Opinion | It Is Decision Time for NATO in Munich

The 62nd Munich Security Conference, otherwise known as “Davos with guns,” has arrived at a pivotal moment. The United States has never demanded more of Europe, and Europe has never expected less of the United States.

The conference, which began on Friday, is a fork in the road for the trans-Atlantic relationship. Of the two paths before us, one is a lasting recalibration of the NATO alliance with a strong Europe at its core, capable of defending itself while sustaining a healthy, if diminished, partnership with the United States. The other is continued trans-Atlantic infighting over shared values, national interests and what counts as a fair division of responsibilities on all sides.

The latter path is no longer just a meddlesome aspect of an otherwise sound alliance. It threatens a messy separation between the United States and its foremost allies that would hurt European and American security. It is in the United States’ interest that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is leading the Trump administration’s contingent at the conference and the accompanying congressional delegations, maximize progress down the first path. And no matter how Mr. Rubio sets the tone, Europe must come together behind meaningful reform.

The American side hasn’t made this particularly easy. A year ago in Munich, Vice President JD Vance declared the death of the trans-Atlantic relationship as we knew it. The proximate cause was not Russia, China or any external actor but what Mr. Vance called the “threat from within: the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” In Mr. Vance’s telling, European allies had not only neglected their own defense capabilities but had also abandoned the shared values underpinning the alliance through their embrace of liberal immigration policies and restrictions on free expression.

His speech was viewed by many on both sides of the Atlantic as intervening on behalf of the far right Alternative for Germany party just over a week before a national election.

As the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy later revealed, Mr. Vance’s speech was not off the cuff but instead offered a preview of U.S. policy. Europe’s “civilizational erasure,” it believes, can be countered in part by support for “patriotic European parties.”

The contretemps at Davos just a few weeks ago made matters worse, especially after President Trump complained that Europe has been insufficiently grateful for the U.S. role in saving it during World War II, has paid too little for its own defense since and is likely to be unwilling to spill blood in defense of the United States in the future.

The temperature has cooled since, but the prospect of rupture still looms. Mr. Rubio declared recently that “NATO needs to be reimagined as well in terms of the obligations.” The question is whether Mr. Rubio will use his pulpit in Munich for another scolding or to sketch out a workable vision for continued trans-Atlantic security cooperation.

The United States should collaborate with NATO even if it reduces its commitment to providing European security. Washington should remain central to joint efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and secure Ukraine’s future, shoring up Europe’s eastern and northern flanks and expanding arms sales and military-industrial partnerships.

The most important issue is Ukraine. Given the administration’s stated goal of shifting the burden of European security to Europe, it would be wise to establish a clear and ambitious stance on Europe’s role in sustaining any eventual peace.

Europe has its own hard decisions to make. The notion of a stronger, better integrated Europe, envisioned by President Emmanuel Macron of France; Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission; and other political leaders, remains painfully theoretical, hampered by the bloc’s bureaucratic inertia. The former Italian prime ministers Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, among others, have already defined the goals: a unified capital market, a continentwide innovation ecosystem, a defense industrial base that transcends national borders and governance committed more to productivity and investment than to procedure and overregulation. There is momentum behind this vision. But “strategic autonomy,” as it has been labeled, demands political trade-offs, such as defense mobilization, deficit spending, diminished sovereignty and uneven gains, which remain blocked by the parochial interests of many member states.

NATO allies’ laudable commitment to spending more is not enough. European countries must break their proclivity to support siloed projects of national defense in favor of a scalable continental defense industrial base. They must spend more on recruiting and training armed forces, not just on buying weapons. This will require difficult decisions at a time when Europe lacks strong political leadership.

Success would bring its own challenges, not least a continent bristling with rapidly rearming powers. Germany’s 2025 military spending already exceeds that of any other European country and is the fourth highest in the world. Britain, France and others will have to adjust to a Europe defined by a robust German military, something the founders of the Munich Security Conference could hardly have anticipated.

Building European strategic autonomy and a new, durable relationship with the United States will take more than three days inside Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof. The worst outcome would be more jawboning without tangible progress. Otherwise, a conference founded in 1963 to coordinate allied containment of the Soviet Union now risks becoming a venue not for strengthening shared security but for trans-Atlantic divorce proceedings.

Michael B.G. Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, served in the Obama administration as U.S. trade representative and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

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