Multi-hyphenates rarely achieve equal success across their different ventures. But not so for Verbal, a Tokyo-based rapper, music producer, saké promoter and fashion CEO who has worked with the likes of Nike, Off-White and Louis Vuitton and helped to disrupt Japanese pop music’s rigid conventions.  

To get a sense of his signature sound, listen to “Eko Eko”, a song released in June 2025 by his group, M-Flo. The track features Verbal and his groupmate, Taku Takahashi, alongside South Korean hip-hop artist Zico and Japanese vocalist Eill. They vocalise over a galloping beat, plaintive synths and guitar chords, switching between Japanese, Korean and English lyrics. 

The track – which features on the group’s 10th album, Superliminal – is typical of Verbal’s output. Genre-bending and language-crossing, it straddles cultures and musical styles. It is J-pop, K-pop, hip-hop, R&B and electronic dance music all in one. Verbal has been at it since 1999, when he and his M-Flo bandmates, Takahashi and singer Lisa, released “Been So Long”,  a song that fused R&B-style vocals, rap and electronic beats with Japanese and English lyrics. “In the late 1990s in Japan, hip-hop was hip-hop, R&B was R&B and rock was rock – you couldn’t leave your territory,” says Verbal. “We weren’t abiding by any of those rules. We didn’t even know that there were rules.” 

In addition to being a member of M-Flo, Verbal and other Japanese rappers and DJs formed the Teriyaki Boyz in the early 2000s, collaborating with talents such as Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Busta Rhymes and Kanye West. Even now, the hybrid sound that Verbal and his cohorts pioneered permeates the tunes of younger J-pop and K-pop musicians. And that’s only a fraction of Verbal’s recent creative output. 

When not in the studio, Verbal heads streetwear-inspired brand Ambush, which he co-founded with his partner, Yoon Ahn, the company’s creative director. What started in 2008 as a pop-art jewellery project has become a clothing, bag and accessories brand with five shops in Tokyo and Osaka. At the brand’s Shibuya office mood boards and racks of clothing samples crowd one room. Verbal shows us around, wearing a black Ambush MA-1 bomber jacket and matching turtleneck sweater with a prototype diamond-encrusted chainlink ring on his finger. He describes how he likes to obsess over details, whether it be for new Ambush releases or planning his upcoming music shows in Tokyo.   

Ambush took its first collection to Paris in 2015 and held its first runway show at Milan Fashion Week in 2022. It has collaborated with labels such as Nike, Uniqlo, Bulgari, Moët & Chandon and Undercover, and, in early 2020, it became part of the Milan-based New Guards Group, an early investor in Off-White. “We decided that we needed a global expansion partner that could help us with the retail and wholesale strategy,” says Verbal. 

Last year, amid restructurings at New Guards and its owner, Farfetch, Verbal and Ahn took back control of Ambush in a management buyout. Verbal describes the five years under New Guards as “a crash course in business, legal and finance”. He and Ahn also clarified their roles under the ownership, with Ahn serving as designer and Verbal in charge of the nuts and bolts. This includes looking at materials and liaising with factories and collaborators, while keeping an eye on trends. “As a brand, we feel so much stronger now,” he says. 

You would think that Verbal would be too busy to juggle more but in 2025 he launched Sōmatō, his small-batch saké brand. Verbal came across Takahashi Shuzo, a 141-year-old brewery in Misato, Akita prefecture, while helping an overseas fund look for distressed assets in Japan to invest in. After hearing from the brewery that it wanted to stay independent, he suggested the new saké brand, which it now produces for. “This is how you should talk to artisans around Japan: ‘We want to retain your legacy but also energise it,’” he says. “The mayor [of Misato] thanked us for bringing new life to the brewery.”

The saké project isn’t out of character for Verbal. A third-generation South Korean who was born and raised in Japan, he is a product of Tokyo’s international schools; he is fluent in English and Japanese, as well as in the musical language of US hip-hop and R&B. His ventures tend to draw on his unique status as an insider whose background means that he understands Japanese culture but isn’t constrained by it. “I think of myself as a cultural translator,” he says. 

