The Psychology of the Resigned Loser Places Europe in a Subordinate Position from the Start

Eighteen years ago, the organizers of the Munich Security Conference invited Russian President Vladimir Putin as a special guest, then a rising global political star. His speech before the defense-security elite of transatlantic-oriented Europe in February 2007, rhetorically directed against American global unilateralism and NATO, was recognized seven years later as a Russian imperial platform based on the principles of the former Russian Empire, within the borders of the former Soviet Union. It was actually recognized only after Putin annexed Crimea in March 2014. It became ‘notable’ after his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Trump Closes the Circle

The sixty-first Munich Security Conference, taking place this weekend, will gather the European defense-security elite, including around sixty heads of state and government, in the most challenging circumstances since World War II. After Vladimir Putin has become the main destructive actor of the existing order over the past eighteen years, above all the OSCE principles regarding the non-alteration of state borders by force, the new/old American President Donald Trump is now closing the circle by abandoning the doctrine under which the U.S. sought to maintain its role as a dominant world power through international liberalism policies with the help of international institutions and unilateral military interventions. The European Union, as a (geo)political expression of the European continent, is particularly concerned about Trump’s abandonment of the post-Cold War consensus under which the U.S., as part of NATO, was the guarantor of European defense and security. All this is happening in circumstances where the EU has two open war conflicts at its borders – the Russo-Ukrainian and Middle Eastern – without any real power to decisively influence their outcome.

Therefore, the most attention at the Munich Security Conference is preemptively directed towards the American delegation, which is coming in a strong composition, led by U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance, with the participation of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine General Keith Kellogg, and a large delegation of congressmen. It is expected that they will programmatically formulate a new American foreign and security policy towards Europe for the first time before the conference participants, as well as the American role in the new global order that is currently emerging, the key elements and factors of which are the subject of analysis in the annual security report of the Munich Security Conference published in recent days.

The most interesting conclusion in that report, titled ‘Multipolarization’, is that ‘multipolarization’ of the world order is a process that is genuinely ongoing, although ‘multipolarity’ as a targeted global order will likely never be achieved. This declared aspiration towards ‘multipolarity’ is already serving the creation of a new bipolar order with China and the U.S. as superpowers, and China uses it as bait for more ambitious countries.

‘An Especially Difficult Challenge for the EU’

Another interesting aspect is related to the research of expectations from the future multipolar world in BRICS countries led by China and in G7 countries, (formerly) the most developed countries of the (pro)Western world. While in the pro-China BRICS member states, where nearly half of the world’s population lives, the majority looks optimistically towards the new multipolar world, in the developed G7 countries, only in the U.S. today is the future viewed with optimism. This psychology of the resigned loser places the Western world in a subordinate position from the start in this competition. In the analysis of countries seeking their opportunity in the new world order, in the process of ‘multipolarization’, the report includes not only the main rivals of the U.S. and China but also Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa. And, of course, it analyzes the EU as the ’embodiment of the liberal international order’. According to the authors, the process of multipolarization is an ‘especially difficult challenge’ for the EU, ‘sometimes a real storm’, as ‘key elements of that order are being called into question’, the entire liberal vision on which the EU rests. The authors predict that Trump’s return to power will drastically intensify this challenge by reducing U.S. engagement in EU security, inciting trade wars and internal divisions, which will force the EU to recalibrate its relationship with the U.S. or emancipate itself from it. The first option is challenging. The second is practically impossible and dangerous for the European security future. Literally a threat with an empty gun. Therefore, it is important for European defense-security decision-makers to carefully listen to the speeches of Vance and Rubio and consider how to fit in. So that in ten years we do not remember – notable speeches and missed opportunities.