Baumgartner reflects on being sole House Republican at Munich Security Conference amid crises in Iran, Ukraine and beyond

WASHINGTON – Since its inception in the Cold War-era Germany of 1963, the Munich Security Conference has become the premier gathering of U.S. and European elected leaders and military officials, so Rep. Michael Baumgartner wasn’t going to let a little lapse in federal funding stop him from attending for the first time.

When an official delegation of House lawmakers to the annual event was canceled as the result of the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security over Democrats’ objections to the killing of two Americans by the department’s immigration agents, Baumgartner decided to pay his own way to Germany. That made the freshman lawmaker from Spokane the only House Republican in attendance, putting him in a unique position to hear from traditional U.S. allies and carry his own message to world leaders.

“It’s important for the United States and Europe to work together to meet our shared global challenges, but that needs to come with some tough love to the Europeans – that they do have to be more capable with their military,” he said. “That starts with a mindset of appreciation and defense of our shared cultural tradition.”

Baumgartner reflected on the trip in an interview Wednesday, after returning home to Spokane, and shared extensive notes from the three-day event that took place Feb. 13-15. He said he made the trip not only because of his role on the House Foreign Affairs Committee but also because what happens around the world matters to Washington’s 5th Congressional District, from the role Fairchild Air Force Base plays in global conflicts to the importance of foreign markets to the region’s economy.

“Europe feels, essentially, very weak at the moment,” he said. “Because of their lagging economic growth, their inability to project their military, the lack of innovation on the continent. And they have some real tough choices to make, because they’ve had really expansive social welfare states and they need to make some tough decisions on how they’re going to have a capable military.”

His trip to Munich came at a crucial time for world affairs, as President Donald Trump asserts U.S. power around the globe, deposing Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and threatening to attack Iran for the second time in less than a year if the Middle Eastern country’s government doesn’t capitulate to U.S. demands. Baumgartner’s message for Europeans echoed that of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose remarks at the summit on Feb. 14 paired “tough love” rhetoric with an appeal to the common cultural and religious bonds that connect the United States and Europe, describing a single civilization that must be celebrated and defended from perceived threats both internal and external.

Saying that “the United States will always be a child of Europe,” Rubio drew a sigh of relief from many European leaders for his contrast with Vice President JD Vance, who scolded Europeans in the U.S. keynote address a year earlier for embracing immigrants and sidelining far-right political parties.

“Vance gave a chewing-out and Rubio gave a pep talk,” Baumgartner said. “Rubio was more diplomatic and reassuring and, I think, fairly Reaganesque in the way that he wove the shared cultural anecdotes through to end on a bit of an inspirational note.”

Despite the difference in tone, Rubio’s message was in line with the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy. He urged the Europeans to bolster their militaries, denounced those who constrain their own economies to combat climate change as a “cult” and warned that mass migration “threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture and the future of our people.”

“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” Rubio said, calling for “an alliance ready to defend our people, to safeguard our interests, and to preserve the freedom of action that allows us to shape our own destiny – not one that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations.”

The son of Cuban immigrants, the secretary of state spoke of his family’s roots in Italy and Spain, saying the United States’ story began when Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who landed in the Caribbean but never set foot in continental North America, “brought Christianity to the Americas and became the legend that defined the imagination of our pioneer nation.”

“We are part of one civilization – Western civilization,” Rubio said. “We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”

Asked how people whose ancestors lived in the Americas before Europeans arrived, or were brought there against their will from Africa, fit into that conception of the United States, Baumgartner said, “It’s a very left-wing, woke mindset to focus on this sort of apology, defeatism aspect of Western culture.”

“No one is saying that Western culture is perfect, but it’s also the culture that ended slavery, the culture that revitalized democracy and the culture that freed the world from the tyranny of Marxism, communism and fascism,” he said. “So on balance, there’s a heck of a lot more there to celebrate. But you have to have a basis of confidence, and Europe doesn’t have confidence now.”

Recalling his recent trips to India and China, Baumgartner said those countries celebrate their history and culture to build a sense of national pride.

“It will be very difficult for the U.S. and the West to meet our shared adversaries and global challenges if it’s rooted in apology, sorrow and defeatism,” he said. “Which is one of the reasons why the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, had so many psychological and information operations to try to eat away at the basis of pride in Western culture and what the West accomplished.”

India is a democracy with a government dominated by Hindu nationalists whose policies discriminate against people of other faiths, according to a 2025 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. China’s ruling Communist Party has enacted a policy of “Sinicization” that forces Christians, Muslims and other religious and ethnic minorities to comply with Chinese traditions and show loyalty to the state, according to a 2024 report by the same commission, a bipartisan group created by Congress.

