclusion of the Ukrainians, and then probably at a later stage, the Europeans. But look at this from the Ukrainian point of view, you can see that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is, is pretty much outraged by what is going on. And I think the Europeans are pretty much behind him on that. And they are also in a state of alarm at what is happening here: are they going to arrange some kind of stitch-up where we are expected to be the peacekeepers in this, and they give us a, you know, a situation that it's almost impossible to keep the peace in, and then we get the blame when any ceasefire then unravels because we were not able to keep the peace? So there's definitely dismay and upset among the Ukrainians and the Europeans at the moment. But I think from the American point of view, it's like, we're getting on with this. It's better than the Biden approach from their point of view, because the Biden approach was just keep this going for as long as you possibly can, which they see as essentially accepting the deaths of thousands more people. And I think there's also a part-- perspective from the-- you know, certainly you hear this from Keith Kellogg, from the Ukraine envoy, who appears to at least be partially sidelined. But this was an argument that he was making when I saw him in Washington during the fall: don't blame Trump for this, for this situation that the war is in now. That it was the Biden administration and the Europeans who failed to [JP: Right.] provide the Ukrainians with more weapons earlier on in this war that might have enabled them to make more decisive gains in, you know, when they were trying to push the Russians back at an earlier stage. And sort of basically say, don't put all of this on Trump. Trump, you know, got the situation that he got, and he thought, let's end it.

[music]

JP: Zelenskyy has called on Europe to form, what it sounds like he wants to be a continental army.

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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: Many leaders have talked about Europe that needs its own military. An army. An army of Europe. And I--

[applause]

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: And I, I really, I really believe the time has come. The armed forces of Europe must be created.

JP: I've also read European leaders call for the creation of a CIA style European spy agency. And like, what do you make of this? And is it the kind of thing you thought might one day become necessary for Europe?

RICHARD WALKER: This idea of a European army is one that has been knocking around for a long time, you know, and it's usually a kind of a think-tank topic. And it usually ends up in the weeds with discussions about, well, what is the difference between-- you know, what would be the mandate and purpose of the European army compared to NATO, and who would be in charge of this, that and the other. So it's, it's usually been a suggestion that kind of ends up going nowhere. It obviously, you know, could take on a new quality now that Europe is confronted by what seems like a credible prospect. That at some point, you know, if the United States continues down this political and kind of cultural path that it's on, that it may pull back so far from European security that the Europeans really need to, you know, not just spend a bit more on defence, but actually seriously collectivize their defence in a way to try to make up for the gap that the U.S. would leave. But, you know, a European army doesn't sound quite as fanciful now as it once did, but I think that's a longer-term conversation.

JP: This all feels in many ways kind of gift-wrapped for Putin, right? This Western coalition made up largely of the EU and countries like the U.S. and Canada, has long been the bulwark against Russian expansion and aggression. And if that coalition is fracturing, if it is no longer, what might that mean for Russia and Putin specifically?

RICHARD WALKER: Yeah, I mean, this is, this is another aspect of the big worry among the Europeans in Munich at the weekend. One-- I was speaking to one former prime minister of one of the Baltic countries, who said that he thought that Vladimir Putin would be drunk on champagne and caviar at the developments that had been taking place. It's this combination of a weakening of the U.S. commitment towards Ukraine, a weakening of the U.S. commitment to Europe, but more broadly, and this sense of kind of bickering and cultural clash between Europe and the United States [that] is just leaving this sense that the Western alliance is in some disarray. And that is basically the dream scenario for, for Vladimir Putin and for the Russians, who feel that they've been encircled and encroached by the Western alliance for the last 20+ years.

[music]

JP: You mentioned before the upcoming German election. I know that you're talking to us today from a small town in Germany, [RICHARD: Yeah.] just a few hours outside Berlin. And so you mentioned, of course, J.D. Vance's kind of tacit or... signaling some support for the far-right party, the AfD. Also, Elon Musk has publicly embraced this party.

SOUNDCLIP

ELON MUSK: I'm very excited for the AfD. And uh, I think, I think you're really the, the best hope for Germany. Um...

[crowd cheers]

ELON MUSK: I think some things that... you know, something I think that is just very important is that people take pride in, in Germany and being German.

ELON MUSK: I think there's like, frankly, too much of a focus on, on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.

