What happened on 14 February 2025 at the 61st Munich Security Conference? Instead of taking the stage to rally European nations against Russia as expected, US Vice President JD Vance went in a completely different direction, criticising them for their lack of democracy and loss of their (truly) liberal values. Apart from a lot of noise in the mainstream media, mostly expressing anger and outrage at Vance's "unfounded" criticism, we haven't heard any clear voices telling us why this happened. Then, as if it hadn't happened at all, the speech was quickly forgotten, at least by the media, replaced by other more explosive and unusual events (not to be easily forgotten), such as the open confrontation between Vance, Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office two weeks later.

Vance's statement was simply titled "The U.S. in the World" in the organisers' programme. At the very beginning, Vance said he wanted to talk about "our shared values", the values of the Western world. So it was not just about the US in the world, as announced. It was about Western culture. He then went on to express his love for Germany and his sympathy for the victims of the 'terrible attack' in Munich the day before the conference. An Afghan man rammed a car into demonstrators in Munich, injuring many, including children. The attack was later described as an act of jihadism. "We are thinking about you," Vance said, "we are praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come." In short, we are together and we will not let each other down. We're friends.

Immediately after this kind-hearted opening and show of friendship, Vance said, "I hope that's not the last applause I get." This conference is about security, he said, rightly noting that when we talk about security we usually mean "threats to our external security". But the threat he was worried about for Europe (and here the applause stopped) "is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor". It was the "threat from within". “What I worry about,” he said, “is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.” And he went on to give examples of overturned election results (Romania) and possible similar action in Europe's most powerful state, Germany. "I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team," he said. “We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them.” He reminded Europeans of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, the communists who censored dissidents, closed churches and cancelled elections, and thanked God they lost the Cold War. They lost because they rejected freedom. And unfortunately, he believed, the same attack on freedom was taking place in Europe and the United States. Freedom of conscience, the most basic liberal value, was being suppressed: the targets were Christians, anti-feminists, pro-lifers. Any alternative opinion to the mainstream narrative was dismissed as 'misinformation'. It looked as if 'old entrenched interests in Europe were hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation' to validate their power and political repression. He then turned to foreign policy, saying that Europe must play a greater role in the future of this continent. A more independent Europe, allied to the United States, would allow America to focus on areas of the world that are in great danger.

The speech only briefly touched on security from external threats. It indirectly suggested that Russia was not a real danger to Europe and strongly emphasised that Europe's biggest problem was its own authoritarian tendencies. This argument is, in fact, a typical Catholic critique from the Augustinian tradition. For Augustine, Rome was corrupted and eventually destroyed by its internal vices and conflicts, its diminishing respect for freedom and its pagan, non-Christian beliefs. Warning that Trump's policies will be in the opposite direction to the liberal avant-garde interests of today's Europe and the former Biden administration, Vance ended his speech with an appeal to elites to give people the freedom to choose the policies they want, and to trust and respect people's judgement and voice. After all, democracy is the power of the demos, the people.

So, to ask again, what happened on 14 February 2025 at the 61st Munich Security Conference? An American vice-president criticises his allies in Europe, accusing them of authoritarian, neo-communist ways of doing politics. He tells them that they are in danger if they don't turn to the traditional liberal-conservative values that the Trump administration hopes to represent, and also hints at a reduction in US military support for Europe. Why Vance gave this speech is clear from the speech itself. The Trump administration, and Vance himself, are presenting the American Christian voter. It doesn't mean that this is a Christian administration, or that Vance is a true Christian. Augustine, one of the most revered Christian authorities on political matters, clearly said that who is godly and who is not, whose love is directed where - to God (meaning truth and salvation) or to the world (meaning sin and damnation) - will be seen in the hereafter. In other words, a Christian upbringing, or Christian electoral support, or an expressed and fiery Christian faith clothed in the form of mainstream politics, doesn't guarantee Christ at the heart and source of inspiration. We don't know how sincerely Christian the Trump administration is, we do know that it has the ambition and incentive to be Christian, to appear Christian. And here is the connection I want to make, a connection that not many observers make: the Kremlin regime also presents itself as a Christian authority. Of course, the political Christian orthodoxy of the Kremlin has its own, specifically Russian characteristics. If American Christianity talks about freedom of conscience and democracy under God, Russian Christianity worships community and consensus and authoritarian rule under God's watch and blessing. And indeed, whether democracy or autocracy, from a Christian point of view a regime has value if it fulfils its duty to impose justice and order against the many vices and interests in human society.

