The Answer America Cannot Give

I. The Diagnosis Is Correct

On 14 February 2026, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference that should not be ignored — not because of what it says, but because of what it exposes. Rubio spoke of a Western civilisation that, after the fall of the Wall, succumbed to a "dangerous delusion": the illusion that history had ended, the nation-state was overcome, and borders had become obsolete. What followed, in his account, was a chain of deliberate misjudgements: deindustrialisation as a political choice, the outsourcing of sovereignty to international institutions, an energy policy serving a "climate cult" rather than the people, and mass immigration undermining the cohesion of Western societies.

The diagnosis, in its broad strokes, is hard to dispute. Europe's deindustrialisation was no natural disaster — it was the result of a policy that favoured cheap imports over domestic production and systematically ignored the consequential costs of destroyed regions, lost expertise, and strategic dependencies. The European Union's energy policy has driven prices upward while competitors — China, India, the United States itself — wield cheap energy as a weapon in economic competition. And the delegation of decision-making power to supranational institutions has created a layer of bureaucratic rule that is neither controlled by the voter nor understood by the citizen.

Up to this point, Rubio's speech could pass for an honest stocktaking. But then comes the therapy — and that is where the problem begins.

II. The Wrong Therapy

Rubio's answer to the crisis of the West can be summarised in one sentence: America leads, Europe follows. The United States will "once again take on the task of renewal and restoration," and it hopes to do so "together with you, our friends here in Europe" — where "together" is a polite circumlocution for "under our leadership." The instruments are classical: reindustrialisation, military strength, border control, reform of international institutions, civilisational pride.

What Rubio offers is, at its core, a renewal of the old order — a stronger, more self-assured, more patriotic version of the West, but structurally the same game. Stronger states. Stronger armies. Stronger borders. Stronger alliances. The model is hierarchical: at the top stands a leading power that sets the direction. Below it stand allies expected to follow — strong enough to be useful, but not so strong that they pursue their own path. In Franz Oppenheimer's language: this is the political means in its enlightened variant. Rule through strength, not through regulation — but still rule.

Rubio wants no custodians of decline, as he put it. That is a good line. But what he wants instead are custodians of a renewal steered from Washington. He does not want weak allies — but he wants allies, not equals. He wants a Europe proud of its heritage — but a Europe that places that pride in the service of an alliance whose rules are written by others.

III. What Rubio Cannot Say

There is a truth no American Secretary of State will ever utter, because it calls into question the very foundation of their power: the West's problem is not weakness. It is the structure of power itself.

Rubio laments that Europe has ceded sovereignty to international institutions. But he does not notice — or does not wish to notice — that the United States itself is the largest "international institution" to which Europe has delegated its sovereignty. Since 1945, European security architecture has been built on the American nuclear umbrella. Europe's economic order follows the rhythm of the dollar and the Fed. Europe's technology landscape is dominated by American corporations whose terms of service are written in California. When Rubio calls on Europe to be more sovereign, he does not mean: free yourselves from us. He means: pay more for the protection we provide.

Rubio laments deindustrialisation. But he omits that Europe's deindustrialisation did not happen against American wishes — it happened with active American encouragement, because every factory that closes in Europe and reopens in Asia or America strengthens the relative position of the US. The transatlantic division of labour, in which Europe consumes and regulates while America produces and commands, is no accident — it is a business model.

And Rubio laments the EU's bureaucratic apparatus. Rightly so. But he has no interest in Europe replacing that apparatus with something better — with a system of self-governance that no longer requires American leadership. Rubio wants a Europe that is less bureaucratic and more military. Oppenheimer wanted a Europe that needs neither, because its citizens govern themselves.

IV. The European Void

Europe's response to Rubio was predictable and dispiriting. Relief that the tone was friendlier than Vance's a year earlier. Gratitude for the assurance that America did not wish to "separate" from Europe. And in the same breath, the hurried promise to increase defence spending, fulfil NATO commitments, to be a better, more expensive, more willing ally.

What Europe did not do — what it has not done for decades — is formulate its own answer. Not a reaction to Washington's demands, but a vision originating from Europe itself. Not the question: what does Washington want from us? But the question: what do we want from ourselves?

Rubio is right when he says that decline is a choice. But it is also a choice to respond to an American speech by offering oneself up as a better alliance partner, rather than saying: we have heard what you want. Now hear what we want.

That this answer is missing is no coincidence — it is a symptom. It is the symptom of a political class socialised within bureaucratic structures and therefore capable of thinking only in categories of administration: percentages of GDP for defence, compliance with NATO targets, drafting of council resolutions. It is the symptom of a career-track democracy in which nobody rises who has uncomfortable visions, only those who manage the status quo. And it is the symptom of a culture that has forgotten how to think in categories of the possible, because it has spent decades regulating the existing.

V. What Oppenheimer Would Say to Rubio

Imagine for a moment that Franz Oppenheimer were sitting in Munich's Bayerischer Hof and had just heard Rubio's speech. What would he say?

He would acknowledge the diagnosis. He would nod at the criticism of deindustrialisation, of the illusory politics after 1989, of sovereignty delegation. And then he would say: Mr Secretary, you describe the symptoms correctly. But your therapy is the same disease in a different dosage.

For what Rubio proposes — stronger states, stronger alliances, stronger borders — is the political means in its most ambitious form. It is the belief that the solution to the problems of rule is more and better rule. That the answer to failing institutions is stronger institutions. That you drain the pond by installing a bigger frog.

