UNITED STATES Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave the green light to European leaders for a new era of colonialism. 

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Mr Rubio offered partnership between the US and Europe to recolonise the global South.

He said: “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.”

With no mention of mass genocides or the enslavement of around 20 million Africans, Mr Rubio complained that “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 swathes of the map in the years to come.”

Mr Rubio, who polls reveal to be the most popular of the leading Republicans, then explained 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 recognised that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.”

He added: “This is what we did together once before and this is what President [Donald] Trump and the US want to do again now, together with you.”

Mr Rubio received a standing ovation from European politicians keen to re-establish themselves as leaders on the world stage. 

Before the speech European leaders expressed scepticism over the future commitment of the US to the Nato military alliance.

Opening the conference on Friday German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the so-called international rules-based order “no longer exists” and that the world has entered an era “openly characterised by power and, above all, great power politics.”

He acknowledged the “rift between Europe and the US,” and ‬urged Europe to rely on its own strengths to safeguard its interests and values.‬

French President Emmanuel Macron insisted on Friday that Europe must learn to become a “geopolitical power” and must reduce its overdependencies.‬

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told the conference on Saturday that “hard power” was the currency of the age.

Sir Keir called for a “more European Nato” and stressed that Europe must “stand on its own feet” to protect its people and way of life.‬