If you follow these things closely, you may have seen a clip of the chairman of the Munich Security Conference breaking down in tears, unable to speak any further while reflecting on Vice President JD Vance’s speech there. This breakdown is remarkable because the chairman, Christoph Heusgen, is not a minor apparatchik but a sophisticated and knowledgeable official who was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s national security adviser from 2005 to 2017.

He had a front-row seat to Merkel’s epochal decisions — to shut down nuclear plants in 2011, admit 1 million Muslim male “refugees” in 2015, and hold defense spending far below the 2% level sought by the second Obama and first Trump administrations. His previous appearance on social media came when, as head of Germany’s United Nations delegation in 2018, he led his colleagues in laughing derisively at President Donald Trump’s criticism of Germany’s reliance on Russian natural gas.