JP: For listeners who may not be familiar, the AfD is this far-right nationalist party known for its opposition to Islam and immigration and Euroscepticism and a desire to bring Germany closer to Russia. Among other things, the party's [co-leader] once notoriously referred to the Nazi era as just a speck of bird's muck in more than a thousand years of successful German history. Another party leader called for a 180-degree turnaround in Germany's handling of its Nazi past. And I'm curious, like, what do you attribute the AfD's recent momentum to, and in what way do we see public endorsements from high-profile Americans, like, lingering over affairs in German politics today?

RICHARD WALKER: Yeah. So I should just add that the party leader who made that comment that, you know, Nazi history was a kind of speck of bird shit or something, he said. That was a former leader. That is not the current leader, Alice Weidel. So there was a man called Alexander Gauland. But that is one of the examples of where the party has, has quite... you know, senior figures in the party have quite explicitly sort of downplayed the importance of Nazi history, which is absolutely intrinsic to German society in the post-war era, and is really the reason that Germany has been rehabilitated since the end of the Second World War as a respected country in the world, even after the extraordinary, you know, really unparalleled crimes of the Nazi era. And this is one of the things that has made the party-- what has led the mainstream parties in Germany to basically establish this taboo. And they call it a firewall. That they, that they would not cooperate with the AfD in government. And this firewall is one of the things that J.D. Vance called out in his speech.

SOUNDCLIP

J.D. VANCE: Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't.

RICHARD WALKER: That the politicians cannot just completely negate a party that represents a considerable part of the population -- that that is undemocratic. And I think this is part of the debate that has been going on in Germany recently, partly with respect to migration, which of course is one of the key issues of the AfD. Though what does this firewall mean, and does the party get stronger? It's now at roughly 20% in the polls, so it's second place. Increasingly, you are seeing debate -- particularly in the mainstream conservatives, the so-called CDU party -- about whether this firewall in its current state is sustainable, at least on, say, a regional level, and whether there may be some context in which some cooperation is possible. And this erupted just a couple of weeks ago when Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU, brought a motion into the parliament in the aftermath of a recent stabbing attack, where the suspect was an Afghan refugee, that caused an outcry. He said, I have to take action in parliament. He brought a motion in parliament, and he said, I don't care if the AfD votes for this, the important thing is to get it passed. And the AfD did vote for it, and that was seen as a breach of a...at least a partial breach of this firewall. The idea that if not active cooperation with the other party, bringing a motion in parliament and then expecting that party to vote for it.

JP: Yeah.

RICHARD WALKER: So that's the kind of backdrop to J.D. Vance's comments. But for J.D. Vance to kind of come in and say... you know, basically tell the German mainstream parties that they should work with the AfD, I think that is seen as, as just crossing a line by the mainstream parties. And I think what is not yet certain is whether these interventions by either Elon Musk or J.D. Vance might actually be a turnoff for voters within Germany. Especially in the AfD, which has a pretty anti-American -- it's one of the paradoxes -- it's got a pretty anti-American political platform. And there are some in the AfD, I think, that certainly don't really like the figures like Elon Musk or J.D. Vance, and see them as outsiders just as nationalists see, you know, almost anyone from outside the country as outsiders.

[music]

JP: Just to zoom out a bit, what do you think it would mean for Europe if the United States began to materially support the far right over its more traditional allies? Like I'm thinking not just the AfD, but like a bloc that included leaders like Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin; parties like France's National Rally, Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom in the Netherlands.