Over the past two decades, Milan-based real estate giant Coima has been a driving force in the revitalisation of the Lombard capital. Its founder and CEO, Manfredi Catella, was the driving force behind Porta Nuova, one of Europe’s most groundbreaking urban-regeneration projects. By attracting major international investors, it is regarded as a key contributor in elevating Milan’s position as Italy’s financial and business centre. At this year’s Olympic Winter Games, Coima developed the Porta Romana Olympic Village, which houses athletes during the games before being converted into student accommodation.

Catella met with Monocle’s Europe editor at large, Ed Stocker, in Milan to discuss repurposing some of the city’s unused industrial areas into purpose-built spaces that connect neighbouring communities. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Coima is responsible for some of the biggest and most important projects that have changed the way Milan looks. How does that make you feel?
When you care about urban development, you care about the community because you will [have an] impact on its people for many years. It’s a great sensation and it’s a great responsibility.

Coima helped develop the Olympic Village in Porta Romana. Tell us about that project.
It has been a very intense 30 months developing [housing with] 1,700 beds for the athletes. But we also designed this campus to be used as a student-housing village after the Olympics. It has been quite amazing to listen to all the athletes arriving to the rooms and expressing themselves so nicely. This might be the most satisfying part of the work. 

How is the site going to continue to evolve after the Games? 
Compared to many European cities, Milan is at a great advantage because it’s late in developing. In our job we look at raw materials, such as the land or sites that you can develop. There are no other European cities with such a scale of brownfields, industrial sites, factories, military barracks and so on that can be repurposed. Many other cities in Europe have already experienced this transition. Porta Romana is a brownfield that reconnects two important parts of the city, [in this way it’s] similar to what we did in Porta Nuova. We’re just at the beginning but the process was accelerated thanks to the Olympics and a part of it is finished already. 

A lot gets made about how Milan changed after the World Expo [and the regeneration of Porta Nuova] in 2015. Was that a significant moment in Milan’s recent development?
Porta Nuova was an impossible urban redevelopment. The mindset of the people of Milan was that it was a bad area, despite it being a mere 1.5 kilometres from the cathedral. Our challenge was to reconnect Porta Nuova to the surrounding neighbourhoods. It took 10 years but the project reset a cultural benchmark for Milan and Italy. It was the start of a transition for the city, which is still ongoing. 

You’ve got plenty coming up. Give us an idea of some of Coima’s future projects. 
Milan must go through three scales of development. One is to develop the brownfields, such as Scalo Farini, Porta Romana and others. The second is the metropolitan area. For example, Milano Sesto, which was a very large, million-square-metre factory site that is 20 minutes from the cathedral by tube. The third dimension is to develop the surrounding cities that, thanks to the high-speed train, can be reached faster than ever. Torino is 40 minutes from Milan today; Bologna is less than an hour. A system of cities – that is what Italy can develop. 

With the Olympics on our doorstep, have you been watching? 
I have. But my focus has been on our next challenge behind the stage, which is making the Olympic Village the fastest repurposed temporary infrastructure ever. While the Olympic Games are going, we’re planning how to make this open to students by 1 September. 

You can listen to the full interview here. For more behind-the-scenes insights on the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, tune in to ‘Monocle in Milan’ on Monocle Radio.

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More coverage of the Games

• Ever wondered what goes into a live Olympics broadcast? Here’s how the event makes it to your screen
• Skating’s solo act: Donovan Carrillo is the only Latino on the ice at the 2026 Winter Olympics
• Marco Balich on organising the perfect Milano Cortina Olympic opening ceremony
• The Monocle guide to Milan

It should be mandatory for anyone born and raised in Sydney to leave the city for a few years. We Sydneysiders love to complain about this incredible place and leaving is the only cure that I have found for our penchant to gripe with “problems” the rest of the world dreams of having. For instance, there’s the ferry to work, which traverses the iconic harbour but can be late by a few minutes. The sloping hills, which make its landscape so interesting, are sometimes a bit annoying. Winters are warm enough that you only get to wear your big coat a handful of times a year. Imagine the horror. 

We’re blissfully unaware of how good we have it. The things that many of us consider normal, even a borderline birthright, such as good coffee, safe streets and passionate opinions about pilates studios, are very much a privilege. I once met a man who commuted into the city by kayak and he acted as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world. He clearly needed time away for some perspective on true mundanity. It also took me leaving for university to fall in love with Sydney.

