The velvet hammer: what Rubio’s Munich address reveals about American grand strategy - and why Britain’s strategists are missing the point

Bottom Line Up Front: Britain’s strategic class is comforting itself that Rubio’s Munich speech marked a return to familiar Atlanticism, when in reality it was a velvet‑gloved ultimatum: America is recasting the Western order on civilisational and hard‑power lines, expects Europe to carry far more of the burden, and is already behaving as a creditor setting terms, not a guarantor offering reassurance. At the very moment Washington tightens its conditions, London is delaying hard choices on force, finance and political leadership – a combination that risks leaving the UK rhetorically aligned with the new order but practically sidelined within it.

Something about Munich does not add up. On paper, Europe left reassured: a courteous American Secretary of State, talk of shared history, sustained applause and a partial standing ovation. Ursula von der Leyen said she was “very much reassured”; Keir Starmer warned that “we shouldn’t get in the warm bath of complacency.” The mood in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel was that a corner had been turned.

It has – but not in the way Europe thinks.

Taken seriously rather than atmospherically, Marco Rubio’s speech reads less like reassurance and more like a politely phrased set of conditions. The United Kingdom, sitting awkwardly between Washington and Brussels, is treating it as the former. That may prove a costly misreading. Rubio sketched, in public, a statement of American grand strategy for the Trump years – one that will likely outlast this administration – and it tells us how Washington now thinks about allies, institutions and power. It also exposes some bad habits in London and other European capitals: hearing what we want to hear, confusing tonal shifts for structural change, and consoling ourselves with the language of an “order” that, in practice, is already frayed.

A charm offensive with conditions attached

Start with the contradiction. European officials came to Munich expecting another broadside in the style of JD Vance’s 2025 appearance, when the Vice President told the same audience that Europe’s greatest threat was “the threat from within” – censorship, suppression of dissent, leaders “running in fear of their own voters.” Instead they got something that sounded closer to the familiar Atlanticist script: shared sacrifice, Normandy and Berlin, Kabul, “we belong together.” Relief followed. The atmospherics mattered. They were meant to.

The substance points elsewhere. The old liberal language of shared values and institutions is still present, but as decoration. The load‑bearing walls of Rubio’s argument rest on three claims: that the post‑Cold War project of a global, rules‑based order has failed; that security now depends on civilisational cohesion and hard power, not on multilateral process; and that Europeans will have to pay far more – financially, industrially, politically – if they want continued American cover.

Rubio did not repudiate Vance’s themes; he reframed them. Europe treated his speech as reassurance from a guarantor; he was in fact delivering terms from a creditor. Where Vance spoke bluntly of European decadence and ingratitude, Rubio wrapped the critique in warmth and shared history. The underlying proposition did not shift. It simply became easier for European elites to applaud. Little wonder the Munich Security Conference itself posed this year’s question as whether the Western‑led order is now “broken, bruised or bolstered”: European leaders sense the settlement is in trouble, even if they prefer to talk about bruises rather than amputation.

Civilisational realism and its logic

Rubio’s speech is useful because it sets out the current American position in clear conceptual terms. What he described – without using the label – is a form of civilisational realism. The relevant unit is not “the international community” or a rules‑based architecture, but a particular civilisation: the Euro‑Atlantic world, which must defend its way of life in an era of renewed great‑power competition and mass migration.

Seen through that lens, several passages snap into focus. “National security is not merely a series of technical questions,” Rubio told the hall. “The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending.” His answer: “Armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people. Armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.” The repeated references to Christianity, shared ancestry, heritage and culture are not throwaway lines for a conservative domestic audience. They mark the boundary of the “we”.

The post‑Cold War consensus – “the end of history,” in his telling – was “a dangerous delusion” and “a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history.” The “rules‑based global order” is “an overused term.” De‑industrialisation was “a conscious policy choice.” Mass migration threatens “the survival of our civilisation itself.” This is not the vocabulary of technocratic multilateralism. It is the vocabulary of a bloc that believes itself to be under siege.

