JD Vance in Munich: the politics of MAGA geopolitics

JD Vance's speech in Munich was neither spontaneous nor calculated insult, although it was insulting. It was a political attack on the security of Europe.

US Vice President JD Vance stunned his audience at the Munich Security Conference on 14 February 2025. Instead of addressing matters of foreign and security policy - the clear theme of the conference ever since its creation - he talked exclusively about an alleged “threat from within” to European democracy. And he didn’t mean Russian subversion, which he portrayed as insignificant. He attacked measures taken by various European governments to contain the rise and spread of far-right political parties. While he framed his attack on European democracy in terms of a US-centric and absolutist line on freedom of expression, and notably in terms of attitudes towards immigration, what JD Vance was really doing was to pressure European governments to open the floodgates to both domestic and foreign subversion in favour of pro-Moscow political parties. JD Vance’s speech was not just an assault by the MAGA movement against traditional democratic forces in allied countries. It was also a geopolitical assault against European security which should be viewed as directly related to the Russia-Ukraine War.