In our defence, however, Sydney hasn’t been without issues. The rapturous reception to the 2000 Olympic Games should have been a boon for soft power, the economy and culture. But the opportunity was squandered. Instead, the Harbour City saw 20 years of sluggish development; legislative and regulatory overreach hobbled the local economy; and its coronavirus response was stifling. 

My first job out of university was as directory editor at Broadsheet, Australia’s leading city guide, where I covered dining spots and shops from Melbourne to Sydney. When I started in 2019, nearly every notable opening seemed to happen in the former. But by the time I left in 2021, it felt as though the opposite was the case. Sydney, freshly unleashed from its coronavirus-pandemic lockdowns and the worst of its notorious lockout laws, had the winds of change in its sails. It remembered that it had been, and could be again, the most important city in Australia.

That only continued when I moved back to Sydney and began writing for Monocle in 2022. There was always something new to cover: museums designed by renowned architects, vast public-transport overhauls and city-shaping infrastructure projects, not to mention a panoply of exciting new retail and hospitality operators. All of this was overlaid onto one of the world’s most idyllic urban landscapes. The nihilism of the 2000s was replaced by optimistic civic pride. 

The city is ready for its big moment again and it won’t waste it this time. Our Sydney guide celebrates the institutions that endured the fallow years, as well as the new places that have bloomed on the other side of them. The difficulty of winnowing the selection down to the absolute essentials was, to me, the best proof of the city’s renaissance. I hope that a scroll through the guide improves your visit and fills you with the intention of coming back – because Sydney gets better every time, especially after some distance apart.

Read Monocle’s guide to Sydney (and download our map) here

I’m in a European hotel during half-term. Naturally, something is off. I’m blindfolded and there’s a disconcerting scent of strawberry. Now, my Spanish is muy bad but my ability to tell a masseuse that I’m uncomfortable is worse. Well, I say “masseuse”; after 60 minutes in her company, I’m unconvinced that she is anything other than a woman who happened to be in the room when I walked in. 
 
An hour ago she told me that she liked my nail polish and asked me to lie down on a table that was too short. (At about 177cm, I’m surely far from the tallest person who she has ever massaged.) The process began with my feet hanging off the end of her cradle, immediately creating an unpleasant ache in my lower back. “Perhaps this is how it’s done here,” I thought. “Might this simply be her way?” She had asked me to take all of my clothes off while she opened various cupboards and ran a tap that she didn’t use. But who was I to question her technique?

“Acuéstese por favor!” When I laid my nude body face down on the tiny bed, she let out a large yawn. Various small towels were placed all over me, furthering my theory that I was, in fact, a giant. A normal-sized person – someone whose feet would not hang over the end of that bed – would only need to have one towel draped over them. Was she using flannels to mess with me?

She banged the cupboards once more before letting out a big “Ah, ha!” and tying what I assumed was some sort of scarf over my eyes, lifting my head up with it as though she was polishing a bowling ball. The next thing I knew, she had whipped one of the towels off my back to squeeze goo on it from a bottle. It was cold and I flinched but the air smelled of strawberries. Not a completely awful diversion from the usual lemongrass but an unusual, childlike scent for a massage parlour. The lady proceeded to rub it into my skin as you would with garlic herb butter on a chicken that you hated, while I tried to breathe, relax and pray that the strawberry gel wasn’t lube. An array of abnormal prodding and tugging and folding followed. There was plenty of sighing (hers) and wincing (mine). At one point, she moved my legs into positions that only a lover or a gynaecologist would dare. 
 
I’ve been on that table now for what feels like three (or even seven) hours and I find myself wondering what would take longer to learn: basic Spanish or basic massage? Is the real masseuse unconscious in a nearby cupboard? Would her relatives blame me for not sensing that something is up? Is this definitely not lube? 
 
As we near the final third of the session, she flips me onto my back and, for reasons that we’ll never know, continues to try to massage it. She then heads to the cupboard once more and, soon enough, a new goo is administered all over my face. Butter? It smells like butter. Is butter good for faces? I’ve lost all perspective. 