He is not, though, the pure institutional arsonist some coverage suggests. Rubio was careful to say that “we do not need to abandon the system of international cooperation we authored” and that “the United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world.” His formal position is reform, not demolition. Yet when he runs through Gaza, Ukraine, Iran and Venezuela, the pattern is the same: on “the most pressing matters before us”, the UN has “no answers” and has “played virtually no role”, while American military power and diplomatic pressure delivered outcomes. The structures endure; what has gone is the assumption that they can bind great powers in the absence of hard power.

The line that matters most came near the end: “While we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.” Partnership is preferred, but conditional. Unilateral action is not an empty threat but an openly avowed option.

When the diplomat and the macro investor agree

There is an echo here from an unexpected quarter. In a widely shared intervention just before Munich, Ray Dalio – the hedge fund founder whose “big cycles” work is read closely in finance ministries and central banks – described the present as a “Stage 6” phase in his long‑term cycle model: the point at which a previous global order has broken down, rules are honoured mainly in the breach, and disputes between major powers are settled increasingly by raw economic and military strength rather than by trusted institutions. “Having power is good,” he wrote, “because power will win out over agreements, rules, and laws all the time.”

Rubio offered the foreign‑policy version of that argument. When he catalogues the irrelevance of the UN in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran, he is describing a system in which the formal architecture exists but no longer determines behaviour. When he calls for Western‑controlled supply chains for critical minerals and semiconductors, and a “unified effort to compete for market share in the economies of the global south”, he is talking about a world in which states expect coercion and disruption and plan accordingly.

Dalio’s further warning – that trade wars tend to morph into “capital wars” as trust erodes and states reconsider where they hold their savings and debt – pushes the argument into territory British policymakers are reluctant to touch. The UK is highly exposed: open capital account, structurally large current‑account deficit, an economy heavily anchored in services and financial intermediation. In a Stage‑6 world where both security guarantees and financial flows can be weaponised, the cost and feasibility of sustaining a serious rearmament can change quickly.

Taken together, Rubio and Dalio describe a simple reality. The formal structures of the rules‑based order remain. What has largely gone is their constraining force on great powers. Strategy built on the assumption that those rules still meaningfully bind is mis‑calibrated.

Europe’s blindspot: mistaking tone for structure

Europe’s first error is to treat reassurance in tone as alignment in interests. Rubio’s refrain that “we belong together” landed well in Munich. But the basis he gives for that belonging is not shared democratic norms or institutional commitments; it is shared ancestry, Christian faith and civilisational identity. He grounded the transatlantic bond in the claim that Europeans and Americans form “one civilisation, Western civilisation,” bound by “centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together.”

That should give European leaders pause. A relationship grounded in institutional norms can be negotiated and managed. A relationship grounded in contested notions of identity is harder to calibrate. Who decides which European countries are fully inside this “civilisation”, on what criteria, and with what consequences if they diverge on migration, religion or social policy? The friction is already visible in arguments over asylum, culture‑war questions at the UN, and debates about “European values”. The Munich conversation about whether the order is “broken, bruised or bolstered” was, in truth, an argument about where the boundaries of this civilisation now lie.

The second error is to treat the Trump administration as an aberration. The structural forces driving American retrenchment from multilateral leadership – domestic polarisation, scepticism of free trade, the pivot to great‑power competition with China, the backlash against globalisation’s costs – pre‑date this president and will outlast him. Rubio articulates the direction of travel. He did not invent it.

Britain’s awkward position

The UK sits in an unusually exposed position. Since 2016, London has relied on two assumptions: that the “special relationship” with Washington would remain structurally privileged, and that “Global Britain” could operate as a nimble mid‑power hedging between blocs. Rubio and Dalio both point to the same conclusion: both assumptions are ageing badly.

On the special relationship, the signal is blunt. Cultural affinity and shared history still count, but they are not decisive. What matters is capability and reliability. Britain’s current defence posture is underwhelming on both counts. NATO figures put UK defence spending at about 2.3% of GDP, with government plans to reach 2.5% (2.6% when security and intelligence spending is included) by 2027-28. The Strategic Defence Review published in June 2025 committed to that 2.6% figure, coupled with an ambition to hit 3% of GDP on defence by 2034 “if economic conditions allowed” – and a broader pledge to meet NATO’s 5% of GDP national security benchmark by 2035, in line with the Hague summit agreement that 3.5% should be core defence and 1.5% wider security‑related spending.

