Marco Rubio reminds Europe — and the world — what the Western Alliance is all about

Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a truly terrific Valentine’s Day address at the Munich Security Conference, laying out the deep ties entwining the United States with Europe — while firmly laying down America’s worries about how the Old World is abandoning our shared heritage.

Above all, he aimed to rally our allies to return to their senses.

He won huge applause with this reassurance: “In a time of headlines heralding the end of the trans-Atlantic era, let it be known and clear to all that this is neither our goal nor our wish — because for us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.”

Crucially, he traced the divisions within the alliance to the “dangerous delusion” that with the fall of Soviet Communism “every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood,” that some “global order” could “replace the national interest” in “a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.”

Those fantasies have now produced a West challenged to even defend itself, let alone preserve “the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.”

The United States remains loyal to our common heritage; under President Donald Trump, “America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past.”