Wolfgang Ischinger is chairing the Munich Security Conference for the last time in 2022. Hats off to a dyed-in-the-wool German diplomat.

What times they were, what incredible experiences, what achievements, what a legacy. Wolfgang Ischinger’s career spans entire epochs of contemporary history: the Cold War, its end culminating in German unification, the hope for a …

Religious hatred often begins in schools as seen most recently in the recent escalation of the Middle East conflict. This dangerous dimension has long been ignored, also by the EU.

One has to take a closer look, specifically at what is being taught to children and young people. A sad example from recent years is …

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allied producers decided last week to extend production cuts for another month despite a recent price surge. The latest figures show that Saudi Arabia has been playing around with production volumes. The reliability of the world’s second largest oil power and the integrity of OPEC are …

Democratic states share not only noble ideals, but basic and vital interests, as well

Two contradictory trends are vexing the West. One is the globalization of the world economy: Trade and investment relationships are so tightly interwoven that the unrestrained pursuit of political conflict or ideological antagonism is out of the question due to the …

Security Times Contribution | Special Edition of the MSC

For almost six decades, world leaders have met each winter at Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich to discuss the most pressing challenges to global peace and international security.

In 2021, the pandemic has forced us to postpone the regular conference. But we remain deeply committed to …

A letter to President Joe Biden from the publisher Detlef W. Prinz

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations! When today, at 12 noon Washington time, you swear your oath to the US Constitution and are officially inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, the world will breathe a collective and deep sigh of relief. The …

It almost seemed as if international jihadism was on the retreat: the so-called caliphate also known as the Islamic State (IS) or by its Arabic acronym Daesh destroyed, the so-called caliph killed, his followers scattered to the winds. But five years after the devastating attack on the Bataclan in Paris, the fanatics in Europe are …

After almost nine years of civil war, the crisis in and around Syria has not been resolved. Nonetheless, it is clear who the winners and losers in the conflict are. Among the winners are the Syrian regime, Russia, Iran and even Turkey, to a certain extent. These countries have always known what they wanted, have …

When the history of these times is written, it may well be that the headlines of the day – Iraq and the controversies it has aroused – will pale in comparison to other international upheavals of our period. The center of gravity of world affairs is moving to the Pacific, and almost all major actors …

What are Europeans willing and able to do in order to secure their wider neighborhood? This question is by no means new. But with instability growing and the US footprint shrinking in Europe’s southern periphery, the question regularly returns – and each time with greater force.

Encouragingly, it looks as if Europeans are no longer …

There was a time when it appeared that history was coming to an end and the future was set to begin. The democratic and capitalist West had brought communism and the command economies of the East to their knees, not least by dint of an arms race the Soviet Union ultimately couldn’t keep up with. …

This year’s Munich Security Report diagnoses the world with a condition it calls “Westlessness,” with symptoms that include signs of Western paralysis amid a loss of global significance. Many political observers share similar concerns. While our countries and societies increasingly question their own norms and values, the argument goes, we are losing the power and …

Could China and the US be stumbling down the path Germany and the United Kingdom took at the beginning of the last century? The possibility will strike many readers as inconceivable. But we should remember that when we say something is “inconceivable,” this is a claim not about what is possible in the world, but …

With the end of the Cold War, many believed the West had prevailed. In his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama wrote that humanity had reached “the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” A few years …

The rivalry between the United States and China has become a guiding paradigm of international relations, shaping strategic debates, but also real political, military and economic dynamics. This is not to say that competition between Washington and Beijing – or even great-power rivalries in general – determines all other international problems and conflicts. However, Sino-American …