Anxious World Leaders Descend on Munich

Welcome to a special edition of Foreign Policy’s SitRep! We’re on the ground in Munich, Germany, for a major international security conference with hundreds of world leaders, defense ministers, spy chiefs, and experts.

Watch your inbox throughout the weekend as we bring you the biggest news, tips, and analysis from the 2024 Munich Security Conference (MSC). The real fun starts tomorrow, when heads of state and other dignitaries start rolling in. But there’s a lot to cover before that, too.

Here’s what’s on tap for today: The West’s reckoning with Russia, a big potential meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials, the major questions we’re asking foreign leaders at MSC, and more.

The West’s Reckoning

In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the stage at the Munich Security Conference and delivered a now-infamous speech that in hindsight seems like a harbinger of things to come.

He derided the notion of a unipolar world led by “one master, one sovereign”—a clear reference to the United States—and said such a system was “not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.” And he warned that NATO’s eastward expansion was imposing “new dividing lines and walls on us.” But if his speech was a warning of the wars to come, few in the West listened.

Now, 17 years later, the West is facing a reckoning with Putin—who was unsurprisingly and pointedly not invited to this year’s conference. Despite all the hard-charging speeches by U.S. and European leaders about unity in the face of Russian aggression and support for Ukraine as long as it takes, many policymakers heading to Munich this week quietly fear the alliance is wobbling.

The war in Ukraine isn’t going well for Russia—far from it—but it’s looking less bleak by the day for Putin as Western commitments to Ukraine falter and the grim war of attrition starts to tip the balance in Moscow’s favor.

What to do about Russia and Ukraine is expected to be a key fixture of the conference this weekend, but not the only one.

Pre-election jitters. The other major theme everyone will be talking about is what the hell is going on in Washington. U.S. allies in Europe are unnerved by the prospect of a neck-and-neck rematch between incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Trump’s latest remarks on NATO—claiming he wouldn’t defend allies who didn’t pay enough on defense and essentially characterizing the alliance as a pay-to-play U.S. protection racket—bring home how high-stakes the 2024 U.S. presidential election is for Europe.

Congressional dysfunction. Then there’s the matter of the major national security funding bill that includes critical Ukraine military aid that’s been stuck in Congress for months amid political infighting over immigration at the U.S. southern border. Whether this bill passes is seen as an important test of whether the United States can actually live up to its commitments to allies and Ukraine—and whether the isolationist strain bubbling up in the Republican Party has spread.

In a sign of how times have changed, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a prominent Russia hawk and Ukraine supporter (and frequent guest at MSC), announced he was ditching plans to come to Munich and was going to the U.S. southern border instead.

Avoiding the next Cold War (or trying to). Then there’s the China question. Europe is still grappling with whether to treat China as an economic partner or a long-term geopolitical threat and is watching closely how Washington manages ties with Beijing. European officials are wary of getting ensnared in a Cold War 2.0 as China hawks take flight in Washington. So far, Team Biden has worked to tamp down tensions with Beijing, to the relief of many Europeans, but it’s unclear how long that will last.

Our sources tell us that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be meeting with China’s top foreign-policy chief, Wang Yi, while both are in Munich this weekend, though nothing’s been formally announced. Watch this space.

And if that wasn’t enough. There’s also the Middle East crisis. There’s a real sense among the European policymakers who are descending on Munich that the world was on Europe’s and the United States’ side when it came to isolating Russia after its Ukraine invasion, but now the United States—and, by extension, its European allies—are hemorrhaging global support over their stance in support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. We’ve already seen signs that European allies are beginning to split with the United States on its approach to the conflict and steadfast(ish) support for Israel—particularly as Israel gears up for a potential offensive in Rafah—adding yet another layer of stress to the U.S.-European relationship.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is laying the groundwork for a long-shot bid to turn the crisis into an opportunity to revamp a Middle East peace deal. Robbie and our colleague Amy Mackinnon reported more on what that grand bargain entails this week. In addition to senior Biden administration officials attending MSC, there’s a sizable delegation of senior Middle Eastern officials flying into Munich this weekend (more on that below), and U.S. officials may seek to advance that grand plan during the conference.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Who we’re watching. The big names—and they’re all flocking to Munich this week. From the U.S. side, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will lead the delegation. Other notable attendees scheduled to come include Wang Yi, China’s top foreign-policy chief; Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud; Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar; the chief of Britain’s secret intelligence service (MI6), Sir Richard Moore; U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres; NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg; European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen; and a group of U.S. senators and House members.

By our count, there are around 28 heads of government and state, 56 foreign ministers, 20 defense ministers, and 36 intelligence chiefs from around the world gathering here this weekend, alongside hundreds of other senior dignitaries and business executives. Needless to say, it’s going to be a news-filled weekend.

What we’re watching. The invisible side of the conference. What goes on outside of the public panels at these sorts of big diplomatic confabs is just as consequential, if not more so. There’s an entire team of MSC staff dedicated solely to coordinating private meetings between officials and other participants on the sidelines of the conference. Think foreign and defense ministers meeting CEOs, chiefs of staff meeting other chiefs of staff, that sort of thing. And that’s where much of the actual meat of diplomacy gets done.

The three big questions. Among all the questions we’ll be asking the foreign ministers, military chiefs, and national security experts we interview this weekend, there are three big ones that we’re particularly focused on.

First, what would a second Trump term mean for NATO and Ukraine? It’s a question everyone is thinking about but few (especially those in government) want to actually go on record about.

Second, can Ukraine actually win this war? And what constitutes winning? The mood on Ukraine’s prospects seems decidedly more dour this year than it did a year ago, much to Putin’s delight. Nearly every transatlantic leader talks publicly about how Ukraine must win and that NATO will maintain steadfast support for the country, but they’re more reluctant to talk through what a worst-case scenario would look like and how the alliance is bracing for it. And that’s precisely what we want to know.

Third, is there any off-ramp to the Middle East crisis? Most agree the status quo isn’t sustainable, and Team Biden is working on its plan, but nearly everyone is skeptical that it can pull this off in an election year. Meanwhile, Israel may be gearing up to escalate the conflict further with an offensive in Rafah, and Houthi attacks on the strategic shipping route through the Red Sea show no signs of letting up. We want to know what foreign officials really think about the Biden plan’s prospects and whether they have any alternative ideas for how to deescalate or even end the conflict for good.

Snapshot

Then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin sit next to each other prior to Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 10, 2007. Johannes Simon/Getty Images

Put on Your Radar

Today: Blinken is traveling in Albania before heading to the Munich Security Conference. He and Harris will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the weekend.

NATO defense ministers met in Brussels today ahead of their Washington summit in July. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva continues his two-day trip to Egypt.

Friday, Feb. 16: Day One of the Munich Security Conference.

Saturday, Feb. 17: Day Two of the Munich Security Conference. The two-day African Union leaders summit also kicks off in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Quote of the Day

“Youthful naivety is bliss, the wisdom of age may save the west.”

—How Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, who is 63 years old, characterized his vote in support of the national security supplemental package in the Senate, with funding for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel. He made his comment in response to another senator who pointed out that nearly every Republican senator under the age of 55 voted against the measure.

This Week’s Most Read

• The ‘Biden Doctrine’ Will Make Things Worse by Steven A. Cook
• The Neurotic Fixations of U.S. Foreign Policy by Stephen M. Walt
• The Country With Nothing Left to Lose by Christina Lu