Struggle and Peace in Munich | Caitlin L. Chandler

On the primary morning of the Munich Safety Convention, February 14, I arrived on the press workplace to request an escort to enter the Bayerischer Hof, the opulent resort that hosts this annual convening of politicians, generals, weapons producers, and know-how corporations. The room seemed like an airport lounge—gleaming white tables with copies of Overseas Coverage, an inaudible convention livestream—and vibrated with the power of journalists from all over the world begging to get inside. Many attendees have been prepared to talk to the press, however the employees had been instructed to discourage them. 

I approached the desk, explaining that I had an appointment with Hichem Khadhraoui, the pinnacle of the worldwide Middle for Civilians in Battle, an NGO that works with communities and armed teams to guard civilians in wars. “He wants to talk to you for an hour?” the convention staffer replied, incredulous. “Does he have a suite? We can only let you in if you’re going to a suite.” “Only rich people have suites,” I answered reflexively. (A collection on the Hof typically runs from round seven hundred euros an evening to greater than 12,500.) Finally a younger, severe lady whom I’ll name Jessa was assigned to accompany me. 

The Munich Safety Convention, created in 1963, as soon as introduced collectively German navy officers with their United States and NATO counterparts to debate countering the USSR. In its early years just a few dozen folks attended, however in 2025 some 450 CEOs, generals, and politicians have been crammed into the Bayerisher Hof for what individuals usually name “Davos with guns.” As I waited to move by safety, sporting a yellow badge that indicated I didn’t carry a firearm, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who occupies a ceremonial position within the authorities, opened with a speech committing his nation to European unity, trans-Atlanticism and the protection of liberal democracy. “The absence of rules must not become the guiding principle of a new world order,” he stated sternly, omitting any reference to German leaders, who had refused to commit to implementing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued by the Worldwide Legal Court docket. 

Steinmeier was a warmup for the afternoon’s most important occasion: a speech by US Vice President J. D. Vance. Steinmeier conceded that the US would possible withdraw a few of its troops from Europe. However he’d met with Vance earlier, he reassured the gang, and “told him that, regardless of what your decision may be, discuss it with us.” 

When he took the stage, Vance didn’t speak about warfare. The crises weren’t in Ukraine, or Gaza, or Sudan, however inside. He criticized European international locations for proscribing free speech. He famous that “almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad” and introduced up an assault the previous day, when a male Afghan asylum seeker drove right into a crowd close to the Munich central practice station, killing two folks and injuring greater than twenty-five others. “How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” He then tried to make a joke on the expense of the local weather activist Greta Thunberg, however nobody laughed. 

“There is no room for firewalls,” he continued—an allusion to the truth that German events had, till just lately, sworn off cooperating with the far-right Various for Germany (AfD) within the Bundestag. Later the German press would report that, earlier than getting into the safety convention, Vance had met in Munich with the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel, who was banned from the proceedings. German politicians have been particularly horrified by Vance’s speech: Within the viewers have been Friedrich Merz, chief of the Christian Democratic Union, and members of the present authorities, a few of whom later made impromptu statements defending German democracy and vowed to ramp up protection in order to not depend on the US. 

The push for European militarization began lengthy earlier than Donald Trump’s second time period. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the EU has raced to funnel cash towards weapons. “I’m not saying we are at wartime, but we cannot say we are at peacetime anymore,” stated Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on stage in Munich. This reveals a wider development. Earnings from arms and navy companies by the hundred largest protection corporations reached $632 billion in 2023, a 4.2 p.c improve from 2022, in accordance to the Stockholm Worldwide Peace Analysis Institute. In 2024 the UN disarmament chief warned that new applied sciences have been outpacing regulation and that the specter of a nuclear weapon getting used was the very best it had been because the Chilly Struggle. 

As shock unfold amongst Germany’s political elites that the US was meddling in a European (reasonably than an Asian, African, or Latin American) election, Jessa introduced me to satisfy Khadhraoui. The softly lit basement room smelled like French fries and grilled meat. Jessa grabbed a desk immediately throughout with a transparent line of sight and instructed me to inform her as quickly as we have been executed. Khadhraoui, who’s negotiated with armed teams in main conflicts, watched our dialogue amusedly. 

