Munich's Blind Spot—the Security Threats Europe Refuses To See | Opinion

The 2025 Munich Security Conference (MSC) opened in the shadow of terrorism. On opening day, a disgruntled 24-year-old asylum seeker rammed his car into a crowd at a trade union rally, killing a mother and child and wounding dozens of others. It was a tragic act, but like school shootings in America, sadly routine. Yet, domestic terrorism barely earned a mention at MSC. While the agenda advertised multinational issues such as China, the Middle East, and nuclear multipolarity, the zeitgeist was all Russia-Ukraine.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance came closest to discussing internal threats in remarks that earned opprobrium from most Europeans and an accusatory headline from the BBC—"JD Vance's blast at Europe ignores Ukraine and defence agenda"—which, of course, was his very point. But his criticism focused on cultural threats such as free speech and immigration, losing the opportunity to connect those issues to the security threats they provoke. In 1998, Samuel Huntington labeled "The Clash of Civilizations," where cultural and religious identities would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. That clash played out in the Munich attack and hundreds of similar massacres around the world, but not on the dais of the MSC.

The singular focus on great-power competition meant that the internal security risks facing Europe—radicalized lone actors, refugee crises, crime, economic stagnation, climate change—were barely acknowledged. The connection between foreign policy and domestic consequences were missing, and the Munich attack is but a microcosm of that phenomenon.

Meanwhile, across the road from the Bayerischer Hof Hotel, where world leaders debated global challenges, the bars and bistros were filled with conversations asking whether Europe had somehow lost its way—whether it had become what Germans call Saturierte Nationen—"saturated nations"—so secure in postwar stability that they struggle to recognize emerging dangers? Had the so-called Reife Demokratien—"mature democracies"—convinced themselves that the problems were outside Festung Europe even as new and unpredictable security threats gathered at their doorstep?

Instead, MSC framed Russia and authoritarianism as the single most existential threat to liberal democracies, but that belies a simple reality—this perception is not universally shared—not even within the "First World." While some nation states align fully with the idea that Russia represents an existential menace, others see the world through a different lens, prioritizing economic stability, migration control or security risks emanating from cultures unwilling to assimilate to host countries.

Beyond the First World, the divergence is even starker. Many nations across the Global South—including key players in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—do not share Europe's zealous support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Similarly, much of the Global North has remained indifferent to the concerns of countries in Africa and South America, or the Middle East about how Israel's aggression in Gaza could trigger a chain of events with far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

In Europe, some policymakers insist that the war in Ukraine is the defining crisis of our time, others see conflicts in the Middle East, economic instability, massive immigration flows as equally, if not more, consequential. As India's foreign minister put it in 2023, "Europe's problems are the world's problems, but that the world's problems are not Europe's problems."

In many ways, MSC this year seemed a nostalgic return to the stability and predictability of the Cold War years. There was a bête noire, once again Moscow, and almost a sense that the last 35 years were, as Robert Gates said, "a holiday from history." A sense that, with the exception of a few one-offs such as China, the Middle East, and artificial intelligence, that the true security challenges were from the East and aimed at the West.

Yet, as JD Vance noted, the greatest threats are primarily from within. Countries must urgently address domestic security threats, whether from radicalized individuals weaponizing vehicles, criminal gangs, economic pressures caused by unsustainable refugee policies, or even climate change that could reshape industries from Marseille to Mongstad.

The focus on Russia and Ukraine is historical myopia and may be as dangerous as the real threats which confront the daily lives of ordinary people. While MSC spoke in serious tones about geographical regions, dinner table conversations in Europe and the United States center on immigration, economic opportunity, cultural conflict, crime, and the local disruptions these create. These are the issues that lead to the false promise of authoritarianism, the unprecedented re-election of Donald Trump and largely the coups and "small wars" around the world—not the big war in Ukraine. While MSC participants may feel satisfied about another opportunity to discuss macro security issues, it might do better in the future to discuss micro security issues which its citizens face daily.

Tanya Goudsouzian is a Canadian journalist based in Istanbul. She has covered Afghanistan and Iraq since 2000.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.