Munich, Bavaria’s capital, constantly tops quality of life polls and is rated as one of the best cities to live in. For many decades now it has been peaceful and quiet. The prosperous business life is dominated by car engineering and innovation. A total of roughly 197,000 city folks work at 1,100 companies in the car industry generating revenue of €102 billion. The city is home to world-class museums, opera, football and, of course, beer. If Bavaria were an independent country, it would have the highest beer per head consumption in the world.
There is no shortage of high-profile events as visitors of trade-fairs and professional conventions regularly fill 40,000 rooms in the city’s accommodation establishment, but wo events stick out.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the city hosts the world’s biggest beer festival, Oktoberfest, that goes back to 1810. Seven million visitors per year consume more than 7.5 million litres of beer as the city is rolling and tumbling for 16 days when the police go on high alert.
The Munich Security Conference is another major annual event that has been taking place since 1963 when it was limited to just about 60 participants. The MSC, as the Conference is better known, has the reputation of being the most important independent forum for the exchange of views by international policymakers. For three days in February security helicopters go up in the air and black cars with tinted windows and sirens cross town when about 350 senior figures from more than 70 countries engage in an intensive debate.
Since 2009, the Conference is headed by the former diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger. The meetings are dominated by senior politicians, diplomats, military, and security experts from the member countries of NATO and the EU who meet with their counterparts from other countries, such as China, Iran and Russia in an informal setting. While many peace proposals and initiatives are usually discussed, on occasion global political decisions, such as the New START ratification between the United States and Russia in 2011, are also announced.
This year the Conference was no different although the preparations started when the US was in the middle of an impeachment trial and Brexit was causing an earthquake in Europe. This 2020 Conference brought together people like Macron, Trudeau, Stoltenberg, Pompeo, Lavrov, Pelosi, Mark Zuckerberg, and the heads of multinational bodies. Britain’s absence was noticed, as Boris Johnson declined the invitation. Possibly sending an early signal of how Britain will hold itself in a diminished role on the international stage after Brexit, none of Britain’s military or intelligence chiefs and neither the foreign secretary nor its defense secretary were in Munich. Also, African delegates were in the single digits in the Bayerischer Hof, the best hotel in town where the conference takes place.
This year the world powers turned to international defence issues with a focus on “Westlessness”, a new concept expressing the concern that in the increasingly global and multipolar world, the Western countries are growing uncertain of their values and their strategic orientation.
The deep cracks in the trans-Atlantic relationship have been visible through the last few years. They only become more apparent in the informal setting of the MSC demonstrating that Brussels, Paris, and Berlin are drifting away from Washington and are being caught between D.C., Moscow, and Beijing.
Pounded by politics at home, the American politicians came with something they could finally agree on. Potential security threats from China dominated their minds and thus the Conference. The hope was that the Europeans and Americans can agree that China is the new enemy and could find common ground to that effect. The European leaders have approached this with caution and sometimes revealed opposing views.
Europe rightly feel like they are being forced into a choice between the two powers. While alarms over cyber-espionage from China have been raised in Europe, most do not see confrontation with China as the right policy and do engage with Chinese companies in technology areas, such as 5G. This infuriates the Americans.
With the shortage of other energetic and charismatic leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron took the stage and without giving much detail and not shying away from becoming controversial, particularly when it comes to his proposals to re-engage with Russia, Macron continued his argument for greater European sovereignty. As his country is now the only nuclear power left in the EU, the French President is calling for a common foreign and defence policy capable of action and joint operations. While he does stir the European debate, it is understood in Brussels and the national capitals that the European countries will not be dramatically increasing their military budgets and pie-in-the-sky ambitions for European power alone are not enough.
Answering Macron, officials in Berlin repeated that German participation in combined operations would breach the country’s constitution. Macron should be advised that this is unlikely to change in the post-Merkel era.
As to the reengagements with Russia, Macron fails to explain how re-engagement with Russia will calm the fears of Russia growing more assertive. There is a legitimate concern that using the script of 2014’s military incursions in Crimea and parts of Ukraine, Russia may invade the Baltics and elsewhere. While Russia does not necessarily project military or economic power, the Europeans are caught not trusting the Trump administration on one hand and on the other they do not seem to know what to do with Moscow.
This frustrates Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, who is perplexed by the fact that the 100-page Munich Security Report released at the conference mentions Ukraine only eight times this year – the lowest number since the start of the war and the occupation of Crimea. There is a growing fatigue of his country that is stuck in the Minsk process. Ahead of the Conference, the Euro-Atlantic Security Leadership Group proposed a set of new initiatives to end the armed conflict in Ukraine anticipating 12 rather unorthodox steps. Supported by Ischinger and some other prominent diplomats, the plan was immediately rejected by Zelensky and the Ukrainian officials. In New York, the Atlantic Council, a think-tank backed by several Ukrainian oligarchs among others, blamed the plan initiators for repeating Russian talking points.
The rift has been also apparent on the technology front, as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, claimed he had learned the lessons from previous data breaches and manipulations. He did not explain why his company still fails to comply with the GDPR, the European data protection directive. The European watchdogs should make sure to follow up with him on data privacy and compliance in a less friendly setting.
By the time helicopters were escorting the world leaders and the event business sponsors to the Munich Airport for their journey home, Save the Children, the network of organisations promoting policy changes to gain more rights for young people, published a report saying that least 95,000 children had been killed or maimed across the world since 2005. The report also claims that tens of thousands were abducted and millions were denied access to education.
May be, not being able to agree on the common enemy and joint military operations, the Western leaders should look for re-establishing values and unity in addressing issues on which they can agree.