Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned that Europe risks destroying the “shared culture” of the West and in turn weaken bonds with the United States.
At a press briefing from the Department of State in Washington DC on Friday, Secretary of State Rubio doubled down on the assertions made in the White House’s National Security Strategy memo, which declared that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” if it continues globalist policies of mass migration and attacks on fundamental liberties such as freedom of speech.
The memo has riled feathers in Europe, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz saying that many aspects of the document were “unacceptable to us from a European perspective”. Meanwhile, the unelected head of the European Commission — the executive arm of the EU — Ursula von der Leyen demanded that the United States not “interfere” in European democracy.
Responding to the pushback, Secretary Rubio said on Friday: “You go to these NATO meetings and you meet with people, what they will tell you our shared history, our shared legacy, our shared values, our shared priorities. That’s what they talk about as the reason for this alliance.
“Well, if you erase your shared history, your shared culture, your shared ideology, your shared priorities, your shared principles, then what – then you just have a straight-up defense agreement. That’s all you have.”
Mr Rubio said that the Untied States was founded on “Western values” such the principles of liberty, individualism, and self-governance, and noted that “many of these ideas that led to the founding of our country found their genesis in some of these places in the Western alliance.”
However, the Secretary said that the Trump administration is “concerned that, particularly in parts of Western Europe, those things that underpin our alliance and our tie to them could be under threat in the long term.”
“And by the way, there are leaders in those countries that recognize that as well. Some say it openly. Some say it privately. In the eastern and southern part of Europe, they’re much more open about it. Nonetheless, it is a factor that needs to be addressed,” he said.
Rubio specifically pointed to the problems surrounding mass migration, citing the recent Islamist terror attack at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Australia as an example.
“Mass migration over the last decade has been highly disruptive, not just to the United States but also to continental Europe and in some cases in the Indo-Pacific as well. So I just think this is a real challenge that multiple Western advanced, industrialized countries are facing, and I think it’s pronounced in parts of Europe as well,” he said.
Rubio differentiated immigration from “mass migration”, which he said is a “negative thing” as it is “very difficult for any society to absorb and assume hundreds of thousands if not millions of people over a short period of time, especially if they come from halfway around the world.”
“I think it’s a growing concern in Europe. I mean, there are other voices in Europe and obviously in Australia as well that have expressed concern about this. These are facts. This doesn’t make you anti-anybody. What it makes is you do have as a sovereign country the right to control how many people you absorb and how many people you allow in and who those people are. This is a very basic sovereign right.”
