February 15, 2026

The Trump administration’s white nationalist project was on full display this weekend at the 62nd Munich Security Conference that took place from February 13 to 15, 2026. The Munich Security Conference is the leading international forum for discussions of security policy. It was begun in 1963, at the height of the Cold War, to be an independent venue for experts and policymakers to discuss the most pressing security issues around the globe.

While the USSR absorbed neighboring countries as satellites, the U.S. and its allies and partners embraced a theory that international relations could achieve permanent peace so long as they emphasized representative democracy, economic interdependence, and international organizations. The equality, shared norms, and costs for wars that this system built, the theory went, along with new mechanisms for negotiation, would prevent global military conflict like those the world had suffered twice in the early twentieth century.

Since World War II, those values have reinforced civil rights and created opportunities for women and people of color, created dramatically higher standards of living around the globe, and prevented global wars. But the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 changed global calculations. Rather than defending the tenets of democracy, American leaders focused on spreading capitalism into the newly accessible states, arguing that democracy and capitalism went hand in hand.

At home, the end of the Cold War meant that the extremist Republicans who hoped to destroy business regulations and slash taxes, as well as halt infrastructure projects and end civil rights protections, no longer had to work with Democrats to stand against the USSR. They focused on getting rid of those they called the American “left,” a term that for them included not just Democrats but also Independents and traditional Republicans in the mold of President George H.W. Bush, who believed the government had a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights.

Extremist Republicans attacked their opponents as socialists even as their tax cuts and deregulation were moving money dramatically upward: at least $50 trillion moved upward from the bottom 90% to the top 1% between 1975 and 2020. Republican leaders and media figures fed their audiences the story that the middle class was imploding not because of Republican policies but because undeserving Black people, people of color, and feminist women demanded government handouts. This narrative fueled Trump’s political rise. ...