The vice-president’s speech on Friday was another wake-up call for European leaders. On defence and in other areas, they need to chart their own course

In 2007, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech to the Munich security conference that stunned western diplomats by launching an unforeseen assault on the post-1989 international order. The United States, alleged Mr Putin, had perniciously manufactured a unipolar world “in which there is one master, one sovereign”. Seven years later, Russian forces illegally occupied Crimea, and Moscow-funded separatists seized swathes of territory in eastern Ukraine, in what turned out to be the precursor to full-blown invasion.

Nearly two decades later, the disturbing speech at the same venue by the US vice-president, JD Vance, may prove to be similarly significant as the geopolitics of the 21st century continue to shift. Mr Vance had been expected to concentrate last Friday’s remarks on Ukraine, after a week in which Donald Trump appeared to be unilaterally preparing to negotiate a ceasefire deal entirely on Mr Putin’s terms. Instead, he used his platform as a pulpit from which to berate the US’s European allies on issues such as multiculturalism, migration and the regulation of social media. Indefensibly, the Trump administration now actively cheerleads for far-right parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, whose leader, Alice Weidel, he chose to meet in Munich.