In a speech on February 14, 2026, at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated:
“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.
But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.
Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West’s age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.”
Source: Rubio, M. (2026, February 14). Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference [Speech transcript]. U.S. Department of State. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-at-the-munich-security-conference
On July 29, 1958, the National Security Council Planning Board wrote:
“[I]f we choose to combat radical Arab nationalism and to hold Persian Gulf oil by force if necessary, a logical corollary would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-West power left in the Near East.”
Source: U.S. Department of State. (1993). Foreign relations of the United States, 1958–1960: Near East region; Iraq; Iran; Arabian Peninsula (Vol. XII, Doc. 35). Office of the Historian. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12/d35
On July 29, 1958, the National Security Council Planning Board wrote:
“The coup d’état in Iraq accelerated the deterioration of the Western position in the Near East. The fall of the Iraqi monarchy has further reduced the possibility of carrying out a policy to develop the Arab Union as a counter-weight to the UAR. Other conservative Arab regimes face increased internal opposition and most are now leaning toward Nasser. The introduction of U.S. troops in Lebanon and U.K. troops in Jordan has been interpreted as further identifying the United States as the opponent of Pan-Arab nationalism. Soviet support of the Pan-Arab nationalist movement and of Nasser has also been greatly highlighted. Popular feeling in the Arab world, even in such states as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, is generally favorable to the Iraqi coup and hostile to U.S. intervention in Lebanon and U.K. intervention in Jordan.”
Source: U.S. Department of State. (1993). Foreign relations of the United States, 1958–1960: Near East region; Iraq; Iran; Arabian Peninsula (Vol. XII, Doc. 35). Office of the Historian. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12/d35
On June 11, 2013, an official study commissioned by the European Parliament's Directorate-General for External Policies identified Wahhabism as a primary source of global terrorism.
Source: Moniquet, C. (2013). The involvement of Salafism/Wahhabism in the support and supply of arms to rebel groups around the world. European Parliament, Directorate-General for External Policies. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EXPO-AFET_ET(2013)457137