Vance's Munich speech: delusion, superficiality and extremism

The speech delivered by Trump’s Vice President, J.D. Vance, at the Munich Security Conference was provocative, misleading, erroneous, and arrogant. Aside from the lukewarm reception that the speech received, and the criticism that was heaped upon it by official spokesmen in the European Union, I am here addressing that speech from a purely Palestinian perspective.

Before that, it must be said that the Europeans saw in that speech a real insult to them, as the man wanted to teach them a lesson in democracy, moral and human values. Instead of talking in detail about the challenges and security risks in Europe coming from Russia and China, he surprised them by talking about the internal risks represented by the inability to deal with opposing voices. Instead of talking about the settlement in Ukraine as a bleeding wound in the European body, he spoke to them about the need for openness and dialogue with the European fascist right. The man was truly provocative, and expressed a shallow and naive narrative of the risks facing the European Union and its peoples due to a failure to understand the full picture of the type of conflicts and the nature of the challenges.

His speech was a blow to the EU’s core principles, Bloomberg reported, adding that the speech was an angry, unsubdued attack in the name of free speech, and exposed the long-standing hostility that Trump and his top aides feel toward the EU.

J.D. Vance simply said that the United States is not guaranteed to protect Europe when needed, an explicit hint to push the European Union to increase defense spending, and a veiled threat that American protection will disappear if the old continent does not submit to Trump’s financial, political and security blackmail. The speech was revealing of the long-term European dependency and submission to the policies and dictates of the United States of America, a fact that has prompted several European parties to search for an independent European power or adopt a special defense policy to confront American plans in Ukraine and elsewhere.

This is how the Europeans read the speech of the US Vice President. They considered it an insult, a provocation, a lack of insight, and a lack of a comprehensive vision. For the Europeans, the speech was selfish, threatened internal peace, and exposed the shortcomings of European security.

As for us Palestinians, who were not mentioned in it, and were never referred to, this speech expresses the height of hypocrisy and duplicity. While Vance called for openness, partnership, tolerance of others, and the demolition of the “isolation walls,” as he called them, he and his administration are calling for the displacement of the Palestinian people, the dismantling of their state, the confiscation of their right to self-determination, and their erasure from the map. Vance’s speech truly expressed the great crisis of Western civilization, which is denying everything it called for and tried to promote to the world. It was a speech of complete downfall, in which its speaker expressed a hateful arrogance that preys on its friends and allies if they disagree with it. It was the speech of liberalism that has turned against itself and has come to see extremism as a pure moral position, and to see killing and displacement as humanitarian solutions, and to see occupation and confiscation as historical settlements. Vance's speech was a bankrupt speech intellectually, politically and security-wise, as it assumes a final correctness with no further correctness, and a final vision with no further vision. It is not possible for a person whose country has only been in existence for 300 years to teach ancient countries the meaning of democracy and freedom of expression, and correct their course by turning to fascism, which was overthrown nearly ninety years ago. When Vance sees only the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, like his colleague Elon Musk, then the democracy that Vance and Musk call for is a democracy that will undoubtedly lead to a deep abyss.