Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a blunt message to European politicians, generals, media figures, and influencers in Germany on Valentine’s Day: protect your culture, secure your borders, and invest in technology instead of importing chaos.
“We want allies who are proud of their culture … and able to defend it,” Rubio said, drawing a standing ovation from the audience. His speech amounted to a polite but firm rebuke of Europe’s dominant left-wing parties, which he said are dissolving their nations through mass migration, civic disorder, ballooning welfare spending, and low-tech poverty. Romance is overrated—common sense is better.
Rubio urged Europe’s elites to adopt a low-migration, high-tech strategy that preserves national culture, boosts productivity and innovation, and expands wealth-creating trade with developing nations in Asia and Africa. In other words: build prosperity, don’t import dysfunction.
His remarks echoed Donald Trump’s January address to global leaders and JD Vance’s comments last November, reinforcing a unified message from the administration: borders matter, and technology beats dependency.
Rubio warned that mass migration strips nations—and even the 27-member European Union—of their ability to defend themselves.
“Armies do not fight for abstractions,” Rubio said. “Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.” Try putting that on a protest sign.
In January, Trump told world leaders that high-tech productivity is better than high-migration poverty. He noted that America’s once-open and dangerous border is now closed and virtually impenetrable, and that the country is experiencing one of the fastest economic turnarounds in its history.
Trump criticized the old Western consensus that growth required endless government spending, unchecked mass migration, and foreign imports—along with shipping “dirty jobs” overseas, replacing affordable energy with the “green new scam,” and importing entirely different populations to prop up failing systems.
He blamed that failed model on the policies of Joe Biden and other Western governments, saying it produced record deficits and the largest wave of mass migration in human history.
“Virtually all of the so-called experts predicted my plans would cause recession and runaway inflation,” Trump said. “We have proven them wrong … In one year, our agenda has produced a transformation like America has not seen in over 100 years.”
Rubio’s message to Europe was simple: follow the proven path, not the failed one. With strong borders, advanced technology, and pride in national culture, Western nations can secure their future and restore their strength—and that’s a strategy worth standing up for.