By the time the blindfold slides off and the nightmare is almost over, I am so desperate to leave that I do what any respectable tourist would: I blurt out a muchos gracias and give her a generous tip. I hobble back to my room, my lower back throbbing, hoping that my sticky face doesn’t attract a swarm of wasps. I make a mental note not to be stung again: never pick a hotel because of its kids’ club and proximity to the airport. 

Emily Bryce-Perkins is a London-based writer. In the UK capital and in need of a few suggestions? Be sure to consult Monocle’s City Guide. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe today.

Speaking from Allianz Tower in Milan, Oliver Bäte reflects on what it means for Allianz to be a worldwide Olympic partner in today’s political context. In conversation with Monocle’s chairman, Tyler Brûlé, the Allianz CEO shares his thoughts ranging from sport’s ability to unite and motivate to how he views society’s approach to work. The discussion offers a frank view on leadership, responsibility and the pressures facing governments and businesses alike.

Listen to the full conversation on The Chiefs from Monocle Radio. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

What does it mean for Allianz to support the Olympics at this moment?
The Olympic Movement represents so much. When there is such chaos in the world, finding two weeks to focus on something different is important. That’s the power of sport – people from all over the world vie to do the impossible and beat the best. It’s an enormous [source of motivation] for everyone watching, with more than a billion people expected to tune in. Finally, it is great encouragement for our customer base and employees. People are ecstatic about participating in the torch relays and volunteering at the Games. It’s a positive incentive for a world that needs it.

Is there a sense of rallying at Allianz because [employees] think, ‘I see my company’s name with the Olympic rings’?
There are only 11 companies that are allowed to carry the rings. Being in the inner circle, we see what we can add and how we can bolster European ingenuity. After all, we’re not just providing insurance. For example, we’re helping the bobsledding association to create safer bobsleds for athletes. It’s about being part of something exceptional, pushing the boundaries and innovating.

Looking ahead to the Munich Security Conference [this month], let’s talk about Brand Munich. Where are we? Does Brand Germany understand its power?
We have a very successful ecosystem in Munich with an amazing airport and great, technical universities. When people think about Germany and what’s good about the country, they often think of Bavaria. It remains a real innovation centre and functions extremely well. Brand Munich is very strong. Take the Security Conference: if you ask people what destination is having serious conversations about where the world is going, few say Davos – and more answer Munich. We have amazing assets but we need to use them.

Everyone says that Germany is coming back. What’s your take? 
We have been very fortunate at Allianz. The forecasts from the market are very good and we have something that gives me hope every day, which is the trust that customers have in the company. It has never been higher in our 136 years. In terms of Germany, there are good companies [that are] doing really well – just look at Siemens. It is overshadowed by the problems that we have in sectors that have not invested properly in the future or were mismanaged by European regulation. We still have debates on working less rather than more, even though we know that we cannot afford the [current] health care and the social systems. Europe has [about] 5 per cent of the global population but [approximately] 50 per cent of the social spending. It’s unaffordable. The problem is that politicians do not want to address this because they say that they will get booted out of office. People do not want to be told to work more – but someone has to do it.

How much of a role can the private sector have on influencing the state of Bavaria as much as Berlin? 
The problem is in the public. The vast majority of our publicised opinions [come from] special-interest people that dominate the debate. Rage [drives] the clicks and therefore a lot of my peers are very careful to go into the public. I don’t think it’s a sustainable model. We just need to call a spade a spade and say, ‘Guys, this is what we need.’

We’re talking about human capital – you still have to deliver customer service. 
Today, if you wanted to make a call to a person, you need to have a lot of contextual know-how to respond to a question [that a machine couldn’t provide]. In the next few years, we’ll have [machine] agents who not only talk agent to agent but can talk to humans in a highly professional way and make fewer errors than a human would. We are trying to free up the time of qualified humans with the help of machines that actually can answer the question that we never get to answering. 

Let’s take a look at the host of the Games. What is Allianz’s relationship to Italy?
After Germany, Italy is our second most important market. We have the strongest brand here, even stronger than the local ones. We see it trying to help the country. We also see the challenges. If you think more about distributing wealth than creating it, you end up in a problem eventually. Reputation and success were solidified in those beautiful years when everyone wanted to drive an Audi in Lombardy – there was a trust in Germany at that point.

