My Take | The EU runs an insecurity conference in Munich for everyone to see
The world has become multipolar but European leaders are behaving more like hapless bipolar patients and have no one but themselves to blame
Thanks to US Vice-President J.D. Vance’s now infamous speech blasting the European Union, the Munich Security Report may have attracted some curious readers such as yours truly. In light of his most unkind claims, it’s almost prescient about America’s unreliability.
“The threat that I worry most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values,” he told a stunned audience at the annual security conference.
At 151 pages, the report is not bedtime reading, but well worth a look. It’s not for nothing that the chapter on America is called “Maga Carta: United States”, a play on “Make America great again” with the Magna Carta, get it?
The report itself is titled “Multipolarization”, exactly the kind of term you expect EU bureaucrats and intellectuals to come up with, but probably won’t take off. The authors do get edgier with some chapter titles.
The one on China has subtitles such as “He Says, Xi Says”, “The Emperor’s New Boats”, a reference to the new Chinese navy, and “Crazy Rich Asians? China’s Economic Clout”. I was half expecting a mention of film star Michelle Yeoh.
The chapter on Russia is “The Czar’s Gambit”. Was it a reference to chess openings, the hit TV series The Queen’s Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, the Russians’ love of chess, or all of the above? Who knows?
Unfortunately, the report wasn’t written in a similarly irreverent tone. The first sentence kind of spoiled the fun: “Today’s international system shows elements of unipolarity, bipolarity, multipolarity, and nonpolarity.”