AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Europe is recalibrating its relationship with the United States. This comes at the end of a turbulent week that saw the Trump administration unilaterally begin discussions with Russia about a peace deal in Ukraine and after a scathing speech by Vice President JD Vance. It's all part of a new strategy that could undermine decades of a global order overseen by a strong trans-Atlantic partnership.
NPR's Rob Schmitz has been at the Munich Security Conference witnessing this change, and he joins us now. Good morning, Rob.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Good morning.
RASCOE: So what did we learn about the Trump administration from their appearance in Europe this past week?
SCHMITZ: Well, Ayesha, we learned the Trump administration is not unified on communicating some key aspects of its foreign policy. Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out U.S. troops keeping the peace in a hypothetical post-war Ukraine. But then Vice President Vance contradicted Hegseth in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, saying putting U.S. troops in Ukraine was still on the table. And then later on, Vance walked back these comments and criticized the Journal for what he called twisting his words.
RASCOE: OK. That does sound a little chaotic there.
SCHMITZ: Yeah. And for European leaders here in Munich, this garbled messaging is sort of frustrating because everything being discussed will depend on European cooperation and resources. I spoke to Rachel Ellehuus about this. She's the director general of the Royal United Services Institute think tank and a former Pentagon representative at NATO. She says, it is true there's been a lack of clarity on Ukraine from the Trump administration, but...
RACHEL ELLEHUUS: My message to my European friends would be that the silver lining there is that that means you still have an opportunity to influence things and, you know, get your act together, come up with a peace plan that you would like to see and present that to your U.S. counterparts as soon as possible.
RASCOE: Rob, Vice President Vance shocked European leaders on Friday by not mentioning Ukraine but also by lecturing Europe about democracy and allowing far-right parties more space in Europe's political scene. So how are people there seeing this?
SCHMITZ: Well, one person I met at the conference this weekend was J.D. Bindenagel. He served the U.S. government in Germany much of his life. He was U.S. deputy chief of mission in East Berlin in the 1980s and then U.S. ambassador to Germany in the '90s.
J D BINDENAGEL: I've seen three Germanys - East, West and united Germany. Three careers - army, diplomat and historian (ph). But now all of that's gone. It's gone. And what Vance said yesterday...
SCHMITZ: And Ayesha, as you can tell here, Bindenagel was really shaken by Vance's speech. He's invested most of his life in building a friendship between the U.S. and Germany, and he feels like all of this work is sort of disappearing before his eyes.
BINDENAGEL: That was a speech designed for what we would like to call - we used to call this kind of soft power that we had in the United States. Soft power was, we were the greatest, and people really wanted to be like us. Now soft power is, we are representing an authoritarian point of view in government. And he was addressing them here.
RASCOE: So where does he see the U.S. European relationship going from here?
SCHMITZ: Well, first off, whatever happens with regards to Ukraine, there will be no agreement, he said, without the Europeans, no matter how much the Trump administration sidelines them. And more importantly is that, he says, Europeans need to search for unity at a time when it's becoming clear that America, at least under the current administration, might not be on their side anymore.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Rob Schmitz joining us from Munich. Thank you so much, Rob.
SCHMITZ: Thanks, Ayesha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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