Finally, what’s your favourite sport to watch during the Winter Games?
Bobsledding. I just did it last year. I now know what it means to go down something at 130km/h with three plus Gs on your neck. It’s quite stunning what these people have to do well.

As we enter the second half of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, the event’s ability to inspire a deep passion for lesser-known sports has reached fever pitch. Who among us could have anticipated screaming at ice being polished or knowledgeably referring to triple axels with unearned confidence? Well, all of us. Because that is the uniting guarantee of the event: it turns us into rabid fans whose enthusiasm will dissipate as quickly as it appeared.

But if the thought of next weekend’s closing ceremony fills you with ennui, fear not. There’s a remedy to keep that Olympic torch flickering in your heart just a bit longer. Monocle has compiled a list of winter-sports films to keep your appetite for skiing, bobsleighing and hockey sated long after the ice has melted and the skates have been hung up.

1.
‘Cool Runnings’ (1993) directed by Jon Turteltaub
This quintessential winter-sports comedy is the ultimate underdog tale. Cool Runnings is loosely based on the true story of the first Jamaican bobsleigh team, which competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics and uproariously stars Leon Robinson, Doug E Doug and John Candy.

2.
‘I, Tonya’ (2017) directed by Craig Gillespie
‘The Price of Gold’ (2014) directed by Nanette Burstein
The essential figure-skating double bill. Both tell the story of Tonya Harding, the first American woman to land a triple axel in the short programme, whose Olympic dreams were dashed by her dubious involvement in an assault on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan. The films assess how the challenges of Harding’s upbringing and the prejudices of the figure-skating world contributed to her choices. In The Price of Gold, we hear from Harding herself and, in I, Tonya, we’re treated to Margot Robbie’s portrayal of the surprisingly sympathetic anti-hero. Both are compelling and entertaining in equal measure.

3.
‘Miracle’ (2004) directed by Gavin O’Connor
Miracle is based on the 1980 Winter Olympics ice-hockey game dubbed the “miracle on ice”, in which the US men’s team beat the Soviet Union’s – the favoured group and Cold War rival. The film’s real surprise is in its depiction of the Russian players not as villains but simply as the other team.

4.
‘Force Majeure’ (2014) directed by Ruben Östlund
Force Majeure is a black comedy that artfully orchestrates a Swedish family’s emotional implosion over a skiing holiday, after the patriarch makes a questionable decision during an incident on the slopes. While the dramatic build-up is delicious, the real pleasure lies in getting an inside look at Les Arcs, the luxury French ski resort where the family stays.

5.
‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ (1977) directed by Lewis Gilbert
We’re stretching the winter-sports theme as far as it will go. In addition to being widely regarded as one of the best in the Bond franchise, The Spy Who Loved Me opens with a rip-roaring chase down the Austrian Alps, which concludes in a pleasingly patriotic ski jump off a cliff – two ski events for the price of one.

There’s something refreshing about a country admitting that it has overdone it. Of course, Saudi Arabia has not phrased it in so many words but the scaling back of its Giga-Projects – most conspicuously The Line, part of Neom – amounts to an acknowledgment that Vision 2030 had promised more than any nation could actually deliver.

For the better part of a decade, the kingdom has been selling the future in kilometre-long instalments: mirrored cities, ski resorts in the mountains, a building the size of a downtown area and, at the centre of it all, a 170km linear metropolis that sought to slice through sand and scepticism alike. The Line was supposed to rise 500 metres into the sky and stretch from coast to desert by 2030. The renderings were pristine and the rhetoric was epic – civilisation, we were told, would be reinvented.

But satellite images show little visible change since mid-2025: a vast scraped corridor in the desert but not quite the stainless-steel canyon once promised. The government has now confirmed that, rather than 170km of parallel skyscrapers, the focus is now on a far shorter coastal segment known as Hidden Marina.

The tone has shifted too. The language is no longer about rewriting urbanism but about “phasing” and “prioritisation”. Reworking The Line could end up as something considerably less cinematic. Rumours suggest a data hub – server racks instead of sky gardens and fibreoptic cables rather than flying taxis. There’s a certain poetry in that downgrade.