Baumgartner said it was good to hear Europeans’ concerns first-hand, including on Trump’s threats to seize the semiautonomous territory of Greenland from Denmark, which have subsided at least temporarily after the secretary-general of the NATO alliance brokered a deal that seems to have appeased the U.S. president.

The Spokane congressman has advocated the United States buying Greenland, saying it would be a good use of taxpayer dollars, but opposed a U.S. military takeover of the island.

“It should be noted that the recent tensions over Greenland clearly were a much bigger deal in Europe than they were back home,” Baumgartner wrote in his notes. “One high level German politician told me that they shook Europe’s view of relations with America to the core.”

The conference in Munich preceded a week in Washington, D.C., that was unusually focused on foreign policy, partly because Congress was in recess.

On Wednesday, Trump’s preferred envoys for international negotiations – his son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate developer Steve Witkoff – oversaw two sets of talks in Geneva that aimed to resolve the war in Ukraine and force Iran to give up its nuclear program. On Thursday, Trump hosted the first meeting of his newly created Board of Peace at the U.S. Institute of Peace – a research institution his administration forcibly took over in March and renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in December – to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza.

Speaking Wednesday, before Trump told reporters on Friday that he was considering another strike on Iran to pressure the country’s leaders into capitulating, Baumgartner said he thought the odds of a breakthrough in the talks over either Iran or Ukraine were low.

“I think there needs to be increased pressure put on Vladimir Putin in terms of how much his economy is being impacted by sanctions on his oil revenue,” Baumgartner said of ending the four-year war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On Iran, he said the fundamental problem “is that the Mullahs that run Iran are essentially a messianic death cult that firmly believes that God is going to help them spread their version of Shia Islam across the globe.”

“The main issue right now with Iran is their ballistic missile program, which, although we hammered the heck out of their nuclear program, they still have a lot of ballistic missiles that we saw them use against Israel,” Baumgartner said. He also wants to see Iran end its support for proxy groups in other countries, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Summing up the challenge the United States faces on the world stage, Baumgartner said the Trump administration has a realistic approach, asking Europe to take on more of the security burden after U.S. taxpayers have borne that burden in the decades since World War II.

“We’re $39 trillion in debt,” he said. “We’re running annual 20% budget deficits. We have an aging nuclear arsenal and we’re flying bombers and tankers that are over 50 years old. We have a Navy that needs to be updated. And we have ongoing threats of imperialistic, war-mongering Russia, Islamic terrorism and a rising China that wants to bully its neighbors and supplant the U.S.”

Baumgartner said going to Germany gave him the opportunity to speak with people he may not otherwise have met, including a dinner he attended with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other leaders. At a lunch organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany, he said, he met Microsoft President Brad Smith and other U.S. business executives.

The congressman said that level of access was probably a function of being the only House Republican who made the trip and the fact that his close friend, James Miller, is the top U.S. diplomat in the Bavarian capital. Baumgartner worked with Miller, now U.S. consul general in Munich, when the two men were in Iraq with the State Department.

“I said to both groups that I work for people in Eastern Washington, and these issues that these folks talk about have to be talked about in a way that voters like mine can support, and there’s very few of my voters who have any idea what the words ‘rules-based international order’ mean,” Baumgartner said. “That sounds like globalist, European techno-talk.”

What his constituents do understand, Baumgartner said, is an appreciation of shared cultural traditions, “whether it’s Oktoberfest in Odessa or Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral in Downtown Spokane.”

“That’s what Americans will actually appreciate, so if Europe wants the support of my voters to meet shared global challenges, which I want to work towards building, they have to converse in a way that my voters will support and understand,” he said. “So there’s a real, practical reality to what Rubio was saying.”

In his notes from the trip, Baumgartner wrote that he was leaving his first Munich Security Conference with some great insights and great contacts. One of his favorite comments at the event came from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whom he quotes as saying, “We must be on the side of good. Anyone who thinks everyone can be bought must also realize he is saying that anyone can be sold.”

Underscoring the transatlantic bonds that were the theme of the U.S. delegation in Munich, the congressman wrote that he met a fellow Baumgartner – local politician Clemens Baumgartner, a candidate for mayor of Munich and the man in charge of the city’s Oktoberfest – at a gala dinner at the former palace of the Bavarian monarchs.

“We had a good laugh,” the congressman wrote. “Apparently, he is the underdog to win the mayoral race, but said that whatever happens I am most welcome to be his guest at a future Oktoberfest. I in turn told him that I have a major campaign fundraising event called ‘Baumtoberfest’ in Spokane’s old German hall. Hopefully we can get ‘Cousin Clemens’ out to Washington state someday, lol.”