Marco Rubio in Munich and the Paleo-Western Renaissance

It has been germinating for decades, but a year ago, the first clear signals of a paleo-Western renaissance began to emerge in the political sphere. This was mainly in the United States (US) but also in other Western communities. Still frail and riddled with baleful animosity, primarily from the quarters of globalist progressivism, the paleo-Western renaissance now appears way more potent than twelve months ago.

The signals are many, some subtle and others more overt, such as US Vice-President JD Vance’s address on 14 February 2025 at the Munich Security Conference and the US National Security Strategy released in November 2025.

Most unequivocal, however, is the address of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, once again at the Munich Security Conference, on 14 February 2026.

Rubio’s address has the makings of one with historic significance. Its goal was to call forth, emphatically, a major turn in the fate of Western civilisation. Even if the effects of these words are yet to decisively manifest, Rubio’s rhetoric and intention should be of paramount importance to all, especially Westerners, wherever they might be, including Western communities in South Africa.

Rubio’s speech, eliciting a standing ovation from his mainly European audience, announced the arrest of a seemingly declining Western civilisation that has been on a downward slope since World War II and envisaged a new age of Western valour and achievement, based mainly on the reinvigorated Western alliance comprising the US and Europe.

Primordial foundations

The paleo-Western renaissance Rubio has in its sights would have as its authentic basis no less than the restoration of the primordial foundations of the West, including:

- the Christian religion expressed not in suffocating fundamentalisms or extremes but in core convictions of the Christian faith – gratitude to our omnipresent and forgiving God;

- the inquisitive and reflexive Athenian passion for wisdom and erudition;

- the Roman inspiration for law and statecraft; having reached magnificent heights, among others, in Roman Dutch and English common law; and

- the freedom-seeking spirit of Western man marked by its spirit for (re)creation, discovery and experimentation, and consecutive renaissances over the ages (as highlighted for example by French historian/philosopher Rémi Brague.

It seeks to manifest not in some dominant ideology but in the continuity of an encompassing culture based on the unbroken partnership, as Edmund Burke said, “not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”.

The paleo-Western renaissance cherishes individual freedom and responsibility, not, mind you, of individual atoms in a deceptively imagined, amorphous globalism, but cultivated in communal wholes of which people form part – families, clans, linguistic and ethnic communities, peoples (Afrikaans: volkere), and the whole of our Western civilisation.

Western civilisation has its place not in a vague haze of individual yet homogeneous atoms, but, as Samuel Huntington described, as one civilisation among many: Chinese, Islamic, Orthodox, Indian, Japanese, African, and others.

In this vision of a paleo-Western renaissance, the West proudly owns its singular achievements over the centuries. It renounces progressivism’s baleful envy and guilt, which reproaches the West’s achievements as irredeemable sin. Westerners are instead absolved to continue their track record of accomplishment with vigour and gratitude, wherever they might be, whether in Western Europe, America, Australasia, South Africa, or elsewhere.

Marco Rubio’s Munich Address

Speaking specifically to Europeans, most devastated by the World Wars and then for decades by the self-inflicted ideological ravages of globalist liberal progressivism, Rubio passionately embraced Western civilisation as “our permanent and precious treasure”. He called upon Western Europe, together with the US, to cooperate forcefully for the reinvigoration of the West.

The Magnificent West

Incarnating the zenith of human achievement, Western civilisation is no mean feat. Hence, what should be rediscovered is not merely “the polite pretense that our way of life is just one among many.” No, the Western alliance, consisting of Western Europe and the US, should be “above all, an alliance based on the recognition that we, the West, have inherited together … something that is unique and distinctive and irreplaceable, because this, after all, is the very foundation of the transatlantic bond”.

