Rubio is expected to avoid taking Vance’s abrasive approach but, when asked if he was planning to be more conciliatory, he said that Europeans “want to know where we’re going, where we’d like to go, where we’d like to go with them”.
Macron will also address the conference on Friday, having told the World Economic Forum in Davos last month that now was “not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism”.
After a week of turbulent domestic politics, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will also travel to Munich, where he is expected to hold meetings both Merz and Macron, before addressing the conference on Saturday.
Conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, in a report ahead of the event, said: “For generations, US allies were not just able to rely on American power but on a broadly shared understanding of the principles underpinning the international order.
“Today, this appears far less certain, raising difficult questions about the future shape of transatlantic and international co-operation.”
The former German diplomat said the White House’s foreign policy “is already changing the world, and it has triggered dynamics whose full consequences are only beginning to emerge”.
Upon arrival in Munich, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the conference would bring “new steps toward our shared security – that of Ukraine and Europe”.
On Friday, Russia and Ukraine announced that a new round of peace talks also involving the US would take place in Geneva on 17-18 February, aimed at bringing Russia’s full-scale, four-year invasion to an end.
The three countries recently held talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with no apparent breakthrough – though Ukraine and Russia carried out a rare prisoner of war exchange shortly after the meeting.
Rubio met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the sidelines of the conference on Friday, as Washington and Beijing seek to ease tensions over a number of issues including trade and tariffs, as well as Taiwan.
Last week, China’s President Xi Jinping called Taiwan “the most important issue” at stake between the US and China during a phone call Trump.
Xi also told the US president to be “prudent” when supplying weapons to the self-governing island, which Beijing views as a breakaway state it has not ruled out taking by force and which has long been supplied militarily by the US.
Iran’s nuclear programme – which Tehran maintains is peaceful – is also expected to draw focus in Munich.
Trump has threatened military action against Iran if it does not agree a new deal to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.