Leaders set up at the Munich Security Conference as a world order at risk of collapse

The US Vice President, JD Vance, Ukrainian President Zelensky, and up to 60 other world leaders and decision makers will be convened in Munich for the next three days for the annual Munich Security Conference (MSC). It’s planned.

For nearly 20 years now, I have been attending and covering this BBC event, but I can’t consider a year where there were many risks in terms of global security. The senior and highly experienced Western official said this week, “This is the most dangerous and contested period of my career I have ever known.”

why?

Simply put, the current world’s security orders – international rules-based order with catch-dal names – are at risk of collapse. Some argue that this is already happening.

When Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, it was widely condemned by many, but not everything in the world. NATO, the EU and the West generally reached an extraordinary level of unity, not being caught up in a direct conflict with Russia, but to help Ukraine protect themselves.

With the exception of some differences from Slovakia and Hungary, there was a general consensus that Putin’s invasion must be considered a failed one. Or Russia is eventually seduced to invade another neighboring country, such as Estonia. It was often said that Ukraine should be given whatever it took to ensure lasting peace from the status of strength.

There’s no more.

President Trump, via Ukrainian Secretary of Defense, acknowledges that it is “unrealistic” to restore Ukrainian territory before the first Russian invasion in 2014, effective in the rug from a Ukrainian negotiation standpoint I pulled it out.

The US also shattered Kiev’s hopes to join President Zelensky’s important ambition, NATO, and ruled out US troops to protect the border from when Russia decides to invade the next time it .

The news that President Trump had clearly made a 90-minute call with Putin was even more shocking. Invasion.

Over the next 72 hours, we are hearing from the Trump team in Munich what details will be on Ukraine’s plans in Munich. Some of them should still be resolved after his envoy, retired General Keith Kellogg, travelling to Kiev next week.

But for now, NATO unity is clearly depressed that there is a widespread difference in opinion about Ukraine between Washington and Europe. Even if it means accepting many of Moscow’s demands, we hope that the war will end as soon as possible.

The other still believed that Russia, at least until this week, lost 1,000 battlefield casualties a day, and its economy was facing disastrous long-term problems. The army was exhausted and agreed to terms of peace that was more favorable for Ukraine.

That’s not happening now.

For the NATO Alliance, now in its 76th year, other worrying cracks are beginning to emerge to discuss at the Munich Security Conference.

Last month, President Trump announced he wanted to “buy” Greenland, an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark. When Danish Prime Minister Fredericksen assured her population that “Greenland is not for sale”, he said, “terrifying” from Donald Trump, who has not ruled out the use of force to take Greenland there. “The phone continued.

The idea of ​​one NATO country threatening to seize part of another NATO country’s territory would have never been conceived. In Greenland, there is no justification for safety as they are happy with how they can support the island’s mutual defense, as they have more US troops than Denmark and Copenhagen.

But most Scandinavia sincerely hopes that it is true, even if nothing happens from this idea. The message is that it is okay to force a threat to your neighbors from leaders in the free world when territory is needed.

“That could be true,” says Lord Kim Dalotch, a former UK national security adviser and UK ambassador to Washington. But even if nothing comes from it, it is dealing with another damage of having their own free hands in Moscow and Beijing.

Washington’s European allies are looking for a sense of security that this is not the case in Munich. But President Trump is already on track on his way to reshaping America’s role in the world, and the sign is that he has not heard any complaints coming from Europe.