Reflections on the Munich Security Conference

There was something unsettling about the Munich Security Conference. The annual Super Bowl for transatlantic talks took place a few weeks after Europeans confronted the reality that Donald Trump is serious about wanting Greenland, and a year after J.D. Vance lectured Germans about the need to embrace the Alternative for Germany – a far-right party labelled an extremist organization by the government.

What happens to a conference dedicated to security cooperation when America has become, to many Europeans, a threat?

The question lingered like an unwelcome guest at meetings, meals and drinking sessions, as people veered between hyperbolic doomsaying and irrational optimism (I was very much in the former camp). Officially, the conference is held at the Bayerischer Hof, a handsome 19^th century hotel that – like most of old Munich – was rebuilt after being destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II. Each February, its windowless conference rooms, speaking halls and basement bars are overstuffed with a thousand politicians, security officials, spooks, diplomats, experts, journalists, techies and CEOs looking over one another’s shoulders for someone more important.

Beyond this hub of intrigue, there are endless side events scattered around the charming Bavarian city –most people who travel to the conference never set foot in the hotel. Like most years, my time was largely spent shuttling around town to different locations forming my own impressions before braving the security perimeter. Here are a few.

The outlook for Ukraine is grim.

A few years ago, Zelensky was welcomed to Munich as a hero, Putin was castigated as a war criminal who had miscalculated, and Western officials competed to show their zeal for arming Ukraine. Today, as Russia inches forward along an 800-mile front line, pummels a freezing Ukraine from the air, and watches Trump squeeze Zelensky, the vibe is different. I heard no optimistic scenarios for Ukrainian battlefield success, or the peace deal Trump promised to deliver on day one.

The best-case seemed to be a cease-fire in which Ukraine cedes substantial territory while assembling a credible enough security guarantee to stop Russia from invading again – with little sign Putin is willing to take even that deal. I tried to wrap my head around Trump’s demand that Ukraine hold an election by the Spring amidst all this carnage and wreckage – almost certainly online, which will hardly be easy to secure.

Russia is at (asymmetric) war with Europe.

I was struck by how often I heard that Russia is already at war with Europe – through constant cyber-attacks, escalating sabotage operations, and relentless influence campaigns to support the same far right parties that J.D. Vance likes so much. This wasn’t just a view held by the hawks. I spoke with some younger Germans who thought it was probable – if not likely – that Russia would be in an actual war with them within five years.

Europeans understand the danger posed by Trump but also kept thanking him.

Time and again, I heard about how the recent crisis over Greenland had served as a wake-up call. Europeans also seemed to take on board the lesson that standing up to a bully is better than flattering him. But at the same time, many Europeans kept expressing gratitude for Trump.

I know, this is a weird. Repeatedly, I heard how Trump’s bullying had forced Europeans to get serious about their own defense. Some of this was framed around the commitment by NATO members to spend 3.5 percent of their GDP on defense, as demanded by Trump (the price goes up to 5 percent if you count infrastructure). Some of it was framed around the cold realization that Europeans could not count on America to defend them, as if Trump’s threats were tough love and not disregard and disdain. Either way, the Trump officials crowing about this achievement in Munich received plenty of reinforcement from the very Europeans they so often offend.

To be blunt: this subplot felt a bit like an abusive relationship – demanding to be thanked for bullying and then receiving that thanks. It also raised a lot of questions. Currently, only three NATO members spend 3.5 percent on defense. Would everyone really hit that spending target, or is it just a talking point? If so, would NATO’s 32 member states coordinate this spending so the sum is greater than the parts? Won’t pouring money into defense amidst an affordability crisis boost those far-right parties sympathetic to Russia and skeptical of NATO?

I love Europe. I believe they should spend more on defense, within reason. But to me, NATO’s strength comes from unity, not arbitrary and unrealistic spending targets. That’s what deters Russia: the promise that an attack on one is an attack on all. So, I’d much rather the U.S. and Europe remain committed to one another than break apart and jack up defense spending. It was also little off-putting how gleefully the defense contractors and consultants seemed to be about this potential bonanza.

Europeans are disappointed and curious about the Democrats.

I offer my critiques from within the giant and cracking glass house of American democracy. As a Democrat, our situation mirrors the Europeans – for a decade, we have failed to find a formula to stand up to Trump or a vision for a world after him. I got tons of questions about the Democratic Party. Why haven’t we shown more fight against Trump? Who, exactly, is in charge? Above all: who is going to emerge in 2028? But we’ve got a lot of battles to fight before thinking about the next president. I kept urging people to focus on what we must do now whether we can have a free and fair election this year – then we can see who can emerge as the party’s next leader.

History’s lessons

When I finally made my way to the Bayerischer Hof, the security presence was overwhelming. I have been to hundreds of these things over the years and was still struck by the hundreds of police standing stern-faced to block anyone who didn’t have a credential from getting near the site. During my first approach, I got stuck for a while as people awaited a motorcade. The passers-by stuck on street corners watched grimly as a line of police cars, SUVs, vans, and black sedans holding VIPs streaked by in orderly succession. I used to sit inside cars like that peering out. With Obama, the crowds cheered and waved and snapped I-Phone pictures and it was nice to occasionally wave back or try to catch the eye of some stranger in the crowd.

There was no such connection in Munich in 2026.

As I finally entered the hotel, I thought about how the biggest challenge for things like the Munich Security Conference today is how distant those of us inside the security perimeter feel from what’s going on out in the world. Here we were, talking about NATO and defense spending and the rest of it. Out there, people can’t pay the bills, our citizens lack belonging and a shared identity, AI is coming for jobs without the tech-enthusiasm of the past, and – at least in most places – the wrong kind of populists seem to be taking advantage of it all.

This is not to besmirch the many good people who come to places like Munich or the value of the exercise. Diplomacy is essential. We need venues like that to bring together people from different countries and sectors. I left knowing more than I arrived. I was pleased to see familiar faces and meet new people. I enjoyed, for instance, an impromptu encounter with the youthful Prime Minister of Greenland who struck me as a smart, decent, determined, and refreshingly normal guy thrust into the strangest situation possible.

Yet the direction of events will be determined by what happens inside our countries far more than any conference. Foreign policy is an extension of politics – take it from me, I left the government proud of my work on the Iran Nuclear Deal, the normalization of relations with Cuba, and the Paris Climate Accord. Now, the U.S. threatens to bomb Iran (again), Cuba is being starved to death by U.S. pressure, and the Trump administration has eviscerated climate action. All of that is because of American politics, not the design of those agreements.

The day I left, some Europeans cheered Marco Rubio’s slightly more polite version of Trump’s bullying, which even had a Chat GPT-sounding ending about a friendship forged in the wake of two World Wars. But neither Rubio’s words, nor rearming Europe, is going to get us out of this mess. We’re going to have to do that ourselves.

Hawks like to invoke Munich as the venue where Chamberlain appeased Hitler in 1938. But while that certainly holds lessons, the die was cast long before. It was in 1923, not too far from the Bayerischer Hof, when an obscure young Hitler attempted his Beer Hall Putsch to seize power in Germany. He failed but got away with a lenient sentence before resuming a more methodical rise to power that far too many Germans – at all levels of society – failed to arrest.

There’s a lesson in that: the world becomes a reflection of who we are in our own countries. We cannot change the trajectory of world events without first changing what’s happening at home.