What a relief, it’s over. This year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC) has ended.
In reality, the meeting has never had much to do with increasing anyone’s security. Otherwise, its Western participants would, for instance, not have laughed at but taken seriously the warning Russian President Vladimir Putin issued there as far back as 2007, which could have spared the world – and Ukraine – the current de facto war between the West and Russia via Ukraine.
Almost two decades ago now, while Russia was resurging from its post-Soviet time of troubles, the movers and shakers of the West chose to haughtily dismiss Moscow’s objections to the Western project of establishing a “unipolar world.” That was sheer hubris: such a world was never to be, but the obstinate Western attempt to impose it has proven highly destructive.
Which brings us to the present. This year, the MSC has taken place under the odd motto “Under Destruction.” The phrase is both clumsy – the kind of sad things that happen when Germans try to sound original in English – and intriguingly pessimistic. Yet it could have had the advantage of signaling a growing willingness to face reality, in particular that of the West’s own mistakes over the last – roughly – third of a century. After the end of the original Cold War, the world has never been the West’s to remake, but the West did have a unique chance to improve it by practicing wise foresight (how hard was it to predict Russia would come back?), fairness (don’t kick a great power already down), and, last but not least, good faith (serial lying rots diplomacy from within).
But greed, incompetence, and arrogance prevailed from Washington to London and Brussels. Post-Soviet Russia was systematically, demonstratively, even gleefully treated without either elementary reason or minimal respect, and now we are where we are: “under destruction.” Tell ordinary Ukrainians about it: they know what it feels like. But that was not the way that the motto was meant at this year’s MSC, of course. The West does not do remorse. Instead, the vibe at Munich was “blame the others.”
More specifically, from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s much noted speech to the usual platitudes of the likes of Kaja Kallas and the conference’s chief organizer Wolfgang Ischinger – to name only a few – virtually everyone who is anyone (except China, obviously) agreed to pretend that the crisis of the old post-Cold War international disorder is fundamentally due to Russia. And please don’t mention that genocide that the West has been helping Israel commit or the fact that kidnapping heads of state is now considered an ordinary means of policy.
There also are, it is true, ongoing tensions between the US under President Donald Trump and the NATO-EU Europeans. Some of the latter have found enough of a spine to hint and sometimes even openly say out loud that Washington has made it harder for the West to pretend to be united. Especially Merz has received much exaggerated praise for stating the obvious and adding his own pessimistic twist to the “under destruction” theme: For the dour, rather self-important German leader the cozy Western-dominated order is not merely “under destruction” but already gone. His answer: make Europe more militaristic again, with a fierce Germany in the lead. Yes, that approach has worked so well before. Not.
Merz also believes – no one knows why – that the relationship with the US can be rebalanced. Reminding Washington that it, too, needs allies and friends, Merz seems to believe the Americans could be interested in a relationship between – fundamentally – equals. Yet that, historically, speaking is what the US never does. If it sees you as client or vassal material, that’s the treatment you will get. If it sees you as a potential equal, it will respect you more while also treating you as an opponent to be contained, besieged, subverted, and, ultimately, brought down. Merz should be very careful about what he is wishing for. But then, history has never been the forte of this privileged party careerist and former BlackRock provincial sinecure holder.
There would, of course, be a way of balancing the rapacious US, namely not repairing “trust” across the Atlantic – what a bizarre, shlocky, even childish notion; as if that has ever made the difference among serious people – but building normal relationships with both China and Russia. Yet one thing that this MSC seems to have shown is that the NATO-EU Europeans are not yet done with their delusions. For one thing they have affirmed their personal veneration for Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine and their willingness to get even deeper into the Ukraine War. They have also told each other tall tales of all the things NATO-EU Europe can do on its own, including of course, reshaping and extending their nuclear arsenals.
In short, at the MSC, NATO-EU Europe’s big hitters’ answer to what everyone finally acknowledged as a catastrophic crisis was to “stay the course,” as one of the worst US presidents would have said about one of its worst wars and crimes (both very high bars). In other words, when the going gets tough because you yourself have been stupid and mean, just march on vigorously, deeper into your self-made misery! When deep in that dark damp hole you have been digging for decades, dig deeper! How very American. How ironic.
Especially since the US is also staying the course, the Trumpist course, that is. Because that was the main message of Secretary of State’s Marco Rubio’s also greatly over-rated speech. While less openly hostile than the lusty verbal assault delivered by his eternal competitor J.D. Vance at the last Munich get-together (yet another low bar), in essence, Rubio’s address made no concessions. What the US is now offering the Europeans is no protection and plenty of demands. No wonder, once they have been officially demoted to third place behind the US policies of dominating the Western hemisphere and of conducting a Cold War against China. Washington to Euro-Vassals: You are on your own, really. But you will still serve us. What a deal! For the Americans. Call it the Turnberry of In-Security, if you wish.
In short, this Munich Security Conference was, really, sort of a bore. Despite all the hype about the NATO-EU Europeans finding their feet and kind of asserting themselves, a little, what has really happened is that the US told them that they will be permitted – and expected – to accept “burden-shifting” (not even “sharing” any longer) from Washington. The Europeans, in their turn, made some noises along the lines of “you need us, too” – What. An. Insight. – and “we can start learning to walk on our own feet.” And the US representatives were kind and uninterested enough to tolerate that much backtalk.
What should have happened at a security conference worth its name has, of course, not happened: a serious assessment of Western mistakes and failures since, at the very latest, 2007, a fundamental, radical reconsideration of the relationship with Russia and China, and only on that basis a real, not rhetorical, not gradual but again fundamental re-assessment of the relationship with the US, regardless of who happens to be in power in Washington. By the difference between those obvious necessities and the ideological claptrap and wishful thinking that was actually on offer, you can measure how far Europe really is from solving its ever-worsening geopolitical problems. As a European, I see no reason for hope.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.