iscover
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has used his address to the Munich Security Conference to reassure spooked European allies of a continued, if somewhat, scaled-back commitment to the global security order, while encouraging Western allies (us included) to do some serious “self-care”.
The return of Donald Trump to the White House has rapidly and repeatedly served to throw much of the established, post-Second World War economic, political and strategic order into complete and utter disarray in a way many could only have had pronounced nightmares about during his first term.
The American unilateral action against Iran as part of Operation Midnight Hammer and then more recently, action against Venezuela resulting in the capture of the Latin-American dictator Nicolas Maduro, have all served to reinforce the disruptive nature of President Trump and his administration’s efforts to effectively rewrite the global direction of travel.
Europe, in particular, has borne the brunt of much of President Trump’s ire and attention, particularly following the countries’ continued lacklustre efforts to materially provide for their own security and sovereignty as they grapple with declining economic and industrial capability and mounting social cohesion issues driven by waves of mass migration since the early 2010s.
While Australia has, at least for the most part, managed to avoid most of the worst scolding from the US president, we are not immune to the central messages being communicated by the Trump administration and its efforts to spur action from their allies, particularly as the world becomes increasingly complex, competitive and dangerous, stretching America’s capacity to be all things to everyone.
Where President Trump has certainly played the role of “bad cop”, his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has been frequently rolled out to play “good cop” in an effort to provide more nuance, more clarity and critically, assurance that America isn’t going anywhere.
Good cop urges confronting the End of History
As part of these efforts, Secretary Rubio hasn’t exactly let America’s Western allies escape very real criticism of the structural challenges that are serving to undermine their sovereignty, security and resilience in the face of mounting geopolitical competition, both within and beyond Europe.
The most recent such example of this is Secretary Rubio’s address to the Munich Security Conference 2026, in which he outlined the need for Western nations to prioritise their own nations, maximising their self-care to correct the domestic economic, political, strategic and demographic challenges that are serving to undermine their national security and resilience.
Citing the now well-known trope of the post-Cold War “End of History” as the catalyst for many of these challenges, Secretary Rubio has warned of significant and potentially civilisational ending challenges that need to be rectified, saying, “But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, ‘the end of history;’ that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.”
Expanding further, Secretary Rubio added, “This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history. And it has cost us dearly. In this delusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade, even as some nations protected their economies and subsidised their companies to systematically undercut ours – shuttering our plants, resulting in large parts of our societies being deindustrialised, shipping millions of working and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.”
These facts have, for many people, become unrepeatable in polite society, lest they fail to be invited to all the right dinner parties, yet that doesn’t delegitimise or disprove the realities that American presidents and their respective administrations have been trying to impart on European and global American allies.
Where President Barack Obama once referred to the European allies in particular as “freeloaders”, President Trump has taken far more direct action in an effort to drive a European and broader allied response, all of whom had, in many ways, been seduced by the promises of easy money, enduring peace and eternal “progress” more seriously than the United States had.
Secretary Rubio detailed this, saying, “We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions while many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves. This, even as other countries have invested in the most rapid military build-up in all of human history and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests. To appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else – not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.”
He added: “And in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. We made these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.”
Renewal and restoration – the essence of national ’self-care’
As part of this shifting focus to drive a period of “renewal and restoration” across America’s allies, Australia included, Secretary Rubio is very clear in calling (at least indirectly) for nations to embrace the concept of “self-care” to rebuild themselves into more potent, independent and sovereign in their own right.
The driving force behind this is, as Secretary Rubio highlighted, the need to protect and promote Western civilisation: “We are part of one civilisation – Western civilisation. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilisation to which we have fallen heir.”
At the core of this push is, as Secretary Rubio believes, the need to recognise that deindustrialisation, economic decline, demographic challenges and strategic decline were far from preordained, inevitabilities for the US, Europe and even Australia, rather they are the result of conscious policy decisions that have, as previously mentioned, been driven by the pursuit of never-ending “progress”.
Secretary Rubio detailed this, saying, “Deindustrialisation was not inevitable. It was a conscious policy choice, a decades-long economic undertaking that stripped our nations of their wealth, of their productive capacity, and of their independence. And the loss of our supply chain sovereignty was not a function of a prosperous and healthy system of global trade. It was foolish. It was a foolish but voluntary transformation of our economy that left us dependent on others for our needs and dangerously vulnerable to crisis.
“Mass migration is not, was not, isn’t some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilising societies all across the West. Together we can reindustrialise our economies and rebuild our capacity to defend our people. But the work of this new alliance should not be focused just on military cooperation and reclaiming the industries of the past,” Secretary Rubio added.
Critically, Rubio argued that none of this will be done in isolation, rather that the nations of the West can and should be focusing on climbing the mountain together, saying, “It should also be focused on, together, advancing our mutual interests and new frontiers, unshackling our ingenuity, our creativity and the dynamic spirit to build a new Western century.”
Stop rationalising a ’broken status quo’
All of this combines with increasing frustration within the US Administration, particularly aimed at European allies, but a frustration that will inevitably be turned against Australia if we don’t seek to adapt to the changes currently transforming not only the global environment, but most consequentially, the Indo-Pacific.
This is reflected in large part by the growing pressure on the Australian government to boost defence spending, national industrialisation and economic resilience, efforts that seem to largely be falling upon deaf ears, as Australia’s policymakers continue to believe that the post-Second World War status quo holds true.
Secretary Rubio highlighted the growing expectations from the United States, saying, “This is why we do not want allies to rationalise the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it, for we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.
“We do not seek to separate but to revitalise an old friendship and renew the greatest civilisation in human history. What we want is a reinvigorated alliance that recognises that what has ailed our societies is not just a set of bad policies but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency. An alliance – the alliance that we want is one that is not paralysed into inaction by fear – fear of climate change, fear of war, fear of technology. Instead, we want an alliance that boldly races into the future. And the only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger and wealthier for our children.”
With these points in mind, it is time for Australia to begin some much needed national self-care.
Stephen Kuper
Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.
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