So we have two major countries with imperial capacity and ambition, squeezing the periphery between them, facing a third major player - China - and sharing a common fundamental belief that these are nations blessed by the God of Christianity. Ideologically, the two countries are close and far apart. Close in terms of Christianity, and far apart in terms of political tradition and application of the Christian faith. The USA is the pinnacle of democracy, Russia the historical example of enlightened autocracy. Europe, on the other hand, is a post-Christian project, conceived by Christian Democratic ideas and politicians, but secularised and bureaucratised. Europe is secular because of Christianity and because of its old sectarian conflicts. Secularism is a Christian phenomenon. Europe represents a different tradition: a Christianity that sought over the centuries to become political and learned the futility of religious conflict, a continent divided by wars and political disputes, including the war between secular and religious authorities. At its best, Europe could not be autocratic, either religiously or politically; at its worst, it could be totalitarian and hyper-secular, atheistic, capable of the most terrible crimes. Stalinist Russia (which was still European, with Marxism as its ideology) and Nazi Germany are the historical representations of the worst of Europe.

The "collective West" was "buried" at the 61st Munich Conference, wrote Konstantin Kosachev, deputy speaker of the Russian Federation Council, in the Russian newspaper Izvestia shortly after the conference. This is his interpretation of what happened in Munich on 14 February 2025. It's hard to believe he was right. The US won't abandon the European nations completely. A regime change in Berlin, with the AfD at the helm, would quickly reverse the downward trend between the Trump administration and European elites. Or, alternatively, if the Democrats win the next US election, the Biden foreign policy would most likely be quickly revived. The Western political system is as flexible as a snake: it can reverse a policy direction according to current interests, and it is inherently combative. Factional and sectarian conflict is part of the Western political tradition. The unanimity of Eastern authoritarianism, the Christian Orthodox idea of a political symphony between spiritual and temporal power, is not familiar to Western societies. The Western political system functions on the basis of constant conflict, which historical experience has only made bloodless. Democracy as a political system was the result of political conflict between monarchy, aristocracy and bourgeoisie; it is a competitive system of internal political struggle. The European Union, on the other hand, was a response to the catastrophes of the First and Second World Wars. It is a peaceful community of nations, but one in constant dialogue and realignment of interests. Brexit has shown that it is also dynamic and difficult to keep still. So Kosachev is too quick to bury Western unity. That is the West: a permanent conflict. But the common interests of the West as a distinct political culture and civilisation will always be the same. And JD Vance doesn't indicate that America and Europe are parting ways. On the contrary, he is fighting the internal enemy, so to speak. The same enemy that the Republicans have in the American liberals. We are friends. We do not put each other down. But we have different interests and visions and we have to find a way to protect and promote them while living together. If Europe turns into a socialist paradise, a better version of the Soviet system, American conservatives have no choice but to fight it, along with Russian conservatives. But the US and Russia would never be as close as the US and Europe can be. Here we have two distinct civilizations with one Christian root. Only a common enemy brings Russia and the U.S. together, without such an enemy they can coexist but they cannot be an organic whole. 

The Munich Conference, according to Kosachev, was created in 1963 to "cement" the ideological unity of the West. It then became a platform for the US to teach its European allies about transatlantic solidarity. Here, he seems to be right, the task of bringing the Western allies together was easier back then - there was one powerful ideological enemy, Communist Russia, and one undisputed leader capable of stopping it, the democratic United States. After the end of the Cold War, however, there was no enemy. There was only one undisputed world leader. And so, according to Kosachev, the "collective West" became a threat to the rest of the world. This threat was defined at the same conference in 2007 by Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the time, Putin offered "alternative options for the coexistence of countries, but his ideas were rejected". Does Vance offer a plan for coexistence today? Probably not. The vice president speaks against the enemy within. He is not talking about Russia, but about the ideological divide between the American right and the European establishment of the left. According to Kosachev, Trump is indicating that the United States is distancing itself from its European allies, but he's not offering a plan for a just world order, as Putin did. The Russian senator believes that Trump "only wants a redistribution of roles, where everyone will be on their own". This interpretation of Munich in 2025 is typical of realpolitik. The United States is shedding its responsibilities and setting the stage for a global competition in which the strong win and the weak serve. This, according to the senator, carries even greater risks than the concept of a truly multipolar world offered by Putin almost twenty years ago.

What happened on 10 February 2007 at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy? The beginning of Putin's speech at Munich 2007 was very similar to Vance's: he began with a kind of apology that he was going to tell the "truth", knowing in advance the reaction of his audience. The conference was a stage where we could speak the truth, he said, not a place for "pleasant but empty diplomatic terms". "This conference will allow me to say what I really think about international security problems," he continued, asking Angela Merkel, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Javier Solana and the rest of the audience not to be angry with him. Again, like Vance, he knew exactly what he was going to say and how it would be received. The video of the conference captures the tension in the room and the scornful grimaces of some in the audience, especially John McCain.

Unlike Vance, Putin was not talking to natural friends. Europe and the United States were, at best, Russia's "partners". And he told the partners that "the security of one is the security of all". There are no external or internal enemies, as in Vance's mind, there is a world organism in which, as in a butterfly effect, a disturbance in one part has a direct or indirect effect on all parts. He recalled F.D. Roosvelt's wisdom that "when the peace is broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger".

