The 2025 report associated to Munich Security Conference is titled “Multipolarization”, a recuring theme throughout the publication that acknowledges and identifies a major transformation at global level that has the potential to impact security.
Except first chapter, all sections of this report refer to a large international actor, suggesting thus that in a multipolar world, following countries may hold the key to international security: the United States (US), China, European Union (EU), the Russian Federation, India, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa. It is not implied, but it raises the question whether the EU played a more important role than the United Nations (UN) in global security, and the United Kingdom (UK) had no saying in this international sector anymore.
The setting of this report appears to incline towards realism and focus on state competition, and the data and processing are at medium plus level. However, the reports assess in general opinions of responders from more countries on security matters. Therefore, the role of this work may also include the popularization of selected topics throughout societies, among others.
In Forward section, the author summarizes what appears to be the core topic of this report: development towards a more multipolar world cannot be questioned anymore, since it is already ongoing, but it can take a better or a worse direction. It must be emphasized that any historic turning point had its advantages and disadvantages, and generally, transformations were determined by the reformist camp. UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights are mentioned, but given the security background of this conference, the lack of enforcement tools renders the discussion rather political. It is not clear whether the call to rule of law is related to the conflict from Ukraine, but enforcing the rule of law in general, as suggested, may represent a challenge and solution to many security questions.
The Executive Summary asserts that liberalism “shaped the unipolar post-Cold War period…”, and this is now challenged. However, this view is simplifying many aspects of international relations. Liberalism might have been essentially an Anglo-American instrument, along finance, utilized to pacify and control European economy and security. It was not “the only game in town” during the Cold War, afterwards, and certainly not after 2001 War on Terror (which is not mentioned in this security assessment). While European countries were striving to consolidate and replicate American success stories, Chinese political and economic system was rising, and the Russian Federation was recovering. Neither the US, nor G7 or G20 dominated the world for centuries, hence the universality of “liberalism” as applied after World War II must be assessed.
“In the pessimistic reading, multipolarization increases the risk of disorder…” is a formulation that reveals another recuring theme in the report: the aspect of (international) order. This concept is not clearly explained but in order to compare it with a previous major change in global affairs, Cuba may have considered, and still considers American hegemony as an expression of global disorder since the beginning of 20th century. While the security aspects of order and disorder, or anarchy, are justified research directions, not all schools of thought focus on order as the British School of international relations does, and claiming legitimacy for conserving or reforming a state of affairs is related with power rather than justice or an unanimously agreed definition of order.
A confusion is created by the statement “For Trump and many of his supporters, the US-created international order constitutes a bad deal”. The authors also claim that there was a foreign policy consensus related to “liberal internationalism”. Should liberalism have been applied by the letter, the US might have withdrawn its military from Europe and would have left Europe to liberally decide and invest in its security. US did not create the international order alone, but it might have incentivized certain countries to support various policy directions. The Western dominance over the rest of the world can be characterized from a security perspective as the agreement of other poles, and there were more of them, to compete peacefully rather than by direct and forceful opposition. And this is also a contributor to the 20th century world order.
The study claims “China is the world’s most prominent and powerful proponent of a multipolar order…”. This view is a rather subjective one. Opposition to imperialism and colonialism are at least centuries old. China fought the British in the 19th century, and held silence on the international scene for approximately a century. Anti-colonial movements developed separately from Chinese policies, and these aligned with the Chinese cooperation strategy. It is the economic prominence of China that turned its political culture more visible, and it does indeed argue for dialogue rather than imposition in a non-interventionist manner that is difficult to represent in the political culture of the West, where any gain or advantage is transformed into a time-limited mini-domination. China might not be the most prominent proponent of multipolarism in the sense of democratizing international decision-making processes, and it is certainly not a country focused on replacing the US-dominated global order: it would cost too many resources.
