Foolish Europe and the Enfant Terrible of the United States

MILITARISM, 16 Feb 2026

Yurii Sheliazhenko | World BEYOND War - TRANSCEND Media Service

Munich, Germany

15 Feb 2026 – In U.S. culture, the primary meaning of the word “Munich” is a bad deal leading to a world war.

The just-completed Munich Security Conference, held on February 13-15, was all about preparation for a big war, with Ukraine House showing AI-generated video of Russian drones attacking European cities, and with these words from Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the event: “It is not written in the Bible that 450 million Europeans need 350 million Americans to defend themselves against 140 million Russians.”

People on the streets, however, demanded peace. Pacifists came to protest against this NATO war conference, holding an Anti-Siko-Demo, chanting “Make peace without weapons!”, bearing banners with the slogans: “Prepare for peace, not for war”, “Let’s stop the arms race!”, “No advertising for death”, “Refuse all military service”, “Hands off Gaza and Palestine”, “No peace with NATO”.

Iranian opposition demonstrated against the militarist policies of their government and the violent crackdown of protests. The Ukrainian diaspora held a rally called “Together against war”.

Also, during the same days as the war conference, the 24th International Munich Peace Conference was held by conscientious objectors and peacebuilders, who took the stage to challenge the narratives of the big war conference. Apparently, nobody came to these protests with messages of Russian war propaganda, as warned by the so-called “Defense Intelligence” of Ukraine, which is hostile to all peace advocates and invented on this occasion a conspiracy theory that the peace movement of Europe is led in Munich by three little-known puppets of the Kremlin, two of whom are actually banned from entering the European Union.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to Munich with a message that the U.S. government wants to defend “Western civilization” together with Europe, which means that European countries must prepare for war, raise armies, and buy more U.S. weaponry, “so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength.” He invited Europe to President Trump’s path of “action” without “fear of war” and made clear that this path is free from “abstractions of international law”.

Lamenting weaknesses of diplomacy, the chief U.S. diplomat accused the United Nations of not being able to bomb Iran, invade Venezuela, and contain “barbarians” in Gaza like U.S. leadership had supposedly done. After all, it is an old habit of “civilization” to exterminate barbarians without mercy, for example, to supply to the Israeli army abundant weaponry of genocide, including thermobaric munitions that evaporated thousands of Palestinians.

European leaders attending the show welcomed Rubio’s remarks, and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that only the United States can stop Russian wars of aggression — as he believes, by weapons supplies and sanctions rather than diplomacy.

A key disagreement at the war conference was who is the main adversary of the West: for Rubio, it is China, but for European “leaders” it is Russia. In both cases, Rubio claimed to support attempts to navigate peacefully the troubled waters of differing “national interests” before having an old-style bloodshed. Perhaps “civilized” people, with all their nuclear-threatening contempt for the weaknesses of diplomacy, still have enough common sense to engage in negotiations with those whom they fear and want to trick — and that is the main difference between civilized people and barbarians, isn’t it?

The solemn cult of war at Munich was disturbed by overtures of political circus when Rubio declared the United States “a child of Europe” and started to scold the parents who politely looked in the other direction, for they were satisfied regarding arms supplies and assurances from the military alliance with the “enfant terrible”.

It was a foolish idea, said Rubio, to hope that every nation would be a liberal democracy, that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood, that the rules-based global order would replace the national interest, and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world. He attacked Europe for being open to migrants and for adopting policies to survive climate change even if it cut corporate profits.

Rubio’s main accusation was that European nations “invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves” — i.e. spent taxpayers’ money on improving their lives and not on enriching U.S. shareholders in the arms industry.

Rubio added a reminder that the U.S. and Europe belong to one Western civilization with shared culture, including Christian faith, Dante, and the Beatles.

Was he aware that, being no barbarians who forget their heritage, the civilized listeners of this speech might have unintended recollections after his references?

Christ called to make peace, love enemies, and welcome strangers, and predicted that the whole world would be united in the kingdom of heaven. According to the Bible, humans are called to care about the garden of nature, and one day nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

Dante placed those violent and greedy in hell, where warmongers would drown in the river of blood.

When Rubio admitted that he hates Europe for the best aspirations and deeds that have made the West tolerable and even attractive to the rest of the world, it is a shame that nobody reminded him of these things, and also that the Beatles sang: “When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out” and “Get back to where you once belonged “.

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Yurii Sheliazhenko is a director of the Institute of Peace and Law based in Kyiv, Ukraine, also council member of the International Peace Bureau and War Resisters’ International, board member of World BEYOND War and the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection. He holds a PhD in jurisprudence.

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