菜单与餐桌
2025-02-18 21:18阅读：
万斯周五（2月14日）在慕尼黑安全会议上批评，欧洲“放弃了一些最基本的价值观，即与美国共同的价值观”。他还称，欧洲盟国领导人不与民粹主义政党合作，不仅违背了选民意愿，也扼杀言论自由和民主。
彭博社分析指出，万斯的言论打破了欧洲长期的信念与假象，即美国一定会在他们需要时出手相助。一名资深欧洲官员说，这次讲话是跨大西洋关系的一个分水岭时刻，因为这是对欧洲价值观根本的攻击，少了与美国在价值观上的共识，欧洲自由民主将岌岌可危。
Trump Is Rushing Toward a Deal With Putin, Leaving Europe
in the Dust
-JD Vance’s broadside in Munich shocked European leaders
-European powers are struggling to forge a response to Trump
By Alberto Nardelli, Ellen Milligan, and Alex Wickham
The groans and the anxious side glances gave way to silence as Vice
President JD Vance took center stage in Munich to pour contempt on
longstanding US allies and cut Europe down to size.
It was an attack of unbridled ferocity in the name of free speech
that laid bare the long-
stewing hostility that Donald Trump and his most senior aides feel
for the European Union — they see the bloc as a symbol of big
government that constrains US companies.
But as European diplomats from Berlin to London pick through the
rubble of the transatlantic relationship, the reality is that the
continent has had eight years since Trump’s last election victory
to get its house in order and three since Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. The wake-up call was a long time coming.
“This is existential,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna
said in an interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security
Conference, where Vance had been speaking. French President
Emmanuel Macron is looking to convene an emergency meeting of
European leaders in an attempt to come up with a response.
Europe’s fate has turned on events in the Bavarian capital before,
and not only in 1938 when the UK acquiesced to Adolf Hitler’s
claims to part of Czechoslovakia in a doomed attempt to avoid war.
In 2007, Vladimir Putin’s speech at the same annual gathering of
security officials, in hindsight, set out his rationale for the
invasion of Ukraine years later.
The illusion that Vance shattered was the belief, deep down, that
the US would always be there to step in when needed, from World War
II through to the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
“When I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what
happened to some of the cold war’s winners,” Vance said. His
disdain for Europe’s mainstream politicians was clear when he
ducked out to see the leader of Germany’s far-right AfD
party.
US officials told some Europeans in Munich that they believe
America and China are the two big powers in discussions over
Ukraine, even though the war is in the EU’s backyard, one European
official said. The US will keep the Europeans abreast on progress
but they’re not seen as significant players.
One veteran official said that Vance’s attack during his debut
abroad was a watershed moment because it was such a fundamental
attack on Europe’s values. It didn’t matter that European nations
were dependent on the US for security when they shared the same
basic principles, the official said. Without that common
understanding, liberal democracy in Europe is at risk.
Europe now finds itself in a desperate race to agree on plans for
Ukraine’s security in the event of a peace deal with Trump already
rushing into negotiations with Russia. The US president is planning
to see Putin as soon as this month.
The fear for many officials gathered for this year’s conference is
that by dialing back support for Ukraine, Trump is inviting Putin
to probe NATO’s willingness to defend the alliance’s eastern
borders.
“If Putin continues, there will be a NATO test,” Tsahkna
said.
Over the years there has been a lot of talk about the need for a
common defense strategy. Macron was among the most vocal about the
need to ramp up European capabilities but that never went far.
Germany remained stubbornly opposed to joint borrowing with
European defense bonds, the key step required to unleash defense
spending to the tune of trillions.
A day after Vance’s address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spelled
it out when describing his discussions with Trump about US plans
for ending the war: “Not once did he mention that America needs
Europe at that table.”
“That says a lot,” Zelenskiy noted on Saturday. “The old days are
over – when America supported Europe just because it always
had.”
The challenge for Europe goes deeper than a future Russian threat.
In the here and now, Europe can’t afford to be sidelined from the
conversations that will change the way the world works.
Multilateral forums like the Group of Seven and the Group of 20 are
other places where its voice is heard. But if Trump decides they
are not worth going to — a possibility officials are taking
seriously — then their influence will be diminished even
further.
That disrespect was tangible in the US dealings with both the UK
and Ukraine this week.
After David Lammy’s meeting with Vance, the UK Foreign Secretary
told reporters that the conversation had gone very well. Hours
later the vice president was lambasting the British state for
restricting protests outside abortion clinics.
In all this, the US was trying to ram through a one-sided deal to
secure access to Ukraine’s natural resources after the war,
according to two people familiar with the discussions. Treasury
Secretary Scott Bessent presented the terms to Ukrainian officials
in Kyiv earlier in the week and Vance’s team in Munich were
pressuring the Ukrainians to sign, the people said.
One official compared the US approach to the Belgians in Africa in
the 19th century. The parallel there is with Leopold II, who bought
the Congo as his personal fiefdom.
European leaders are clinging to the limited reassurances they’ve
received in private meetings with US officials. Vance, in bilateral
meetings in Munich, left open the possibility of US involvement in
security guarantees if Europe significantly stepped up its support
, people familiar with the matter said.
“The conversation with Vance behind closed doors was very different
from what he said on the public stage,” German Foreign Minister
Annalena Baerbock said in an interview.
One European minister noted that everything is moving fast and
Europe is not good at moving fast. To emphasize that point, another
official insisted that nothing can happen until after next week’s
German election, even though it may take weeks to form a new
government.
The crunch point could come within a few months, according to one
European who speaks to both Zelenskiy and the Trump team.
Russia has prepared for this moment, assembling already its cast of
top-tier negotiators. Europeans are worried that the US has made
too many concessions already and is eager to declare the problem
solved, leaving them with the fallout.
The challenge is that the EU is good at negotiating when everyone
plays by the same rules. In the free-for-all that Trump has set
off, the EU is lost, because its leaders’ hands are tied.
Multiple officials in Munich said allies needed to agree on
security guarantees among themselves before talks with Putin, but
Trump is moving on a different timeframe.
Sensing the dangers ahead, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk
implored the bloc to come up with a plan now.
In a week where the wheels of history appeared to turn with
potentially massive consequences, it’s unclear whether everyone on
the continent grasps the enormity of the stakes and the need to
deal with reality as it is.
“There are only two things that motivate people to act: sex and the
fear of death,” Tsahkna said. “The fear of death - do we have
enough of it in Europe?”