Oppenheimer would counter: the problem is not that the West has become too weak. The problem is that it has strayed too far from its own principles. Western civilisation, of which Rubio is so proud, is not founded on strength — it is founded on freedom. On the idea that human beings can govern themselves without need of a ruler. On the conviction that voluntary cooperation is more productive than subjugation. On the principle that monopolies — whether on land, on capital, on permission, or on security — are the greatest obstacle to a just society.

Rubio celebrates Western civilisation. Oppenheimer would ask him: do you mean the civilisation of the Magna Carta and the Enlightenment — or the civilisation of NATO and the Pentagon? For those are two different things.

VI. The Acratic Answer

The answer Europe owes Rubio — and itself — lies not in choosing between American allegiance and defiant rejection. It lies in a third option that never appears in the Munich debate, because it fits none of the usual categories: neither transatlantic nor anti-American, neither nationalist nor supranational, neither left nor right.

That answer is acracy. The evolution from bureaucratic democracy to self-governance without rule. Not as utopia, but as a compass — a direction against which every single decision is tested: does it bring citizens closer to self-determination, or does it take them further away?

What would that mean concretely, as a response to Rubio's demands?

Rubio demands reindustrialisation. The acratic answer goes further: yes, Europe must rebuild its industrial base. But not as a state-directed armaments project in the service of an alliance — rather as a decentralised, cooperative network of self-responsible producers. The model is not Lockheed Martin — it is Mondragón: the Basque cooperative group that demonstrates industry works without corporate rule, works even better in fact, because the people who do the work also make the decisions.

Rubio demands military strength. The acratic answer asks: against what? The greatest threat to Europe today is not a conventional invasion — it is internal erosion: the emigration of the best, the ageing of societies, the loss of industrial competence, the suffocation of every initiative under regulation. No tanks can counter that threat. Only the liberation of productive forces from the bureaucratic chains that paralyse them. This does not mean Europe needs no defence. It means that a society incapable of governing itself is not worth defending — not in the long run.

Rubio demands border control. The acratic answer agrees — for a different reason. Not because borders are ramparts of identity, but because uncontrolled migration undermines the principle of subsidiarity: if the communities that are supposed to decide their own affairs locally cannot determine who belongs to them, self-governance is impossible. This is not a nationalist argument — it is a democratic one.

Rubio demands reform of international institutions. The acratic answer radicalises that demand: not only the UN and NATO need reforming — the EU itself must transform from a bureaucratic central authority into a voluntary cooperative. Not imposed from above, but grown from below. Not as an empire that exports regulation, but as a confederation that practises subsidiarity. The Europe that Oppenheimer envisioned — a Europe of free cooperation between equal communities — is the counter-model to both Brussels bureaucracy and Washington hegemony.

VII. Why Only Europe

Rubio said something truer than he perhaps intended: that America will always remain a "child of Europe." Historically, that is correct. But it has a consequence Rubio does not draw: if America is the child, it cannot simultaneously be the father. A child telling its parents how to live has confused the roles.

Europe has something America does not: the memory of failure. Of two world wars fought on this continent. Of totalitarianism from left and right. Of the experience that strength alone is not enough — that it is, on the contrary, the surest road to catastrophe when wielded without wisdom. This memory is no cause for shame, as Rubio rightly says. But neither is it cause to copy the American model of strength without self-doubt.

Europe also has something America never developed: a tradition of cooperative thought, running from Robert Owen through Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen to the Mondragón experiment. A tradition of subsidiarity, alive in Swiss communal democracy and in the Scandinavian trust between state and citizen. And it has Franz Oppenheimer — a thinker who knew both failure and hope, and who developed from both a vision that is neither left nor right, neither statist nor anarchist, but something third: the overcoming of rule through the abolition of monopolies.

America cannot give this answer because it stands in a different tradition. The American idea of freedom is individualistic: freedom from the state, freedom of the individual, freedom of the market. Oppenheimer's idea of freedom is cooperative: freedom through the shaping of a society in which no one can rule another — not through violence, not through monopoly, not through bureaucracy. That is a genuinely European thought. And it is for Europe to think it.

VIII. What Europe Should Say

If a European statesman — assuming one existed who deserved the title — had stepped to the podium at Munich's Bayerischer Hof on 14 February 2026 after Rubio, he could have said the following:

Mr Secretary, we thank you for your frank words and your diagnosis, with which we largely agree. The West indulged in illusions after 1989 that have been dearly paid for. Deindustrialisation, sovereignty losses, energy dependence, the migration crisis — all these are realities we must confront.

But we reach different conclusions than you.

You demand that we grow stronger. We agree. But our strength will not come from the Pentagon and not from NATO. It will come from a renewal of our societies from within — from the liberation of our citizens from a bureaucracy that paralyses their energies, and from building an economy in which the people who work also make the decisions.

You demand that we take greater pride in our heritage. We agree. But our heritage is not only the Sistine Chapel and Cologne Cathedral — magnificent as they are. Our heritage is also the cooperative movement. The Enlightenment. The idea of subsidiarity. The vision of a society that governs itself without rule. That heritage is richer and more radical than anything ever conceived in Washington.

You say you do not wish to be custodians of decline. Nor do we. But neither do we wish to be custodians of your renewal. We want our own renewal — and it begins not with the question of what America expects of us, but with the question of what we expect of ourselves.

The answer is: acracy. A society that governs itself. No empire, no alliance, no subjugation — cooperation among equals. That is the European answer you cannot give. But we can give it. And we will.

That is how it could have sounded. That is not how it sounded. That is never how it sounds. And that is the real catastrophe.