LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on the future of European security and the relationship between Europe and the U.S., we turn to Kurt Volker. He's a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, serving under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. He also served as U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations in the first Trump administration. Good morning, and welcome back to the program, Ambassador.
KURT VOLKER: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
FADEL: OK. So the Munich Security Conference wrapped up over the weekend. Last year, Vice President JD Vance had a really harsh tone for America's European allies. This year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a softer approach.
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MARCO RUBIO: America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity and that, once again, we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends.
FADEL: Ambassador, listening to him, did the secretary of state's shift in tone actually mean a shift in the administration's policy toward European allies?
VOLKER: Yes and no. He repeated a lot of the same points that JD Vance made last year, and these are discussions about Europe in a civilizational context. We saw the national security strategy that warned about civilizational erasure of, you know, the West because of immigration, because of failed climate policies, cultural issues. And so he touched on all of those things. But unlike JD Vance, who did this in a very critical way and a warning to Europe, Secretary Rubio put this more in the context of common challenges that people on both sides of the Atlantic are facing, and we want to work together to address these challenges. That's a much more positive and pro-trans-Atlantic way of talking about it in a way that I think our European allies can now latch onto a bit and say, well, there's a positive attitude here. Let's try to work together.
But what's also interesting is, like JD Vance a year ago, Marco Rubio did not talk about Russia's war on Ukraine, about U.S. strategy for Europe, about how we see European security in the future. He kind of left the elephant in the room outside the room, didn't talk about how we intend to deal with that. And for Europeans, they see Russia, they see the largest war in Europe since World War II, they see these hundreds of thousands killed and they see Russia's intentions and hybrid attacks on European states as very, very real. And this is something that we still need to address together.
FADEL: Let me ask you about that because we did hear European leaders still bristle at some of the messaging, rejecting this idea that there's a climate cult, rejecting that there's erasure and a great threat to their culture and civilization. And we heard German Chancellor Friedrich Merz say that a deep divide has opened between Europe and the United States. Do you agree with that assessment, and what does the future look like if that divide just keeps growing?
VOLKER: No, I don't agree with that. And look, yes, you hear those critiques from many in Europe, and they're on the other side of that political argument. We have the same critiques in the United States as well. We have a very robust political debate. So you have a Trump administration that is projecting a certain point of view. We have people in the U.S. that have a different point of view. Likewise, in Europe, you have multiple points of view. So I actually don't agree that there is this gulf between the U.S. and Europe. I really see that our societies are grappling with the same issues. And I agree with Secretary Rubio. We should be talking with each other and trying to work out, how do we deal with the concrete issues in front of us as a trans-Atlantic alliance.
FADEL: On Russia, you mentioned how this was kind of something that wasn't spoken about by the U.S. And then we heard the Ukrainian president say, the U.S. just keeps asking for concessions from Ukraine and not from Russia. Is that the American strategy, and is it working?
VOLKER: Well, I think there's more complex American strategy, and there's several things that have gone right. We have got the U.S., Ukraine and Europe aligned around the idea of a ceasefire in place and accepting that some Ukrainian territory will be occupied by Russia for a long time. We've got the Europeans increasing their defense spending to 5% of GDP. We've got the coalition of the willing ready to deploy to Ukraine when there's a ceasefire. We have a reinvestment fund with the EU and Ukraine and U.S. ready to roll out. So we've done a lot of these things, but what we have not done is put pressure on Vladimir Putin to stop the war. And that's the only reason there is a war, is because Putin is waging it against Ukraine, and that is the missing piece. So when I hear that we're putting pressure on Ukraine to make concessions - for instance, ceding territory to Russia that Russia doesn't even occupy - we should be doing the opposite.
FADEL: Kurt Volker is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. Thank you for your time.
VOLKER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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