MUNICH, Germany — The U.S. is being much less offensive at this year’s Munich Security Conference but one of Europe’s top Trump whisperers sees it as a shift in tone, not substance.

“American foreign policy has changed,” Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland and occasional golf buddy of President Donald Trump, said in a live interview with POLITICO, pointing to the U.S. National Security Strategy that reserved some of its harshest remarks for American allies in Europe and recent messaging from senior officials.

The American approach combines ideology and hierarchy, he said: “One is ideological: It’s very MAGA … and then the second strand is America First.”

His comments came after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a speech in Munich that touched on Make America Great Again themes, highlighting Europe and America’s common heritage and shared Christian values, and also underlined that the U.S. still sees European countries as allies.

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker, a close Trump ally, also stressed in an interview with POLITICO: “The Americans are not leaving.”

That was a marked contrast to the overt hostility toward the continent displayed last year by U.S. Vice President JD Vance when he appeared on the Munich main stage.

But Stubb noted that Rubio’s comments on an America that is shifting the burden of conventional defense to Europe while focusing on the Western Hemisphere and Asia is not all that different from Vance.

“I think we brought down the temperature in the transatlantic relationship,” Stubb said, noting he spoke with Rubio for roughly half an hour after the speech, adding: “We respect the sovereign choices of countries.”

Rubio’s comments showed a clear ordering of priorities for Washington, Stubb said: “No. 1 is the Western Hemisphere, No. 2 is the Indo-Pacific, and then No. 3 is Europe.”

Stubb argued Europeans should understand the Trump-led American shift.

The Finnish president — a longtime transatlanticist — also stressed the partnership remains intact. Finland’s military integration with the United States predates NATO membership and bilateral cooperation “is better than it has ever been,” he said.

The transatlantic relationship is not ending, he argued, but evolving into a different balance of roles.

“It’s in the interest of the United States to have very strong defense forces in Finland, Sweden and Norway,” Stubb said. “Let’s just continue to work on this transatlantic partnership.”