In Rubio’s reasoning, there is no trace of civilisational timidity, progressivism’s insistence on Western self-denial or suicidal guilt. States Rubio: Western civilisation is “a great civilisation that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny. It is worth defending. After all, it was Europe that gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution, that produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Da Vinci… the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel and the towering spires of the great cathedral in Cologne, testifying not just to the greatness of our past or to a faith in God that inspired these marvels. Moreover, there are wonders awaiting us. But only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we together begin the work of envisioning and shaping our economic and our political future.”

The new alliance to be built, Rubio states, must be strong and obviously not operating as a global welfare state and atoning for the purported sins of past generations.

Reinvigoration

The address was a forceful call to reinvigorate the Western alliance – much more than a renewed military alliance, but one primarily marked by its cultural vigour, anchored in and propelled by a shared civilisational heritage and aimed at achieving new heights for Western civilisation. This Western civilisation of ours and of which we are the heirs, Rubio proclaimed, is “a great and noble civilisation”.

Europe and the US, Rubio stated, “are part of one Western civilisation … 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 civilisation to which we have fallen heir”. Europe and the US “are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally”. The US and Europe must together fend for this great civilisation.

This is why the US wants Europe to be strong, and its allies to be proud of their culture and of their heritage, “who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilisation.”

America, Rubio stated, was founded 250 years ago, but its roots go back to Europe long before. Those who settled and built the US arrived on American shores carrying the memories, traditions, and Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new. “We will,” Rubio stated with reference to Americans, “always be a child of Europe.”

“The US is now once again taking on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as powerful, and as vital as our civilisation’s past. And while we are prepared,” Rubio stated, “if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and hope to do this together with you, our friends in Europe.”

“For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.”

However, since 1945 decline set in. Yet, the future of the West is not destined to be “a faint and feeble echo of our past”. Like our predecessors, “we know that decline was a choice, which, like them, we refuse to make. Americans will not be polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline. Americans wish to revitalise the old friendship with Europe and renew the greatest civilisation in human history,” he said, adding, ”The only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger, and wealthier for our children.”

Identify and Overcome Forces of Civilisational Erasure

Rubio avows the commitment to rebuke and deter the forces of civilisational erasure that today menace both America and Europe.

In consequence, he warned against the uncontrolled globalist pursuit of a world without borders, which has led to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that “threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. We made these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.”

Mass migration, Rubio underscored, “is not … some fringe concern. It … continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilising societies all across the West.”

Hence, it is incumbent on the West to “gain control of our national borders”. Failure to do so is an abdication of “our most basic duties owed to our people and an urgent threat to the fabric of our societies and the survival of our civilisatio”.

The Western alliance, premised on the shared Western civilisation, should also be directed toward reconstituting a Western economy. Hence, the West should limit its economic dependence on the states outside the Western fold. The West should also advance its mutual interests and new frontiers, unshackling our ingenuity, our creativity, and the dynamic spirit to build a new Western century. There should be a Western economy, comprising commercial space travel and cutting-edge artificial intelligence; industrial automation and flex manufacturing; creating a Western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers.

“Acting together in this way, we will not just help recover a sane foreign policy. It will restore to us a clearer sense of ourselves. It will restore a place in the world, and in so doing, it will rebuke and deter the forces of civilisational erasure that today menace both America and Europe alike.”

Rubio explained how in the face soviet Communism after World War II: “Thousands of years of Western civilisation hung in the balance… But we were driven by a common purpose … not just by what we were fighting against; we were unified by what we were fighting for.”

Without mentioning Francis Fukuyama by name, Rubio rejected his “end of history” thesis, as set out in his 1992 book, TheEnd ofHistory and theLastMan , that liberal democracy has finally triumphed. It is a “dangerous delusion”, causing us to act against our own interests, Rubio stressed.

Rejecting this globalist liberalism (operating in unison with progressivism), Rubio stated that the belief that every nation would henceforth be a liberal democracy, that the ties formed by trade and commerce alone would replace nationhood and national interest, and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone becomes a citizen of the world, is false. Moreover, the so-called rules-based global order is “an overused term” that fails to reflect the realities of human life and international politics. It is oblivious to human nature and the lessons of over 5 000 years of recorded human history.