RICHARD WALKER: Yeah, I mean, if that support gets more explicit, then it becomes, yeah, it just exacerbates this sense of a, you know, a really deep crisis in the transatlantic relationship that you were feeling, that we were feeling in Munich at the weekend. One kind of expression that came to mind when I was hearing Vance's speech, and it kind of points in this direction, is a vibe shift, yeah? In the U.S., in the political right in the U.S., there's been a lot of talk that Trump's election was not just a political victory, but that it kind of was part of a broader vibe shift that went beyond the political into the cultural and tech spheres. And you see that being pursued by, for instance, Meta getting rid of fact-checking [JP: Yeah.] on Facebook as an example of that. And I think there is a concern that Vance's speech might herald exactly that. Like, as sort of an attempt to say, all right, you and Europe looked down on Trump and the whole MAGA movement in the first term and breathed a sigh of relief when he was gone. And you thought, he's gone for good. Well, now we're back, and actually, we would like you to follow this path and you to have your own vibe shift. And I think that's really going to be the-- it just adds more kind of juice to this sense that populist nationalism is on the rise in Europe. And there are going to be some electoral tests coming up soon. We've got this first one at the weekend here in Germany, where the AfD will be second place for the first time. Then we've got in France coming up, where Marine Le Pen, the National Rally -- you mentioned that party -- is likely to be a candidate again. Will this be the time that France finally votes for a nationalist president? It's not inconceivable. In the U.K., the Labour government is in big trouble. The conservatives are divided. There's the Reform Party, which is the kind of, the reconstituted version of the Brexit movement. I was in London before Christmas, and people there are saying to me they thought, you know, there's a good chance in the next election they come in. So that transition to a more nationalist, populist kind of form of politics could be happening here. But the signals we've now got since this weekend from the U.S. is that they want to... they want to encourage that. And that is a major challenge for the more centrist politicians that are currently in government in most countries in Europe.

JP: Just one final question for you today, and to pan out even more here. The U.S.-European relationship has historically been a difficult gambit. There have been more than a handful of American presidents, including the founding fathers, that have been governed via a kind of like isolationist platform: the notion that the U.S. has no business in the affairs of Europe, not in war or resources or expansionist projects. Woodrow Wilson, who governed through World War One, won his election with the slogan: "He kept us out of war." Even Franklin Roosevelt, who many championed for coming to the defence of Europe during the Second World War, began his time in office with the passage of a series of neutrality laws aimed at preventing the U.S. from involving itself in foreign wars. And when thinking about the U.S.-European partnership in a broader sense, how have we seen it change over time, you think, and was it kind of a miracle that we ended up having such a sustained era of mutual cooperation between all these major players?

RICHARD WALKER: Yeah, perhaps it-- well, I mean, I think for a long time, you know, that lesson settled in the minds of American politicians, that when you don't get involved in European security affairs, then what you end up with is big wars, and that the U.S. has to, has to intervene to ensure stability. And then through the Cold War, then the transatlantic alliance became a, you know, a very important bastion against communism. I think as for whether the U.S. is now really heading for full isolationism or whether what we're seeing is more of a prioritization towards China, I think that's really the big question on, on that kind of level. [JP: Right.] And I think my interpretation would be that a prioritization towards China, it feels a bit more likely from the composition of Trump's administration and the kind of broader standing of the Republican Party. But you cannot rule out the isolationism kind of taking over. And, you know, part of it obviously depends on where Trump himself goes with all this. And, you know, people -- look at people in the administration. For instance, Marco Rubio. I mean, he's virtually made his career in the Senate about being anti-China and standing up to the Chinese threat. And I would assume that, you know, his big mission in this administration is to try and calm things down in Ukraine so that this administration can focus on China. There are others within the administration who think that way. And if that is the case, and this is one interpretation that some in the administration are encouraging, that what they are doing with Russia at the moment is trying to peel it away from China -- do what some refer to as a 'Reverse Nixon,' where Nixon peeled away China from the Russians, instead peel the Russians away from the Chinese, so that they can focus on China. Now, there are many experts who doubt that that is possible. That the reasons that China and Russia have become so close are really structural and that any sort of schmoozing by an individual president is not going to change that. But if that is the strategy, then... I think one interpretation would be a complete abandonment of Europe would not serve that strategy well. Because all it would do is then, you know, leave Europe completely prone to Russia, and then force the Americans potentially to have to come back and mop up yet again if the Russians did go on a rampage in a situation like that. But I think the big meta question going forward is, you know, what is this we're seeing from Trump? Is it a isolationist kind of imperialist, where, you know, the Americans withdraw to their hemisphere and start thinking about expanding to Greenland and, who knows, Canada, or are we seeing part of a strategy toward a really meaningful pivot towards dealing with the much larger, as they see it, challenge of China? I guess we just don't know the answer yet.

JP: That was a really helpful analysis when trying to answer that question, what is this, what is this all ultimately about. Thank you so much for this, Richard. This was great.

RICHARD WALKER: Thank you.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right, that is all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

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Has Trump killed the U.S.-Europe alliance? - Transcript

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