Commentary by Timofey Bordachev (Program Director of the Valdai Discussion Club), in The Multiplural World, Feb 13, 2025 (This commentary first appeared in Russian in the Russian daily newspaper Vzglyad, Feb 13, 2025. Translation by The Multiplural World with the assistance of machine translation. A related reading by the same writer is further below.)
Since its founding in 1963, the annual Munich Security Conference has gone from being a genuine consolidation of the West on an intellectual level to a platform for intrigue within an imperialist agglomeration that still aspires to govern the world.
[Introductory note by The Multiplural World:
As the NATO proxy war in Ukraine winds down, the full import of the defeat of the NATO countries by the Russian Federation is taking shape and becoming fully visible. Mainstream news sources in the West will continue to be completely unreliable for understanding what is taking place. Meanwhile, reliable, alternative news sources of Ukraine are drying up as many of them have gotten carried away by bizarre and naïve claims that the Trump regime in Washington offers a new path of ‘peace’ and ‘reason’ in world affairs. Here is a Canadian writer with a long-winded version of what he calls a ‘Trump peace plan’ for Ukraine. Oh dear, there is no such plan, there is only U.S. (Trump) submission to its defeat and attempts to paint it as anything but. Then there is the ‘left-wing’, anti-Russia media in the West; it sold its soul irrevocably to Western imperialism at the time of the 2014 coup in Kiev. Those among it who bothered to comment on the coup (most were uncomfortably silent) presented it a positive expression of surging Ukrainian nationalism. But this nationalism is today a far-right ideology. It stands entirely opposed to the heroic history of Soviet Ukraine, from the self-determination policies (‘korenization’) that made an independent Ukraine possible beginning in the early 1920s to the rise of a soviet ideology (internationalism, political self-determination, social development). Soviet ideology was weakened across the former Soviet Union by illusions that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989-90 and restoration of capitalism that followed could improve social and economic conditions. But Soviet ideology did not disappear and is today enjoying a renaissance if not being reborn.
[As a result of all of the above, The Multiplural World will be stepping up its translating and publishing of news and analysis from Russian news sources. It will also boost its original reporting on the state of the world–from the wreckage of imperialist war, the genocide in Palestine, the global warming emergency, and so much more, to the degrowth and socialist alternative program that is desperately needed. Degrowth and socialism is the only protection for humanity from the ravages of capitalism; it is the only path to a new world founded on principles of social justice and ecological salvation.
[The following is the second report of this new and renewed reporting.]
The Munich Security Conference is the West’s main open “brainstorming” session on its relations with the outside world. It was in this capacity that the conference was created in the early 1960s, and it remains so today: nothing new in either form or content.
In 2025, it will take place on February 14-16. As usual, it will bring together not only Western politicians and experts but also some representatives of countries that we call the World Majority. Chinese, Indians, representatives of Arab countries, and even a few guests from Africa and Latin America are planning to attend.
Russian politicians and experts used to attend, but that ended in 2014. The reason for their participation was simple, it was a combination of attempts to better predict the West’s strategy in the future, on the one hand, and to assess the reactions to Russia’s own statements.
No one in Russia is thinking any longer about reaching agreements or looking for ways to compromise: everyone is already accustomed to the fact that in relations with the United States and its satellites there can only be a “zero-sum game”, when the gains of some automatically mean losses for others.
The Munich platform was used to convey Russia’s thoughts to the rest of the world in the presence of Western countries. This was precisely what President Vladimir Putin’s historic speech in Munich in 2007 was all about. It is from this speech that the collapse of the U.S. dominance system that emerged in the world after the end of the Cold War is usually counted. The 2007 conference and speech by President Putin marked a turn towards conflict in relations between Russia and the West, since the latter is incapable of tolerating opinions that differ from its own.
In all respects, this year’s Munich gathering is a rather boring event, where the main roles have long been assigned. Questions of fundamental importance for all of humanity are present only in the sense of what potential benefit or threat they may pose to the organizers. An annual report is written for the conference, this year it is loudly called ‘Multipolarization’, apparently out of a desire to offer an alternative to the multipolarity promoted by Russia, China and other countries.
The loud title, however, is compensated by the extremely boring content of the text, which is written by the staff members of the organizing committee on the payroll there. Considering that it is not customary to ask sharp questions about oneself in the West, the text of the report becomes more and more forced with each passing year. And it is completely inferior in quality to similar documents published in Russia or Asia.
Germany has been chosen as the venue for the gathering of the intellectual forces of the West. Firstly, it is their most economically large and developed state, capable of handling such a forum from the financial and organizational points of view. Secondly, it is completely controlled by the USA and therefore there is no need to fear attempts to pull the blanket over themselves and push through points of view alternative to Washington. Everything will be done very carefully.
In addition to the general problems that the US and its satellites are currently dealing with, the conference promises to devote much attention to a topic that is quite amusing, but at the same time indicative of the state of minds in the West – the possibility of deploying some “European peacekeepers” in Ukraine. Amusing because it is completely divorced from reality and is an excellent example of one of the many simulacra produced in unimaginable quantities by Western media and “talking heads”. And for the same reason, it is indicative, since it demonstrates that the Western expert community and politicians are ready to spend hours discussing ideas that are completely unbelievable from a practical point of view.
This fully reflects the European approach: being unable to influence anything happening in the world, the Old World creates constructions that it then discusses with itself with colossal rapture. Thus, a couple of days ago, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Paris’s upcoming investments in the development of its own artificial intelligence – a competitor to Chinese and American developments. There is no doubt that in the end, everything will be limited to words.
However, all these delightful conversations will only be a backdrop for the Europeans to get acquainted with representatives of the new American government. Donald Trump’s envoys are already terrifying their interlocutors in the European Union and the Europeans are going to use the Munich meeting to better understand how to deal with the next generation of American masters. There are fears that the new masters will be much more demanding of Europe than they have been in recent years. This means that their satellites need to find ways to confirm their strategic loyalty while avoiding significant, new expenses as much as possible.
The Americans are in the ideal position of a racketeer who completely controls the behavior of his protégés and at the same time keeps them in the dark about future plans. Now the main threat from their side is to maintain the conflict with Russia on the same scale but to shift the costs entirely onto the Europeans [emphasis added]. This is what the European Union and Britain fear most of all. After all, all their talk about increasing military preparations is nothing more than hot air. European voters are in a state of complete apathy and are not at all ready to march in formation to fight Russia.
Also by Timofey Bordachev:
Trump’s assault on USAID offer a glimpse into the vulnerabilities of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus, essay by Timofey Bordachev, in RT International, Feb 7, 2025 (The reader should ignore the naive, original headline of this essay in RT as chosen by the editors of the publication. That headline has nothing to do with the content of the essay.)
