Deepening geopolitical differences highlighted before Munich meeting

The world has slipped into a volatile era of "wrecking-ball politics" that favors the dismantling of institutions over incremental reform, a report from the Munich Security Conference warns before its annual meeting this week.

The conference convenes roughly 65 heads of state and government, alongside nearly 100 foreign and defense ministers, top commanders, and senior officials, for three days of discussions beginning on Friday in Munich, Germany.

The 2026 MSC report, published on Monday ahead of the meeting, cautions that the global order is under mounting strain, alliances are fraying, and geopolitical rifts are deepening.

MSC Chair Wolfgang Ischinger asserts in the report's foreword that "rarely in the conference's recent history have there been so many fundamental questions on the table at the same time".

He highlights core questions, including European security, the trajectory of trans-Atlantic ties, and whether the international community remains capable of navigating an increasingly "complex and contested" world.

According to an analysis by Euronews, the report depicts a world amid sweeping political, economic, and security turmoil. At its core is an assessment that frames the entire report and the conference itself: "The world has entered a period of wrecking-ball politics."

It finds that tentative reforms and marginal policy shifts are yielding to sweeping overhauls that deliberately challenge existing systems and, in some cases, seek to dismantle them.

The United States, the very power that helped forge the post-war international order, is now singled out as a principal engine of its transformation.

More than 80 years after its inception, the report claims that order is now "under destruction", emphasizing that this is not merely a string of discrete policy choices, but a broader pivot coming from Washington.

US policy, the report argues, is challenging bedrock principles that have underpinned international cooperation for decades, from the role of multilateral institutions and the primacy of rules-based trade to close alignments with democratic allies.

Consequences are felt worldwide, but are especially pronounced in Europe, which has long been reliant on US security guarantees, where the partnership is now perceived as "unsteady", oscillating between "reassurance, conditionality, and coercion".

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is slated to attend this year's conference. According to press reports, Vice-President JD Vance's attendance was initially confirmed, then canceled a week later.

At last year's conference, his speech was widely described as a "reckoning with Europe" and provoked criticism from multiple politicians, including Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

The report includes survey findings from multiple countries on whether current government policies are enhancing prospects for future generations.