This might not be the death of Vision 2030 but it is undeniably the end of its most operatic chapter. Other Giga-Projects have also been slowed, resequenced or discreetly paused. Riyadh’s vast Mukaab cube has been shelved. Mountain developments to the north face similar scrutiny. The Public Investment Fund is preparing a refreshed strategy that places emphasis on sectors with clearer and quicker returns, such as advanced manufacturing, mining, AI and logistics.

And then there’s the small matter of the 2034 Fifa World Cup. Saudi Arabia is orienting its infrastructure priorities around hosting football’s grandest tournament. One of the proposed stadiums is still slated to sit atop The Line’s structure – a vertiginous arena suspended above a city that, as of today, barely has foundations. Even when scaled back, the country’s ambitions seemingly retain a taste for altitude.

Vision 2030 has achieved things. Social reforms have been rapid and tangible. Tourism is no longer theoretical. Women’s participation in the workforce has significantly increased. The non-oil economy has expanded faster than many predicted. In important respects, the kingdom has changed at a remarkable speed.

But the Giga-Projects became both billboard and burden. They were designed to shock the system into believing that transformation was inevitable. Instead, they risked turning Vision 2030 into a spectacle: a parade of holographic master plans competing for attention and capital in an increasingly expensive world. What we are witnessing is not collapse but correction. Oil revenues are no longer a limitless accelerant and construction costs have surged globally. Foreign investors, once dazzled by scale, are asking harder questions about returns and governance. This week the kingdom’s investment minister, Khalid al-Falih, was replaced by veteran banker Fahad al-Saif as part of the largest government overhaul since 2022. The timing is notable and the message subtle but clear: if the era of spectacle is ending, that of persuasion is beginning. Selling sovereign bonds is one thing; persuading foreign investors to commit patiently to a recalibrated Saudi future might prove rather more delicate.

Saudi Arabia has entered a more sober phase. Ambition is being trimmed to fit what is realistically deliverable. Grand visions can galvanise a nation while attracting talent, tourism and headlines. But it takes institutions, regulation, private-sector confidence and time to grow cities. Steel and glass are the easy part; ecosystems are not. The desert is still dotted with cranes but fewer miracles are being promised and, in the long run, this might prove to be the kingdom’s most grown-up pivot yet.

Inzamam Rashid is Monocle’s Gulf correspondent. Want to read more on Saudi Arabia?

– Beyond the Giga-Projects, a new generation of Saudi Arabian architects is getting introspective

– Saudi Arabia’s latest alcohol policy shift lowers the bar for raising a glass

– Missing in action: A rift emerges as the UAE skips Riyadh’s World Defense Show

In his opening address to the Munich Security Conference (MSC) on Friday morning, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, described the event as a “seismograph for relations between the United States and Europe”. Since its inception, this talking shop, attended by the world’s highest-ranking political, military and business leaders, has usually been a weekend of hearty feasts and even heartier agreement. Indeed, if anything was likely to show up on Merz’s seismograph it would probably be as a result of an overenthusiastic post-schnapps backslap. But last year, US vice president JD Vance sent tremors through the main hall of the five-star Hotel Bayerischer Hof – the aftershocks of which are still being felt. Vance, whose position essentially made him the guest of honour, stood up at the lectern on the opening morning with the intention of taking down his hosts. He called out Europe’s leaders for being undemocratic, degenerate and complicit in their own cultural demise, in a speech that set the tone for a dizzying 12 months of transatlantic rupture. This year’s event, following a few weeks after the Greenland crisis pushed the alliance to the brink, felt like a very public way of processing some of the continent’s grief.

On the eve of the conference, the event’s organisers published their annual report assessing the state of international relations. Its title was “Under Destruction” and it made no bones about where it believed the main source of our present instability comes from. “The world has entered a period of wrecking-ball politics,” reads the report’s first line. “At the forefront of those who promise to free their countries from the existing order’s constraints and rebuild stronger, more prosperous nations is the current US administration.” Such directness, it was thought, would set the tone for an MSC during which Europe’s leaders would begin the rhetorical fightback against Washington. 