I needed to know how we may take into consideration the way forward for the Geneva Conventions—the principles governing warfare—given the elevated normalization of warfare crimes reminiscent of bombing hospitals and focusing on civilians. “In the past years, the respect of international humanitarian law, and I would say even the basic humanitarian principles, have been completely disregarded by major actors on the planet,” Khadhraoui instructed me bluntly. One turning level, he stated, got here when the US and European allies illegally invaded Iraq in 2003; since then, armed teams all over the world have drawn their very own classes from seeing highly effective international locations disregard humanitarian legislation in wartime. Khadhraoui’s imaginative and prescient of safety differed from most of these I heard bandied across the convention: “You cannot have security over protecting civilians. You cannot have security over peace.”

As Khadhraoui raced off to his subsequent assembly, Jessa indicated I may end my espresso. “Can we go to the toilet together?” she then inquired. I requested her if she was finding out journalism, nevertheless it turned out that she and many of the minders have been college students on the close by navy academy. When she exited the toilet and noticed I had not fled, her shoulders noticeably relaxed. As Jessa negotiated with the MSC employees to let me attend a panel subsequent door, she began to develop on me. 

Inside, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda mentioned the right way to improve European protection spending. Safety personnel scanned the room, which was filled with males in navy uniforms lounging in blue velvet chairs. Finnish President Alexander Stubb, additionally on stage, stated he thought we have been witnessing the “birth of NATO 3.0.” Whereas NATO 2.0 was centered on peacekeeping, after Russia’s assault on Ukraine the brand new NATO can’t be “no action and talk only.” The panelists agreed that the brand new American administration was appropriate to ask Europe to take accountability for its personal protection. The US supplies most of NATO’s capabilities, together with housing nuclear weapons in NATO bases in Western Europe, and has some 100,000 troops deployed there. “We might sometimes dislike the tone of the ask, but it’s a serious one,” Stubb stated. 

The MSC calls itself “the world’s leading forum for debating international security policy.” Along with the annual February convening, it runs closed retreats at venues like a chateau in southern Germany and the Rockefeller Bellagio villa in northern Italy. On the aircraft to Munich, I learn its flagship annual report, this yr titled “Multipolarization.” The chapter headings have been off-putting: “India: Modi-fied Status.” “Brazil: Lula Land.” “South Africa: The Fate of Good Hope.” A lot of the articles made the identical easy factors: within the aftermath of the Chilly Struggle the world was unipolar, dominated by American energy, however now extra actors have been competing for affect. 

In 2014 the MSC had twenty-seven employees and an annual price range of some 1.2 million euros. Its 2023 annual report listed eighty-three employees, and its annual price range has ballooned to greater than 18 million euros, with 5.5 million for the convention alone. (This doesn’t embody the fee to the German police, which sends officers from different districts to Munich.) Some 74 p.c of these funds come from the non-public sector, many from know-how corporations. Though they weren’t seen usually publicly on panels, I used to be proven an official MSC individuals checklist this yr that included tech and protection leaders like Alex Karp of Palantir, Chris Lombardi from Oracle, and Roisin Kennedy from Lockheed Martin. Within the areas I used to be sometimes allowed to entry, just like the Politico lounge, few watched the mainstage discussions. Most have been in Munich to have facet conferences and presumably make offers. Contained in the safe zone however exterior the Bayerisher Hof have been lounges run by Deloitte, McKinsey, and different firms. 

A parallel cybersecurity convening—sponsored by corporations like Airbus, Google, and Meta—was underway, whereas a dinner hosted by the Council on Overseas Relations featured “a three-course meal featuring foods under threat from climate change, from red prawn carpaccio to Norwegian cod fillet confit with chive butter blanc [sic] and caviar.” Among the many visitors was the chief director of the UN World Meals Programme, Cindy McCain. At a close-by bar, a returning participant confirmed me a small spherical silver coin inscribed with the letters MSC: You had executed Munich proper when somebody slipped you one through a handshake.  

Because the convention proceeded, I heard extra European protection leaders comment that they hoped they’d lastly gotten the push from the Individuals they wanted to militarize. “Can Europe get its shit together?” a delegate requested. For Oliver Stuenkel, a political scientist presently based mostly at Harvard’s Kennedy Faculty, it won’t be attainable. Once we chatted towards the tip of the primary day within the Politico lounge, he urged that the bloc “lost an opportunity to actually push towards more unified stands at a time when these far-right parties were still not emerging.” In that sense Vance’s comment that Europe confronted inner threats was appropriate, simply not in the way in which he supposed it. 

