One year after U.S. Vice President JD Vance attacked European allies at the Munich Security Conference, Washington¡¯s partners will be seeking to chart a more independent course, while preserving the basis of the alliance.

Vance¡¯s 2025 speech at the annual gathering of top security officials triggered a year of unprecedented transatlantic confrontation, with the United States seemingly set on dismantling much of the international order it helped to build. This year¡¯s meeting, which begins on Friday, also comes against a backdrop of multiple conflicts, including war in Ukraine, ?Gaza and Sudan.

¡°I cannot remember a time when we had more simultaneous wars, crises, and conflicts of that dimension,¡± Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German diplomat who heads the ?forum, told a ?gathering earlier this week.