MUNICH — Trump administration officials have taken a markedly warm — even friendly — approach to European allies this weekend at the Munich Security Conference. But the message itself is uncompromising: Join Donald Trump’s campaign to reshape the world for Washington’s benefit, or get out of the way.

The U.S. sent more than half a dozen senior officials to the annual global confab of government officials and security professionals. It was, in some ways, a rare instance of the Trump administration engaging with the exact types of multinational institutions that it has excoriated over much of the last year.

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby earned praise in the corridors of the grand Bayerischer Hof hotel for conciliatory remarks that called for the U.S. and its allies to work together to secure Europe. Secretary of State Marco Rubio received a standing ovation when he said in his Saturday speech to the conference: The U.S. and Europe “belong together.”

But between the backslapping in the hallways and swigs of mai tais at Trader Vic’s, a tiki bar inside the Bayerischer Hof where former Sen. John McCain once held court with bipartisan delegations, European officials vented. The tone from the U.S. had changed, attendees said, but the perception that the Trump administration would like to see a Europe whiter and more right-leaning had not.

Officials understand the U.S. message is join us, and “if you’re not, we go alone,” a European official said. “Of course, we want to be with the U.S.” While the U.S. wants to dispose of the so-called rules-based international order, “for us the rules-based part is very important.”

Such concerns didn’t bother the delegation, representing an administration that has only been further emboldened after Trump’s attack on Iran last year, its capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and a recent threat to seize Greenland.

Rubio on Saturday participated in a G7 meeting. But he snubbed a gathering with European allies on Ukraine Friday evening, citing scheduling constraints. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said the U.S. wanted to express urgency this year but “not throw everybody into a panic.”

“We just need to, every single day, chop wood and carry water, ignore all of the political noise,” he said Saturday in an interview at the POLITICO Pub in Munich.

But Rubio’s marquee speech fell flat to many on the sidelines. More than a dozen European officials expressed concern that few of America’s policies toward Europe have changed despite Rubio’s promise of a “common destiny” with transatlantic allies. And some who had fashioned themselves as model allies by spending billions to boost their arsenals with U.S. weapons were still wondering when their long-promised arms would show up.

“The underlying message was the same: We don’t want weak allies, don’t defend the old order,” said one former European official, who like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about a close ally. “If the smallest common denominators the Americans can find are our common history going back to Columbus, narrow national security interests and common civilization, that alone shows how far apart Europe and the U.S. are drifting.”

While many Europeans found parts of Rubio’s speech to love, he did not exclude reference to the MAGA culture wars some in the administration are pushing on the continent. Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, a European leader known to have one of the best rapports with the president, said Europe would not embrace such ideals.

“MAGA means anti-EU. It means anti-liberal world order. It means anti-climate change. That’s the ideological undercurrent” guiding U.S. foreign policy, he said in a Saturday interview in the POLITICO Pub.

Behind closed doors, American officials were more candid about their antagonism. Colby, for example, told an audience at a private side event at Munich that the U.S. shared interests, but not values with Europe.

“He expressed readiness to work together, but a clear message that Europe must step up, and that we have moved from a ‘value-based world’ to an ‘interest-based’ world,” said one of the participants.

The sidelines of the conference last year were filled with ashen-faced European diplomats stunned by Vice President JD Vance’s harsh criticism of the continent’s democracies. This weekend in Munich, there was at least the appearance of healing.

After Rubio’s speech, diplomats who had been holding their breath waiting for another American browbeating took time out of back-to-back bilateral meetings to smoke cigarettes and play chess in the courtyards of the conference’s two connected hotels. Even U.S. officials, who kept their European colleagues at arms’ length last year, were a fixture in the hallways and on the sidelines.

Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, spent much of his time at the conference at the POLITICO Pub, hobnobbing with his colleagues from allied nations and setting up an impromptu office in a cabana. He had a cordial run-in with the Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen in a patio between the connected hotels making up the conference grounds.

But the happenings at this annual forum are not likely to resonate much in Washington. Trump’s advisers want to see him focus more on domestic issues. And Vance’s team told European officials he would not attend the gathering as vice presidents usually do to focus more on the administration’s domestic agenda, one diplomat said.

Other European officials at the conference said Washington’s strategic messaging could not obscure its approach to the continent since Trump returned to power.

“I’m worried about denial,” Alice Rufo, French deputy defense minister told reporters, referring to the national security strategy released late last year suggesting Europe’s civilizational decline.”We need to read the [U.S. administration’s] documents. They are very clear.”

While Rubio hit the right notes, his travel on Sunday and Monday to Hungary and Slovakia — EU and NATO countries which have drifted in a more nationalist and pro-Russia direction — sends a strong message.

“Marco Rubio comes with a conciliatory tone, but then he goes to Hungary and Slovakia. What kind of a signal is that?” a European lawmaker said.

Some European officials, though, said Rubio delivered a stern message the continent needed to hear.

“It is a milder way of telling us that the time of unicorns riding bicycles across rainbows laced with tofu and almond milk is over,” an EU official said. “This is not simply about being reassured or not. It is about whether we want to live in reality or in an artificial la la land of big announcements.”

Laura Kayali, Jacopo Barigazzi and Paul McLeary contributed to this report.