Remarks by the current vice president and his predecessor defined the dramatic change in American foreign policy that has unnerved traditional allies.
MUNICH — Vice President Mike Pence made his case for “America First” in the deeply hostile territory of an annual conference of America’s closest European allies on Saturday. He was not deterred from repeating his demands that Europe withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, ban Chinese gear from global communications networks and accelerate its increases in contributions to NATO.
Mr. Pence received a predictably tepid response, mainly from a crowd of visiting Americans. They included a number of Republican members of Congress who came here to Munich, along with the Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at a fraught moment in the trans-Atlantic relationship.
Hours later, Mr. Pence’s predecessor, Joseph R. Biden, received a brief standing ovation after delivering an impassioned rebuttal to the Trump administration’s treatment of allies, in what appeared to be the foreign policy plank of a campaign for president — if he decides to run.
“I promise you, I promise you,’’ Mr. Biden said. “This too shall pass. We will be back. We will be back.” He never defined “we.”
Taken together, the two men defined the dramatic change in American foreign policy that has left the traditional allies who gather at the Munich Security Conference in despair, and has led the Trump administration to embrace newer, far more authoritarian allies in Central Europe. Mr. Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spent the week visiting several of them, in a European tour that bore little resemblance to similar trips taken by administrations past.
“The contrast is between a new foreign policy that focuses on America first and expects others to do as we say no matter what,” said Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO and now the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, “and the old foreign policy of working together in pursuit of common values.’’
Mr. Pence did acknowledge significant progress in getting more NATO members to live up to their commitment to contribute 2 percent of their gross domestic product to defense by 2024. Even the current secretary general of the NATO alliance, Jens Stoltenberg of Norway, said on Saturday that “European allies are stepping up more for defense.