Merz’s speech, brought forward on request from the traditional Saturday slot reserved for the incumbent German leader, began with an unsparing assessment of the present world order. “If there had been a unipolar moment after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a unipolar moment in history, it has long passed,” said Merz, who always seems to be looking over the top of his glasses like a long-suffering accountant going through your receipts. “The United States’ claim to leadership has been challenged and possibly lost.” He went on to explain – to anyone without a firm grasp of German history – why his country cannot “go it alone” and would always seek to move as one with its allies. All of this felt like the build-up to, at the very least, a forthright repudiation of recent American behaviour. But instead, mindful perhaps of the decorum expected of him as host, Merz reverted to MSC-standard, insisting on the primacy of the western alliance. 

After an underwhelming first round, the Europeans that I spoke to still seemed up for a fight, or at least a bit of light cussing. At an event featuring the preposterously folksy South Carolina Republican, Lindsey Graham, the US senator exclaimed: “Who gives a shit who owns Greenland?” Someone behind me scoffed, “I think Denmark does”. If Merz wouldn’t give the people back some fighting pride, then it was up to zany Uncle Manu to speak for a continent. The French president, whose sideburns seem to grow longer as his own influence wanes, was his usual boisterous self. He touted Europe’s response to Trump’s threats to annex Greenland as “politely declining unjustified claims on European territory”, without quite managing to shake the half-smirk he always appears to have on his face. In the end, Macron’s speech passed fairly uneventfully.  

As the attendees retired to their evening’s bratwurst, there was a feeling of bathos that only the pulling of punches can bring. Still, perhaps the upside of this would be a repentant US secretary of state Marco Rubio mending ties in the weekend’s showpiece speech. America’s chief diplomat has sometimes appeared sullen and shrunken since taking up the role. But on Saturday morning he delivered the most articulate expression of the current US administration’s thinking that has been made yet. He declared an intention to renew the western alliance, an endeavour in which he said it was hoped Europe would be closely involved. Rubio called his country a “child” of the continent while praising it as the birthplace of Western civilisation. “Ultimately our destiny is and always will be intertwined with yours,” Rubio said. Then, like all middle-aged Americans of European stock, he revealed himself as an amateur genealogist, invoking 18th-century forebears from Sardinia and Spain. The speech, which also mentioned Mozart, Shakespeare and The Beatles, was intended to flatter Europe’s cultural sensitivities – but since it also derided the continent for being weak, in hock to a “climate cult” and ashamed of its own heritage, it had the same scolding flavour as Vance’s, and was perhaps more unsettling for being delivered soothingly. It also failed to mention Ukraine, an omission compounded by Rubio’s skipping a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky the night before. 

So as the MSC circus packs up its lanyards and Heckler & Koch UMPs, where does this leave the transatlantic alliance? Although Mark Rutte, Ursula von der Leyen and UK prime minister Keir Starmer were quick to characterise Rubio’s speech as a much-needed olive branch, outside of the keynotes and fireside chats, there was a more unguarded sense of how bad US-Europe relations have become. The firmest rebuke to US rhetoric came from the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, who joked on Sunday morning that, “contrary to what some say, woke decadent Europe is not facing civilisational erasure.” For those still keening for a return to the status quo ante, hope was offered by the large Democratic Party contingent in attendance, including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom insisted that current US foreign policy was an aberration rather than the new normal. An alternative vision was offered by Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, who, with a smile slightly more restrained than Macron’s, said, “multilateralism should always be promoted and strengthened. It must not happen that some countries dominate others.” You don’t need a seismograph to work out who he was referring to.

Lisa Murkowski is the senior US senator representing Alaska, a seat she has held for the Republicans since 2002 – despite repeated efforts by her own party to oust her Murkowski did not endorse – or by her own account vote for – US president Donald Trump in any of his three election campaigns, and she was one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove Trump from office at his second impeachment trial in 2021.

Senator Murkowski spoke to The Foreign Desk at the Munich Security Conference; she had just visited Greenland in the wake of Trump’s threats to seize the territory from the Kingdom of Denmark, by force if necessary.

