The degeneration of the Munich Security Conference into an international shouting match about what JD Vance did or didn’t say about Europe is a microcosm of everything that has been wrong with the democratic world since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. All that has transpired since the conference has followed the same pattern.
Sorely lacking has been a clear-headed understanding of the principles that unite us all, regardless of what side of the Atlantic we live on. When people are unguided by principles, the result is invariably a maelstrom of opportunism and knee-jerk reaction. That is what has characterized international behavior since the conference.
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The content of JD Vance’s speech is irrelevant to the wider point. As the world faces its most dangerous moment in decades, poised on the brink of global disintegration and an ever-growing coordination of autocracies into a military and economic bloc, the West must put aside differences and offer Ukraine and the future of the democratic world rock-solid certainty.
True leadership and strength would be focusing unambiguously on the potentially catastrophic challenges that the democratic world now faces and rallying us together.
The Trump Administration may well think that Europe’s immigration policy is misguided, but it shows a profound lack of perspective to have homed in on that gripe, which was inevitably going to drive a wedge into the trans-Atlantic alliance. True leadership and strength would be focusing unambiguously on the potentially catastrophic challenges that the democratic world now faces and rallying us together.
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If Vance felt an implacable urge to say something on immigration, then he is entitled to scratch that itch. But a person of principle would have intuitively understood how inopportune that moment was. Deliberately sowing discord and division at the current time shows an extraordinary lack of judgment.
Vance’s speech was not a one-off. Trump’s attacks on Denmark, Canada and other allies in the face of grave and real menaces to freedom around the world and his most recent and deplorable comments about Ukraine show an American administration that is not using a set of underlying values to assemble challenges into a clear hierarchy of priority. Like the dog that didn’t bark, Vance’s silence about Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, and what they are up to in Ukraine, in a speech that instead focused on hectoring Europe, spoke volumes.
Like watching a bystander throwing a drowning person an agreement to hand over their house before they’ll consider throwing them a lifeline, anyone with any conscience and honor is left in stunned horror.
Our common principles are not difficult to comprehend, nor do they require momentous mental effort to use them to guide one’s outlook and decisions on the international stage. At the risk of laboring the point, let’s remember that they can be articulated in a single paragraph:
The rule of law, in a society where laws are impartial and consequently, gives the population: The confidence to exercise freedom of expression, assembly and conscience; The ability to remove one’s top-level leaders in free and fair elections in which there is credible political opposition; Checks and balances within the governing powers which are respected and nurtured by those elected to rule; Respect for the territorial integrity of other nations; A willingness to be steadfast in supporting allies of these free ideals.
One might embellish these points with others and elaborate on them, but the ideals for which Ukraine fights and which the democratic world should rally around are not complicated or difficult to master. Books have been written about them, entire philosophical schools founded on them, but they can be clearly understood in just four or five sentences, give or take a few. There is no excuse for a lack of principled action.
What is most essential is that these ideas, which in time of peace may temporarily be set aside to focus on more minor matters such as the price of eggs or the tariff arrangements on corn, become the warp and woof of everything we do when they are under serious threat.
That powerful motor of liberty, if present, would lead to coherent thoughts about Ukraine. Through the dust and rubble of ongoing ballistic missile attacks and over the corpses of their children, the Trump Administration handed to Ukrainians a crass demand for a great proportion of their material wealth in return for nothing specific. Like watching a bystander throwing a drowning person an agreement to hand over their house before they’ll consider throwing them a lifeline, anyone with any conscience and honor is left in stunned horror.
The response to Vance’s speech has laid bare that Europe too has lost focus on the matters of importance. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius declared Vance’s speech to be “unacceptable.” Quite apart from the irony that this was an answer to a speech about freedom of expression, it shows that at the highest ranks of the western world we don’t seem to understand, or at least we are not articulating, what we are defending.
Any individual who will clearly state what we stand for and remind the world of our values would be welcome, but we should not hanker for saviors or dwell on past glories.
No opinion is “unacceptable.” The consequences of opinions, if implemented, may well be, but that is entirely another matter. You may disagree with what Vance had to say and offer counterarguments, but the notion that a point of view can be “unacceptable” was why Ukrainians shook off the tyranny of communism in 1991 with determination. The acceptability of diverse opinions is the very foundation of the democratic world and may be the most distinguishable, even defining, difference between democratic and autocratic nations.
Not a single leader stood up at the Munich conference and clearly stated the cost and peril of continuing along the path that we are currently on. The nation currently fighting an existential war in defense of freedom has been treated appallingly, like a person trapped in a boxing ring while those around them exchange jousts over their head. Ukraine continues to give the world its candid advice on exactly what is in store if things don’t change rapidly and decisively. Clapping and standing ovations will not be adequate.
It has been said, perhaps rather tritely, that we need a Churchill of our times. That would certainly help. Any individual who will clearly state what we stand for and remind the world of our values would be welcome, but we should not hanker for saviors or dwell on past glories.
All of us can fulfil that role and every single one of us can promote the values of a system of ordered liberty. Those who have the reins of power especially have been handed an historic opportunity to defend values that have taken millennia to bring into existence and which are worth fighting for.
The democratic world has had a capacious three years in which to get its act together, and yet if an alien had parachuted into Munich and observed the proceedings, it would be forgiven for thinking that Ukraine had been invaded yesterday. We will say the right things, fight for the right things, and bring clarity and structure to the way in which we react to the world if we are first clear about our principles.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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