Until recently there were two superpowers, a bipolar system, Putin said, which "ensured global security". And after the Cold War we were left with "ideological stereotypes, double standards and other typical aspects of Cold War bloc thinking". One might have expected Putin to continue with the usual adage about post-Cold War unipolarity, but no, he did not go down that route. For him, the world was not unipolar, America was not the ruler of the world. This was a surprising audacity for the leader of a state that had not only lost its international influence and most of its imperial territories, but was still in the grip of many economic and political problems. The reasons for Putin's refusal to accept the "obvious" - that the United States is now the undisputed leader of the world - are many, but perhaps the most important was that if Russia were to recognise America as the world's leader, it would legitimise the status quo. Russia doesn't accept the unipolar model. It never has. And Putin said why Russia is against unipolarity, leaving out, of course, the particular Russian interests and ambitions.

There are no 'external' and 'internal' enemies in Putin's speech, there is only one enemy: oneself. This is where Vance's and Putin's perspectives converge. What is a unipolar world? Putin asked. Was it something good? Was it, we might ask, Christian? Christian realist political theory has never accepted the world domination of a single secular ruler. One can start with arguments from the story of the Tower of Babel, go to the writings of the Church Fathers, and end with the political realism of George Kennan and assert, in the language of faith, that God designed the world so that no one nation should dominate the world. The balance of power is the only remedy for a sinful world. Vladimir Solovyov, one of the few Russian philosophers to propose the unification of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, wrote a book in 1900 in which he imagined the Antichrist as a great unifier of nations, a sovereign in a unipolar world.

What is a unipolar world? Putin asked. And answered: "One centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making." "It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day, this is pernicious not only for all those within the system, but also for the sovereign itself, because it destroys itself from within." Wasn't that Vance's main point? The internal enemy, or the enemy of oneself? Then Putin's speech went on to say that this certainly had nothing to do with democracy, adding another aspect to Vance's argument, because democracy is the rule of the majority, taking into account the "interests and opinions" of the minority. And now, Putin said, echoing Vance (or rather Vance echoing Putin), Russia is constantly being taught about democracy, but those who teach it "do not want to learn themselves".

The unipolar model, Putin concluded, is impossible today. Not only because it requires a lot of resources, but also because it has no "moral foundations." Today, he said, we are witnessing an almost uncontrolled hyper-use of force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflict, and the US is at the centre of this attempt at unipolarity. No one feels safe. "I want to emphasise this - no one feels safe!"

If we leave aside the purely moral and ethical arguments for rejecting the unipolar model, there are purely pragmatic reasons that make it practically impossible. The unipolar pressure, Putin said, was on a world that was changing, and there were emerging centres of power - India and China, whose GDP was greater than that of the US, and also the cumulative GDP of Brazil, Russia, India and China exceeded the GDP of the European Union. This was a trend that was going to accelerate.

Putin eventually turned to NATO, repeating the old question of against whom NATO enlargement was directed. And he quoted the Alliance's Secretary General, Manfred Woerner, who said on 17 May 1990 that "the fact that we are ready not to deploy a NATO army outside German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee." There were no guarantees, Putin insisted, adding, "We should not forget that the fall of the Berlin Wall was possible thanks to a historic choice - one that was also made by our people, the people of Russia."

Putin also spoke out against the USAID, which Trump has dismantled. On the one hand, he noted, USAID provided funding for programmes to help the world's poorest countries, while at the same time developed countries kept their agricultural subsidies. And "let's say things the way they are - one hand distributes charitable help and the other hand not only preserves economic backwardness but also reaps the profits thereof".

Putin's speech ended with a threat and an intention that will materialize in the coming years, disturbing unipolar ambitions and the world itself: "Russia is a country with more than a thousand years of history and has practically used the privilege to conduct an independent foreign policy". In other words, the unipolar model won't work, or at least will face major challenges. One thing Putin failed to say, or at least hint at, was that Russia shares with the United States the ambition to be a nation with a mission in the world. The United States and Russia share similar historical ambitions. Both countries see themselves as bearers of world history and sources of global change. Alexis de Tocqueville once predicted that the future belonged to the United States and Russia. The 20th century made us think he might be right. Then the fall of the Soviets led us to believe that the future belonged to the US alone. Now we are faced with these two great nations, in conflict and yet coming together, and a new player, long ignored because of geography - China. It's hard to say who the future belongs to, but the Munich Security Conference showed that there will be no unipolar world, and now both the US and Russia agree on that.

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Tsoncho Tsonchev (Ph.D., McGill University) is the author of The Political Theology of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Reinhold Niebuhr: Essays in Political Theology and Christian Realism (The Montreal Review, 2018) and Person and Communion: The Political Theology of Nikolai Berdyaev (The Montreal Review, 2021).

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