Those numbers tell their own story. The near‑term uplift to around 2.6% is real, funded partly by cuts to the aid budget. The 3% and 5% figures sit firmly in the conditional tense. Germany, which overtook the UK as NATO’s second‑largest defence spender in 2024, is on course for a defence budget above €80 billion in 2026 and heading towards something like 3.5% of GDP by the end of the decade. Poland is already above 4%. The Baltic states sit between roughly 2.5% and 3.5%. Senior German politicians now talk about delivering the full 5% NATO benchmark as a way to escape “self‑inflicted immaturity”. Against that backdrop, Britain’s claim to be Europe’s leading military power rests increasingly on the nuclear deterrent, intelligence capabilities, Special Forces, and a handful of high‑end platforms – frigates, submarines and fast jets – rather than deployable conventional mass.

The state of the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) makes the gap even clearer. The DIP – meant to set out how the UK will equip its forces over the next decade – is stuck “at the political level”. The head of the RAF has admitted voters are “frustrated” by the delay and that chiefs are running “iterations” of options while ministers sit on the decisions. Behind that sits the Treasury. Media reports suggest Rachel Reeves has been unwilling to increase the MoD’s budget beyond the existing settlement of £73.5 billion a year by 2028–29, worried both about waste in procurement and the prospect of cuts or further tax rises elsewhere to pay for any uplift.

Since Munich, there have been signs of movement. Starmer’s public line – “we are going to have to spend more, faster” – has created expectations in allied capitals. Briefings now suggest that No.10 is at least exploring ways to pull part of the 3% trajectory forward under pressure from military chiefs and partners. The point remains, though: Britain is speaking the language of urgency in Bavaria while struggling to agree, in London, on the basic force‑planning document that would turn that urgency into funded units, platforms and stockpiles.

The bridge strategy is also strained. Starmer’s line in Munich – “there is no British security without Europe, and no European security without Britain” – is correct in principle but thin in practice. Attempts to deepen defence cooperation with the EU have been halting. From Washington’s perspective, the EU (especially Germany and Poland) is slowly becoming the primary conventional pillar in Europe. From Brussels’ perspective, Britain remains outside key decision‑making forums. A bridge with shaky foundations at both ends is an engineering problem, not a strategy.

Ukraine is the unspoken test case. European governments are now quietly planning for a long war and a drawn‑out deterrence posture on NATO’s eastern flank, while voices around Trump dangle the prospect of a quick deal with Moscow. In that context, Britain’s hesitation on force generation and industrial capacity looks less like caution and more like a bet that someone else will underwrite the hard years if the politics turn ugly.

The civilisational turn adds a domestic complication. Rubio’s emphasis on Christian heritage, mass migration and “unapologetic” Western cultural superiority cuts across Britain’s internal fault lines. Starmer’s response in Munich – defending “vibrant, free, diverse societies” and the fact that people who “look different to each other can live peacefully together” – was an unmistakable counterpoint. The UK government must work closely with an administration whose cultural politics diverge sharply from its own. That tension will surface in asylum and resettlement policy, multilateral diplomacy and the tone of joint communiqués. Ambiguity has limits.

Overlay Dalio’s Stage‑6 diagnosis and the picture darkens further. A UK that under‑invests in hard power while relying on deep financial integration and cheap capital is doubly exposed in a system where both security guarantees and financial flows can be turned into instruments of pressure.

A shifting domestic weather system

Rubio’s speech lands in Britain as the domestic weather changes. Externally, Washington is calling for a harder, more self‑consciously “civilisational” West, less sentimental about rules. Internally, a growing slice of the electorate is receptive to precisely that sort of language – just not from those currently in office.

Multi‑level polling at the start of 2026 has Reform UK around the 30% mark nationally, edging ahead of both Conservatives and Labour in several models. Support is particularly strong among routine and manual workers. Other polling has Reform several points ahead of Labour, even as many respondents doubt the party is ready for government. Strong support combined with low confidence in readiness is exactly the kind of structural tension foreign capitals notice.