In 2024 Germany spent 2 p.c of its GDP on protection, the NATO goal, however Trump has known as for international locations to spend 5. To extend spending to even 3.5 p.c “would change the country in ways that I think many Germans don’t want to,” stated Stuenkel. The social returns of protection spending are low, and to extend protection budgets European leaders must both go into debt, reduce social packages or elevate taxes.

Germany’s worldwide repute, Stuenkel stated, was tanking rapidly. He cited a “ridiculous video” by which German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s spokesperson “would not explicitly say [that] if Netanyahu comes to Germany, he will be taken into custody” due to the ICC warrant. “It’s not to say that anyone is an angel in the international order or doesn’t use violence against their own people. But I mean to say that you uphold an international rule-based system and then not follow it…” His voice trailed off.

The pinnacle of the World Well being Group, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who got here of age throughout the Ethiopian Civil Struggle and later served within the successful Tigray Individuals’s Liberation Entrance (TPLF) authorities, additionally had a pointed critique. “I know firsthand how war feels,” he instructed an auditorium at a facet occasion on the Technical College on the eve of the MSC. “I hate war.” Requested about latest cuts to international well being, he replied: “Even funding, to be honest, is not the issue. It’s how the world actually prioritizes its issues. For instance the world as we speak is now spending $2.43 trillion on defense. That’s too much.” 

It was a uncommon dissent. On the MSC, few folks publicly questioned whether or not rising navy budgets would make Europe safer. After the German election in late February anointed him as the subsequent possible chancellor, Merz has pushed to cross a constitutional modification that might permit the federal government to boost its borrowing restrict with a view to dramatically improve navy spending earlier than an inflow of recent parliamentarians from each the leftist Die Linke and the AfD can block such a measure. After the convention, the UK additionally introduced it could reduce overseas support to fund protection. 

However in closed-door conferences analysts doubted a few of these spending plans, calling for extra tailor-made methods like scaling up rising protection know-how companies. The issue was not simply that Europe depends on international locations just like the US for particular weapons, reminiscent of Patriot air protection missiles, but in addition that it lacked a imaginative and prescient for utilizing new know-how that different international locations—amongst them the US, China, Russia, Israel, and Ukraine—have been racing to develop. The AI protection market is booming—in 2024 it was valued at $4.956 billion, with development projected at 30 p.c by 2029, or $18.558 billion. Within the months previous the MSC, highly effective US tech corporations like Google dropped “do no harm” commitments that they’d not use AI to develop bombs or surveillance. European corporations, nonetheless, have principally been absent from this acceleration towards automated warfare machines.

The Kiev-based journalist Tim Mak—who runs a pair of publications protecting the warfare in Ukraine, The Counteroffensive and CounteroffensivePro—pointed out to me that the way forward for battle may already be glimpsed on the battlefield. It might price as much as $50 million to provide a conventional F16 fighter jet, however solely $1,000 for “a pretty decent frontline drone,” he stated. Whereas working fighter jets takes no less than a yr of coaching, “anyone with a PlayStation” can function a small drone. Ukraine and Russia have invested closely in tiny FPVs—the propellors are round 5 inches—in addition to different distant gadgets. A story by Counteroffensive documented how, in December 2024, Ukraine launched a completely drone-led assault in northeastern Ukraine in opposition to Russian forces, which included kamikaze and machine-gun-mounted floor fashions in addition to FPVs, one in every of which had a mounted assault rifle. (It shared its drone know-how with the insurgent forces who topped the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.) Earlier within the yr, an investigation by +972 journal revealed that the Israeli navy had used AI to create kill lists in Gaza with little human oversight. There was no public session on the MSC with know-how and protection corporations about how humanitarian legislation may very well be programmed into these new weapons techniques.

On the second day of the convention I entered the AmerikaHaus, a sq., four-story constructing with a pearl-gray limestone exterior some ten minutes from the Bayerischer Hof. After World Struggle II the US authorities created AmerikaHäusers throughout Germany, initially as libraries. The Haus was internet hosting an MSC facet occasion known as “Addressing Double Standards”organized by the Membership de Madrid, a company of former democratic presidents and prime ministers. Amongst them have been Danilo Türk, the president of Slovenia from 2007 to 2012; Aminata Touré, the prime minister of Senegal from 2013 to 2014; and Elena Motta, a Guatemalan congressmember. 