Despite its issues, nationalism cannot be excluded from a liberal world order: liberalism should be liberal rather than pushing for liberalism in the name of freedoms. The formulation “For the EU, which embodies the liberal international order, the growing contestation of core elements of the order poses a particularly grave challenge…” is connected to the war from Ukraine and the second election of President Trump. The authors probably did not take into consideration that the claimed liberalism might have led to the death of more than 1 million Ukrainian and Russian people in Ukraine, and the liberal rule of law must have been applied in order to secure the legitimacy of liberalism as a peaceful “ideology”: deciding on who is covered by the liberal umbrella and when reduces its universal value. From a more general perspective, the proponents of liberalism must take into consideration that the world is not anymore in the Era of Discoveries, when European empires sent ships to colonize and control remote indigenous population and declare equality among citizens in home countries and liberalism as core belief. As the world is getting smaller, and everybody sees and hears everything in real time, the concept of responsibility will condition both liberalism and competing paradigms. Large populations may prefer a transparent communitarianism if liberalism continues to be based on the separation between proponents and remote regions. Hence, it is both the goal and the path that matter in 2025 and alone advertising a nice word might not mobilize audiences.
The statement “In this century, no state has made greater efforts to upend the international order than Russia” raises the question whether this was China or Russia. The Russian Federation and previously the Soviet Union pioneered many technologies and discoveries, was and is part of the international order. It was competing with the US until 1989, it might have lost the Cold War, but might have pushed the US into a so-called unipolar world that it did not afford and hence take potentially fatal losses. Europe cannot ask the Russians and other nations to follow US leadership as it does, but it would be in a position to ask for peaceful cooperation if this was a principle it applied in all cases.
“Russia is successfully disrupting efforts to stabilize the international order” state the authors. If “stabilizing” meant imposing own views on peaceful nations, unilaterally, under the threat or by force, then it is not only the Russians who oppose the “efforts.” International order is a term that suggests a relative stability, which is hardly the case in the course of history, and stabilization may involve the deployment of resources. The unification of these two concepts may suggest a pro-active involvement in foreign affairs, which is more specific to the West in recent centuries. There was no mandate granted by the UN nations to the US or Europe to safeguard international peace and order, but to the Security Council. Attempts to legitimate interventionism are risky, and potentially damaging.
Whether Japanese are concerned with the emergence of multipolarism or not may represent a question, but repeated protests against American military bases in Japan cannot be excluded from this context: there was no visible protest against Americans leaving the bases from Japan. Or Germany.
The assumption that “Visions of multipolarity are thus polarized” is basically correct, but the implication that “This makes it increasingly difficult to adapt to the existing order peacefully…” is questionable. Peoples and nations want to compete not adapt as Europe did after WWII, and as long as the Geneva Conventions are upheld and no modern warfare is deployed overtly or covertly, people should question and compete with the goal of advancing civilization. It was liberalism that Europe embodies, not the ideology of falling in line. Such theses risk of being assessed as deceiving or regressive rather than winning hearts and minds. And while the existing “order” may be more peaceful than others in history, the supporters of “adapting” cannot explain to the survivors of the 1990 – 2001 barricade against Iraq that thousands of children died due to starvation and lack of medicine, the use of depleted uranium munition, and that they need to “adapt to the existing order peacefully”: there is no peaceful global order to adapt to. Yet. Likewise, the idea of Pax Americana presented in this study is not a historical reference when compared to classical Pax periods: it was very short and not proportional to the size of the American military footprint.
Concepts like ideological multipolarity (page 21) used to describe relations between power poles require more specific definitions. Ideology is a rather outdated term when utilized to characterize contemporary international relations and interactions. It can still be used in the classical sense, as in this document, but it requires additional considerations in order to represent fluid actors and structures, outcomes and target audiences for mass-scale mobilization and coordination.
Despite a relatively visible tendency to romanticize global affairs aspects related to period of US domination over Europe, the study includes quotes also from the Russian President Putin and hence aims for a high degree of objectivity.
The conclusions of chapters are generally acknowledging in a transparent manner the transition to a new world order, and assess potential risks these directions may generate. The concerns are legitimate and will probably serve history very well: challenging is beneficial. But the representation of developments from the perspective of Pax Americana in Europe, and a particular definition of liberalism – an “order” that exhibits so many characteristics and perceptions – may not be sufficiently representative as to describe the potential outcomes of a changing global order.
Security is paramount to development of individuals and societies, and the Munich Security Conference is an established dialogue platform. However, in order to become even more global, it has to diversify away from both data and interpretations which are typical to Western conferences, that are apparently attempting to convert rather than convince.
Bucharest, 16 February 2025
About the author:
Prof. Ecaterina MATOI is Program Director at MEPEI.
