Raqqa, Iraq. Flickr/ Beshr Abdulhadi. Some rights reserved.The tone of this year’s Munich Security Conference – the Davos of global security – was captured by the Munich Security Report’s theme: ‘Boundless chaos, reckless spoilers, helpless guardians.’ The front page headline on The Security Times, a conference special edition from the stable of Die Zeit, featured a box of matches and urged an appropriate response: ‘Don’t do stupid stuff.’
It is easy to explain and understand the widespread sense of crisis. Events and actions in Crimea, Donbass and Syria generate a mixture of trepidation and anger in many circles from a range of different perspectives. There is more agreement that these situations are tragic and hold risks that are even worse than we have already seen, than there is accord on what are the reasons, who is to blame and what to do.
These events occur against a background of long term risk shaped by growing inequalities, competition for natural resources and the consequences of climate change (on which I wrote for The Security Times – see p40). Responses both to immediate events and the underlying risks are complicated by this century’s radical change in the pattern and distribution of world power. Here is a 2-minute run-through of the issues as I see them.
