Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Europe’s fate is intertwined with the U.S. while faulting the continent for what he said was a drift away from their shared Western values.

The double-edged message offered some reassurance to allied leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference but did little to temper their push for more independence from Washington.

“We want Europe to prosper because we’re interconnected in so many different ways, and because our alliance is so critical,” Rubio told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on the sidelines of the conference on Saturday. “But it has to be an alliance of allies that are capable and willing to fight for who they are and what’s important.”

“What is it that binds us together? Ultimately, it’s the fact that we are both heirs to the same civilization, and it’s a great civilization,” he said. “It’s one we should be proud of.”

Rubio’s comments elaborated on a speech he delivered to the event, Europe’s premier annual security gathering, earlier Saturday morning. The speech was the most anticipated of the three-day conference, with fellow leaders eager to hear if he would double down on the contemptuous tone voiced a year earlier by Vice President JD Vance at the same venue.

That tension has only gotten worse in the last year as European leaders struggled to respond to Trump’s amped-up demands to take over Greenland, his clashes with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his repeated threats to tariff French wine and other European goods.

In the interview, Rubio said he was not turning away from Vance’s message, which warned European nations of dangers from their own policies, but wanted to help explain why President Donald Trump’s team felt compelled to make it.

“The alliance has to change,” Rubio told Bloomberg. “When we come off as urgent or even critical about decisions that Europe has failed to make or made, it is because we care.”

He framed the problem as Europe’s fault, urging leaders to reject the “climate cult” and saying the U.S. had no interest “in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” He criticized “an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies.”

Michelangelo, the Stones, the Beatles

But Rubio also leaned into shared U.S. security and cultural ties with Western Europe — Michelangelo, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles — and joked that German immigrants “dramatically upgraded the quality of American beer.” He acknowledged that the U.S. doesn’t know if Russia is serious about ending its war with Ukraine and drew a stark distinction between China and the West.

“No one is under any illusions,” he said. “There are some fundamental challenges between our countries and between the West and China that will continue for the foreseeable future.”

The dual message highlighted the rupture at the center of recent tension between the U.S. and its allies: the Trump administration says Europe is to blame for straying from state sovereignty and nationalist values. European leaders, meanwhile, point the finger at Trump for their rift.

Wolfgang Ischinger, the chairman of the Munich Security Conference, called Rubio’s speech “a message of reassurance of partnership.”

“Mr. Secretary, I’m not sure you heard the sigh of relief through this hall” from the speech, he said.

Rubio spoke a day after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the transatlantic relationship must evolve. He said Germany and Europe need to bolster their security and independence together. And there was nothing in the U.S. diplomat’s comments to make leaders reconsider their push for greater European self-reliance.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was reassured by Rubio’s speech but also said “some lines have been crossed that cannot be uncrossed.” And U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer cautioned that Europe “shouldn’t get in the warm bath of complacency” about its own defense and security.

One senior European official said Rubio’s speech was a more intellectual articulation of the sound bites that U.S. politicians, including Vance, often make.

Rubio’s speech showed a willingness to work together but nothing in it can undo a “growing hardening of approaches” as embodied by Trump’s demand for Greenland and the threat posed by Russia, French minister for European affairs Benjamin Haddad said in an interview.

“It would be a mistake to press the snooze button,” Haddad said. “We need to rethink our own security architecture. I am not hearing anything else from the Americans.”

U.K. Defence Secretary John Healey said Rubio was right to say Europe needs to take its border security seriously and that the continent is responding to his call to step up its own defenses.

“Everyone in that room found that an important speech, not just now but for the future,” Healey said in an interview. “With that U.S. strategic shift that is taking place, nevertheless there’s an enduring commitment to the NATO alliance.”

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(With assistance from Loren Grush, Ellen Milligan and Ania Nussbaum.)

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