Europe's feeble democracies

Dear Reader,

If you haven’t seen it already, it’s worth watching US Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday. On the surface at least, he ignored the conference’s raison d'être - international security - and instead dedicated his speech to attacking Europe for what he sees as a slide into Soviet-style authoritarianism.

Name-checking an annulled election in Romania, the Brandmauer against the AfD, and the increasing tendency of European states to censor people for posting unwanted opinions on social media, he warned that, in its confrontation with Russia, an authoritarian Europe will no longer be sure what it is fighting for.

“If you are running scared of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” he stated.

Given that Europeans are convinced that the shoe is on the other foot and that the US is sliding into authoritarianism, Vance’s speech led to fuses short-circuiting across the continent.

The Germans were up in arms, particularly over h…