Rubio urges renewed Western alliance, reindustrialization and tighter borders at Munich Security Conference

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio told the Munich Security Conference that the transatlantic alliance ‘‘saved and changed the world’’ and must be rebuilt to meet new strategic challenges.

Rubio opened by recalling the conference’s Cold War origins and the threats then facing Europe, saying the post‑Cold War belief that liberal democracy and unfettered globalization would automatically prevail was ‘‘a foolish idea’’ that ignored historical realities. He argued those assumptions had contributed to deindustrialization, loss of supply‑chain sovereignty and the offshoring of millions of middle‑class jobs.

Why it matters: Rubio framed economic policy, migration and defense as linked parts of a single…