Touré identified that the UN, the one place the place international locations may focus on on an equal foundation, was quickly weakening, partly as a result of western world powers—the US and the UK—had refused to grant equal participation to international locations from the worldwide south. “Even the UN is operating like it was in 1955,” she stated. No African international locations have been among the many Safety Council’s 5 everlasting members—the US, UK, China, France and Russia—who’ve veto energy over resolutions, together with on battle negotiations, sanctions, and authorizing the usage of pressure. Many African international locations have been turning towards strengthening regional mechanisms based mostly on shared pursuits, such because the African Union, reasonably than prioritizing international establishments. Though we have been at a safety convention, Touré felt that nobody was speaking concerning the root causes of conflicts, which in Africa included excessive injustice and poverty. “Now it’s all about arms.”

Later I discovered Touré taking a brief break from the primary periods within the Politico lounge, adorned with video games of battleship and chess on the facet tables. I requested her what she considered the MSC. “It seems to be a business,” she replied. A lot of the MSC’s and the Trump administration’s rhetoric struck her as outdated, meant to hide industrial pursuits. 

As if to show her level, shortly after we spoke Republican Senator Lindsey Graham took to the Politico stage to debate Ukraine. “We better make sure that we economically integrate with Ukraine as a trip wire,” he stated, referring to the US financial pursuits there. “If we do a minerals agreement where there are American businesses all over Ukraine, it’s harder to invade.” The trail to peace was in American revenue. “Ukraine has value—literally has value…. These people are sitting on literally a gold mine.” 

Graham took credit score for Donald Trump’s so-called plans to finish the Ukraine warfare, saying that he’d proven the US president a map and defined there have been “trillions of dollars” in treasured metals underground. These embody the nickel and cobalt used for electrical autos. It was a style of the extortion that was to observe—the Trump administration’s demand that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky give the US 50 p.c possession of those uncommon earth minerals as “repayment” for US support, adopted by contentious negotiations that included a Russia–US assembly with out Ukraine, and culminating in a weird and terrifying press convention on the White Home the place Vance and Trump publicly berated Zelensky. (Trump has appeared to harbor a grudge since his first time period, when Zelensky rebuffed his request to research Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine.) 

On the finish of the session Graham reminisced about an earlier period: he missed John McCain and Joe Lieberman, with whom he used to return to Munich. “I’m the last amigo,” Graham stated, “but my goal is to create an army of amigos.” It was McCain who launched Graham to Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, of whom he spoke fondly. “Then you had the Khashoggi thing—horrible.” He paused, just for a second. “But things are changing. Women are driving.”

A buddy texted me that Yanis Varoufakis, the previous Greek finance minister who cofounded a progressive pan-European motion known as DiEM25, was about to deal with an anti-NATO protest known as the Munich Peace Rally. I raced out of the safe zone to get to the demonstration. The metallic clapping of drums introduced the coming brigade of some hundred folks—some 2,500 had turned out throughout town in three demonstrations. 

“By allowing international law to die in Palestine, they’ve killed international law everywhere, in Germany as well,” Varoufakis shouted from the stage. “For international law to mean anything, it must be applied to everyone, because if it doesn’t apply to everyone, it doesn’t apply to anyone.” Earlier that day I had attended a press briefing with Philippe Lazzarini, the pinnacle of UNRWA, the UN company that helps Palestinian refugees, within the gleaming MSC press heart, housed in a former financial institution. About fifteen folks have been there. 2 hundred and seventy-three of his employees had been killed in Gaza. After a focused misinformation marketing campaign by the Israeli authorities, UNRWA had misplaced most of its funding. His staff’s lives have been nonetheless in danger. The company was functioning, he stated, “hand to mouth.” 

Towards the tip of the day, after a very powerful visitors had already left Munich, the organizers started to let journalists into the Bayerischer Hof, though nonetheless accompanied by minders. We filed right into a dialogue on “(C)overt Custodians: Intelligence for the 21st Century” as folks grabbed free wine. Afterward we hoped to talk with visitors, however the MSC handlers instructed us they have been off responsibility—we needed to go away instantly. I missed Jessa, who had been assigned elsewhere.