While some saw the remarks as reassuring, key European leaders renewed calls for more independence from the U.S. amid tensions over issues like Greenland and Ukraine.

The secretary of state was much less caustic in Munich than Vice President JD Vance was a year ago. But European officials said his core message was much the same.

A fter World War II, peace-loving Sweden began working on a nuclear bomb to stave off a feared Soviet invasion. But in the 1960s, the Scandinavian nation scrapped the program under pressure from the United States, whose nuclear arsenal has shielded Europe for about 80 years.

America sought a “reinvigorated alliance”, he argued, rather than abandonment of Europe. Russia was not winning the war in Ukraine, he added later, contradicting the line of Mr Vance and other Ukraine-sceptical voices in the administration.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to paper over cracks in the relationship between the U.S. and Europe in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, though foreign diplomats were less convinced t

"We live in a new era in geopolitics," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Europe ahead of the Munich Security Conference.

Donald Trump had only just regained the White House when his acolytes dealt Europe two verbal sucker punches in the solar plexus.

Europe is divided over its future relationship with the United States, with some countries looking to decouple and guard against wild swings in U.S. policy, while others fear any break with its nuclear-armed superpower will leave the continent vulnerable to Russian aggression.

In a speech at the World Economic Forum last month, Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Union’s executive body, repeatedly stressed the bloc’s need for “independence.”

While the Epstein files have not directly led to any new investigations in the United States, several European nations are engulfed in scandal.