The traditional duopoly is also fragmenting on the right. Rupert Lowe’s new vehicle, Restore Britain, adds another outfit to an already congested lane. The Conservatives risk becoming, in one commentator’s phrase, “a parliamentary rump skating by on Boomer inertia”, while Reform tries to do to them what Labour once did to the Liberals. Restore Britain threatens to siphon off some of the most ardent culture‑war activists and younger online cadres, especially those to Farage’s right. In theory, that could help Reform present a more disciplined operation. In practice, it reinforces the impression of a British right turning into a cluster of political start‑ups rather than a plausible governing machine.

Substantively, there is clear overlap between Rubio’s thesis and the rhetoric of Farage, Reform and Lowe. Borders, national identity, cultural cohesion, hostility to “woke” elites, scepticism of supranational institutions and calls for re‑industrialisation are familiar themes. Rubio’s warning that “an unprecedented wave of mass migration” threatens “the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people” could sit comfortably in a Reform script.

From Washington’s perspective, that ideological convergence is not trivial. A Farage‑led government, or a coalition in which Reform is dominant, would share much of the Trump administration’s worldview on borders, culture and the limits of multilateralism. Rubio’s civilisational framing would find a far more enthusiastic echo in Whitehall under such a government than it does under Starmer. If the only question were cultural alignment, the choice would be obvious. It is not hard to see which man in Number 10 many in Washington would find more congenial.

But preference is not the same as confidence. Running a G7 state’s diplomatic network, intelligence community, nuclear enterprise and defence apparatus in a Stage‑6 world is a different order of business from winning by‑elections and online arguments. At present, even many of those flirting with Reform doubt its readiness for government. That scepticism is not simply establishment snobbery. It reflects a reasonable question: do these parties have the intellectual and institutional depth to translate a civilisational diagnosis into a workable national security strategy?

So far, the evidence is thin. Reform’s output on defence, intelligence and foreign policy has been sporadic and mainly oppositional – focused on what to scrap and denounce rather than how to rebuild mass, stockpiles, industrial base and alliance management. Restore Britain, at this stage, exists more as an aesthetic and a grievance than as a set of worked‑through policy documents. That might be enough to move the dial electorally. It is not yet a basis for deciding force structure, covert action authorities or deterrence posture, let alone for building the kind of “fourth fighting service” – an integrated system for wielding economic pressure, intelligence and diplomacy – that Britain will need if it is serious about operating in a Stage‑6 world.

Meanwhile, Mark Carney’s proposal for a new “defence, security and resilience bank” – offering loans for military procurement – has crept back onto the table after an earlier British veto. It is a telling development: an attempt to conjure new financial plumbing to fund rearmament without owning the tax rises. In a Stage‑6 environment where “capital wars” become more likely, building defence spending on yet more leverage is a bet, not a solution.

Mood music is not strategy

The temptation after Munich is to exhale. The speeches were warm. The photos looked good. There was no rupture on stage.

That is precisely the risk. The underlying messages have not changed since Vance stood at the same podium a year earlier. The United States considers the post‑Cold War settlement finished, expects allies to carry much more of the cost of their own security, and is re‑basing its strategy on hard power and civilisational identity rather than institutions and rules. The financial system, as Dalio keeps pointing out, is drifting in the same direction: away from assumed stability and towards a world in which power, not paper, arbitrates disputes.

For Britain’s governing class, the task now is to stop being reassured and start being honest. That means revisiting defence timelines with real urgency, treating the DIP delay and Treasury ceiling as strategic problems rather than internal process, approaching European defence cooperation without the hang‑ups of the Brexit years, and seeing industrial and financial vulnerabilities as core security issues, not side notes.

It also means resisting the urge to treat Britain’s new civilisational politicians as a sideshow. If the country is going to shift towards their rhetoric, it will need to do the harder work of building a national security cadre that can match that rhetoric with competence. A Britain that swings towards anti‑institutional politics without that groundwork risks giving Washington what it wants rhetorically while weakening what it needs in practice: a serious, technically capable ally that can plan beyond the next news cycle.

Rubio came to Munich with warm words and hard conditions. The warm words were heard. The conditions are what matter.