European bigwigs had hoped meeting new members of the Trump team face-to-face at a security jamboree in Munich from February 14th would ease the awkwardness. The opposite happened. J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, used what might usefully have been a speech on how age-old allies could better work together in the age of Russian aggression to instead castigate his hosts on their dodgy way of life. He excoriated Europe for supposedly stymying free speech, doing too little to control migration, and “censoring” nationalist politicians. Europeans have spent the past three years fretting about the fate of Ukraine at Russia’s hands, and wondering whether the Baltics may be next. Not Mr Vance. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor,” he said. “What I worry about is the threat from within.” Quoi!!??

The reaction to Mr Vance’s speech ranged from bemusement to outrage, then panic. It was more than European pride being wounded by being spoken to in the style their forebears once used to lecture wayward colonies. Rather, Europeans started to worry about the wisdom of having their security underpinned by today’s America. It takes a certain type of politician to travel to a security conference—one being held closer to Ukrainian territory than Washington is to Chicago—to suggest in effect that America did not see the point of defending Europe if its values were not MAGA-compatible. Mr Vance had, during the campaign, casually floated the idea that America should drop support for NATO if Europe tried to regulate X, a social-media platform that happens to be owned by Elon Musk, a key Trump apparatchik. If that had been a shot across the bow, his Munich diatribe was a torpedo aimed squarely at the heart of the transatlantic relationship.

Mr Vance’s hectoring did not sting Europe by delivering hard-hitting truths from a friend. Much was wide of the mark, as if dredged up from the shadier bits of the internet. Europe does indeed have less permissive laws than America on free speech. But what it curtails most often is the kind of social-media bilge, from terrorist content to rape videos and Russian propaganda, that even liberals agree authorities need to control. Assertions that hard-right parties are “censored” sit awkwardly with the fact that a slew of such politicians are in office in Europe, and the Alternative for Germany could win over 20% of the vote in German elections on February 23rd. (Two days after being granted an audience with Mr Vance, the party’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, took part in a nationally televised debate—some censorship.) That some centrist parties until recently misread the public mood when it comes to immigration is true. Many have been punished at the ballot box accordingly. So far, so democratic.

As for some politicians choosing not to enter coalitions with hardened nationalists: that may be bad politics, but is hardly undemocratic. (Mr Vance glossed over the fact that his Republicans are completely allergic to dealing with the Democrats whose presidential candidate won over 48% of the vote last November.) To bang on about free speech just as his boss was banning the Associated Press from the Oval Office for calling the Gulf of Mexico just that seemed, at the very least, odd timing. Mr Vance was at his most convincing—a low bar—when he questioned why Romanian authorities annulled an election in November, after a populist candidate came top in the first round supposedly with concealed Russian backing. But coming from a man who clings to the Trumpian lie that the American election in 2020 was “stolen”?

He came, he saw, he harangued

A stray line in Mr Vance’s castigation has caused particular angst in Brussels. By wryly referring to “EU commissars”, the veep rekindled a concern that the MAGA crowd has a deep loathing for the union at Europe’s heart. That is perhaps unsurprising. It is the EU that administers trade matters on behalf of its 27 member states. Its “commissioners”, as they are in fact known, enforce rules on social media that so rile Messrs Vance and Musk. Co-operation between the Biden-era White House and the European Commission, for example on Russian sanctions, gave Brussels officials added heft. If, as seems likely, the Trump administration freezes them out, it would have an enduring effect on how Europe is run.

In the run-up to the Munich melodrama, many Europeans had worried about being snubbed by their most important ally. Many politicos had hoped to persuade Mr Vance to give Europe a seat in the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, for example. Repeated emergency summits of European leaders were called, to ponder what the continent must do next. Once they would have focused on how to deal with Russia. The real question now is what to do about America.

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