On February 14, in a dizzying and convoluted speech delivered to an enthousiastically applauding audience at the Munich Security Conference, the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, unfolded a brief history of the Western empires and their American colonies. “For five centuries before the end of the Second World War,” so Rubio, “the West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.” Referring to the period when this “pouring out” inundated the Eastern shores of the American continent, he thankfully noted how it gave rise to “colonies” that “were built by English settlers, to whom we owe not just the language we speak but the whole of our political and legal system.” (*)
Altering the Colonies’ British Systems of Government
While it can’t be denied that most of the earliest settlers spoke the English language and that the British colonies they established owed their political and legal system to the British Empire, the whole of what Rubio described as “our political and legal system” is owed to the anti-colonial Americans who revolted against and fundamentally rejected the British imperialist system of government. In their Declaration of Independence, they clearly stated: “… when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”
“Here I am …”
Secretary Rubio squarely placed himself in the post-colonial tradition of Independence, anti-imperialism and “new Guards” for the future security of the united States, by informing his audience that in 1776, “… in the year that my country was founded, Lorenzo and Catalina Geroldi lived in Casale Monferrato in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. And Jose and Manuela Reina lived in Sevilla, Spain. I don’t know what, if anything, they knew about the 13 colonies which had gained their independence from the British empire, but here’s what I am certain of: They could have never imagined that 250 years later, one of their direct descendants would be back here today on this continent as the chief diplomat of that infant nation. And yet here I am, reminded by my own story that both our histories and our fates will always be linked.” If anything, Rubio’s “own story” links the United States with Cuba, from where his Cuban parents emigrated in 1956, just before Fidel Castro came to power.
Dissolving the “links”
In any case, whatever “links” Secretary Rubio may have had in mind, in 1776, all political “links” between the vast “Western” Empires and the 13 united States were radically severed when, as it was so succinctly stated in the Declaration of Independence, “in the Course of human events, it became necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitled them.” The dissolution was followed by the replacement of the Western colonial system of Government with the infant nations’ anti-colonial system of independence and unconditional respect for Man’s unalienable rights: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Enemies in war, in Peace Friends
Even the links between peoples’ “own stories” did not survive the discontinuation of an era of dependence unscathed. As the Declaration provides: “We [have] been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”
The Path of War
Speaking of this year’s expenditure of 1.5 trillon US dollars on America’s military interventions around the globe, Rubio staunchly defended it by reminding the Security Conference’s attendants of the fact that “[i]n a perfect world, all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats and strongly worded resolutions. But we do not live in a perfect world, and we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate. This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon. It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on. It is a path we have walked together before and hope to walk together again.”
Making Empires Great Again – the MEGA Doctrine
On this path to glory, Europe must regain the will to restore the imperial and imperialistic power which it lost as the result of fighting 2 World Wars in an unsuccessful effort to maintain its vast Empires. “In 1945”, so Rubio, “for the first time since the age of Columbus, [the West] was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.” Rubio strongly advised European leaders to embrace the MEGA Doctrine and Make what’s left of their former Empires Great Again.
Soldiers, soldiers, and nothing but …
In other words … now that, over the course of 250 years, the united States of old were taken over by that brandnew Empire named the United States of America, the “Western” Empires of old must reverse their “terminal” decline and join the American Empire in fighting “those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens, endanger our global stability and shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate.” With this statement America’s chief diplomat declared diplomacy to be a thing of the past and a waste of time. The missionaries, pilgrims, explorers and diplomats such as Marco Rubio can stay home. Let’s cut to the chase. What the West needs is what it used to have in abundance … soldiers, soldiers and nothing but soldiers.
Armies, armies, and that “perfect world”
According to the American Empire’s Chief Diplomat, since we don’t live in a “perfect world” we have no other option than calling in the military to bomb our way to that “perfect world”. In Rubio-double-talk: “National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series of technical questions – how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it, these are important questions. They are. But they are not the fundamental one. The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. 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.”
Security …. for what ?
Yes, Mr. Rubio. Sounds great. But what kind of “great civilization” is it that you are actually defending ? Is it the “great civilization” that, for centuries, the Western Empires poured out over their colonies across the globe ? Or is it that “great civilization” that the Founders of the united States had in mind when they declared and established their independence and decided that such civilizations can only survive when Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed for the sole purpose of securing Man’s unalienable rights. As Secretary of State you probably know that Thomas Jefferson, your very first predecessor in office and main author of the Declaration of Independence, was acutely aware of the fact that States have a habit of securing the pursuit of their own happiness rather than that of their peoples and so become Empires that blatantly and openly threaten and tyrannize their own citizens. Truly Great Civilizations last only for as long as their Governments exclusively use the powers given to them by the governed to secure and defend the latters‘ rights to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.
The Hollow Men
As T.S. Eliot, the great poet who witnessed the demise of the British Empire, wrote in his poem The Hollow Men, “this is the way the world ends – not with a bang but with a whimper”. This is the fate of “Great Empires” when they are being ruled by Men in whose hollowness resounds nothing but the Will to Power. In the words of that same poet, they are “the stuffed men – Leaning together – Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” Their “dried voices”, when they “whisper together – Are quiet and meaningless – As wind in dry grass – Or rats’ feet over broken glass”, in their “dry cellar”.
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(*) Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference; Remarks; Hotel Bayerischer Hof; Munich, Germany; February 14, 2026. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-at-the-munich-security-conference