How much damage has Trump’s Greenland fixation done to the transatlantic alliance?
Relationships matter. How we treat our friends matters. The trust that has built up over decades and generations matters. And so when words like ‘occupy’ or ‘take over’ or ‘buy’ or ‘acquire’ are used that disrespect a sovereign territory, and disrespect the autonomy of the people of Greenland, that’s a problem. But it’s something that can be reconciled through honest dialogue and openness about what is being sought. If we’re talking about shared security interests in the Arctic space, let’s think about it.

Was the welcome in Greenland to a Republican senator at all equivocal?
I didn’t feel that at all. There was an appreciation for the fact that there was a bipartisan delegation from the US that was there to share a message: we want to engage in a co-operative dialogue. 

You’ve spoken to spoken to Monocle before about the US not taking the security of its own patch of the Arctic seriously enough, ie the state you represent. While Trump was talking about taking Greenland, were you sitting in Juneau wondering: how did we get here?
We need to recognise that the Arctic has been under-appreciated, not just by the US but around Nato. Investment in the Arctic has been limited at best. There’s a great deal of focus right now on Greenland and what we need to do for security on that eastern side of the continent. But I maintain that just as important is ensuring that on the western side, where Alaska sits right smack next to Russia. We need investment in everything from communications to defence. We’ve got work to do in the Arctic. So when you [Trump] suggest that the way to address that is to occupy Greenland, that creates division and dissension, rather than a focus on: what are we going to do jointly, co-operatively, to protect this vast area of the globe that is pretty wide open.

And are you hoping that secretary of state Marco Rubio spent some of his flight to Munich rereading ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People’, as vice president JD Vance clearly didn’t last year?
I’ve known Secretary Rubio for a long time, and he is a man with quick wit and a lot of charm. So I’m hoping that this is going to be a great conversation.

As we’re already halfway through Q1, it’s perhaps a good moment to take stock, pull out the diary and do a bit of forward planning and general housekeeping. While the Monocle crew can spontaneously show up anywhere and host a little party, there are three essential dates to keep in mind for the coming months.

On 28 March our Zürich outpost will host its annual Hanami Market to celebrate the arrival of spring. If you’ve not paid a visit, it’s an all-day celebration of the best of Japan with excellent bites, specialist retailers, emerging brands, good tunes and, of course, exceptional drinks. If you’re looking for a little weekend escape, our team will be happy to offer up some hotel and restaurant recommendations but, better yet, you can get all our updated City Guides (Tokyo, Kyoto and many more) by signing up for a subscription. Subscribers will also be able to reserve a spot at our special Ginza-style lounge evenings at Dufourstrasse on 27 and 28 March.

Off the back of Salone del Mobile in Milan there will be a special edition of The Entrepreneurs broadcast live from the heart of Shanghai. Kicking off at a civilised hour on 29 April (I’m sure you’ll find a few of us up for a drink the night before), we are bringing some of China and the region’s sharpest business owners to the stage to introduce their projects, ambitions and insights. Hosted by some of your favourite voices from Monocle Radio, the conference will be a pacy mix of one-on-one interviews and punchy panels with plenty of time for audience participation and, as ever, prizes for the best questions. The day will wrap with a cocktail reception, elegant dinner, night on the town and, if you’re game, it will be a straight-to-plane (STP) affair with a few editors as we head to Bahrain for the 2026 edition of The Chiefs.

On 6 and 7 May our annual conference devoted to leadership and building better brands will be doing a twirl for our first-ever conference in the Gulf. If you’ve not been to Bahrain, it’s high time to make an appearance. I’ve been three times over the past year and have been seduced by the narrow lanes, shopfront typography, 1970s logos and the very good coffee shops in Manama Souq. We get under way with a cocktail on the 6th and pack in a full day on the 7th with speakers from around the world focusing on retail, security, hospitality, media and much more besides. For more information you can go here or drop Hannah Grundy a note at hg@monocle.com if you want to discuss corporate or group rates.

I’ll be on hand for all of these events and, if you just happen to be in St Moritz today and have caught this email before 10.00 CET, please swing by the Monocle Shop at Hotel Steffani for a special art-focused edition of Monocle on Sunday. Of course, if you’re not up here in the lovely Engadine Valley then please tune in and hopefully I’ll see you in Zürich, Shanghai or Bahrain over the coming months. 

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.