World leaders gathering in Munich for the annual security conference are being greeted by a report from their hosts that takes an axe to the policies of Donald Trump and warns that then global security structures risk being turned to rubble.
The Munich Security Report 2026 entitled “Under Destruction” says that: “The world has entered a period of “wrecking-ball politics”.
“Sweeping destruction – rather than careful reforms and policy corrections – is the order of the day. The most prominent of those who promise to free their country from the existing order’s constraints and rebuild a stronger, more prosperous nation is the current US administration. As a result, more than 80 years after construction began, the US-led post-1945 international order is now under destruction.”
The view is widely shared in Europe and among America’s allies in Canada, Japan, and above all in Ukraine. But in setting the discordant tone for the weekend of discussions between world powers, which will include the US, the 123-page report savages the US administration and sets the stage for a jarring score.
Not least because in the G7 countries surveys found that people did not have much faith in their own governments either – “only a tiny proportion of respondents say that their current government’s policies will make future generations better off”.
“The most powerful of those who take the axe to existing rules and institutions is US President Donald Trump,” the Munich security conference report says.
This might suit his followers, it went on, but “it is unclear whether destruction is really clearing the ground for policies that will increase the security, prosperity, and freedom of the people. Instead, we might see a world shaped by transactional deals rather than principled cooperation, private rather than public interests, and regions shaped by regional hegemons rather than universal norms. Ironically, this would be a world that privileges the rich and powerful, not those who have placed their hopes in wrecking-ball politics”.
The architecture of security once known as Pax Americana is breaking down across Europe and the Indo-Pacific especially while humanitarian work and efforts to slow down climate change are collapsing, the report said.
“Ironically, the president of the country that did more than any other to shape, sustain, and defend the post-1945 international order is now at the forefront of dismantling it.”
The report said that Trump had flouted international law: “In just one year in office, Trump has used force against targets in Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. He has also openly contemplated using force against other targets, including Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico, threatened to ‘take back’ the Panama Canal, and speculated about Canada joining the United States as the 51st state. Very recently, he has even doubled down on his designs on Greenland.”
In a survey of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US, Brazil, China, India and South Africa not one country agreed that “Donald Trump’s policies are good for the world”.
In Ukraine, Europe’s leaders were being “forced into a posture of accommodation – not towards Russia but toward Washington” as Ukraine is in danger of being a “first victim” of Trump’s approach.
“Rather than being treated primarily as a question of sovereignty and international law, the war is at growing risk of being reframed as a negotiable dispute between powerful leaders, in which territory, security guarantees, and even natural resources become bargaining chips,” which risk a “victor’s peace”.
Europe is already dealing with hybrid warfare waged by Moscow and now dealing with an administration in Washington that has backed Putin against Ukraine.
But the region is struggling to put up a united front to counter Russia’s threat. The UK, Spain Greece and Italy all identified as “fiscally strained low spenders” on defence where politicians have failed to make the case for more money for “guns over butter”.
But what increases there have been in defence spending have been inefficient because Europeans seem unable to work together efficiently: “Rising defence budgets are instead fuelling a new wave of industrial nationalism that risks deepening fragmentation, inflating costs, and eroding fragile public support.”
Cuts to multilateral humanitarian work, led by Trump but reinforced by many other countries including the UK, posed an immediate risk to life for millions around the world but also add to the fragmentation of organisations like the UN.
Rules-based trade is being undermined and “whether the system will collapse into the law of the strongest remains an open question”, the report added.