Columbus

Affirming the US’s European roots, Rubio traces the history of the US back to Columbus, whose adventure into the great unknown brought Christianity to the Americas – and became the legend that defined the imagination of the pioneer nation of the US. This was a nation eventually made up of English settlers, to whom the US “owes not just its language, but the whole of our political and legal system, Scots-Irish, Germans, French Dutch, Spanish, and Italians”.

Rubio declared in conclusion that the US wishes to go into the future together “with a Europe that is proud of its heritage and history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation and of liberty that once sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilisation; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive. We should be proud of what we achieved together, but now we must confront and embrace the opportunities of a new era.”

Western Civilisation in South Africa

Rubio’s address is as important for South Africa as for the US, Europe, and Western communities wherever they may be. African states are mainly the products of successful colonial-imperialist endeavours of the erstwhile European powers, primarily Britain, France, and Portugal. In the case of the South African state, British imperialist enterprise and, before that, Dutch initiatives.

South Africa has a populace and a South African citizenry, but there is no South African nation. Historian Hugh Seton-Watson, like many others, clearly highlighted in his Nations and States that a nation, unlike a state, is a community of people whose members are bound together by a sense of solidarity, a common culture, and a common national consciousness. Thus viewed, South Africa is no nation-state, but a multi-nation state. Moreover, and important in the present context, South Africa is also a multi-civilisation society. Here, African and Western civilisation meet, while Islamic and Hindu civilisations also maintain a permanent presence.

The Afrikaners, descending from the Netherlands, Germany, and France, among other nations from Western Europe, are a nation – a recent one – within Western civilisation deriving its language from the Netherlands. The English in South Africa, too, derive their language from England and their culture from the British Isles, various European nations, and also from Afrikaners.

Yet, both share in that great and noble Western civilisation Rubio speaks of. And both, like Europe and the US, are in Rubio’s words part of one Western civilisation bound by the deepest bonds, forged by a shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, and ancestry. All are close civilisational kin.

And the Western peoples in South Africa, like the Americans in Rubio’s words, are “children of Europe”. Like the early European explorers and inhabitants of what became the USA, the first Euro-Africans also first explored the coasts of Africa in the fifteenth century and settled in Southern Africa in the seventeenth century.

The same forces, including progressivism and globalist liberalism seeking the erasure of Western civilisation elsewhere, are also perniciously operative in South Africa. These forces of decadence are also a peril facing other civilisational groups in South Africa, albeit to a lesser extent and less obviously at present.

Moreover, all in South Africa suffer from the destruction of the South African state’s incompetent oligarchy.

Samual Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations is now three decades old since publication in 1996, and is proving to be prophetic. It announced the re-beginning of centuries-old civilisational and inter-civilisational history and political dynamics – precisely what we are now witnessing in the hoped-for paleo-Western renaissance.

Huntington, quite understandably, could not have foreseen the destructive effects of globalist liberalism on Western civilisation – and on all other civilisations.

But the suggestion in the title of the great Huntington’s work that civilisations are necessarily doomed to unavoidable clashes is not correct. Neither are nations irreversibly destined for deadly collision courses.

This is of particular importance for multi-civilisational and multi-nation states such as South Africa. State policy in South Africa should therefore not try to achieve the impossible by imposing a single political and social order or a single statist nation.

Renouncing a single order and a single nation for South Africa is no big deal, however, because there is no need for such an order or nation in a state. What South Africa does have, as perceptive journalist Allister Sparks observed, is some kind of South African mind, which includes adequate commitment to peace and mutual care, and most crucial, to mutual recognition for our communities, nations, and civilisations in this part of the African continent, sufficient to overcome destructive calls of race peddlers such as Julius Malema and the corrupt South African oligarchy, and to sustain a multi-nation and multi-civilisational society.