Global Outlook

Countries spend vital funds to stockpile expensive weapon systems at the cost of making actual necessary investments to protect their populations. National security calculations presuppose that power and status equate with costly weapons accumulation. However, none of the challenges that pose existential dangers to nations in the 21st century can be tackled with weapons, or solved by one country acting alone, or even fought with military means.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons should be seen in Western Europe as a signal by the rest of the world to take the promise of nuclear elimination much more seriously. Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany should work together to get rid of the American nuclear weapons on our soil, and sign the Ban Treaty as soon as politically possible.

The Munich Security Conference (MCI) has for decades been a place where dialogue about controversial security issues is central. Complicated issues like the Iranian nuclear programme and talks between estranged neighbours, like Israel and Palestine or the USA and Russia, were on the agenda and could be discussed in public and behind closed doors. This year’s 57th conference on 19 February was totally dissimilar to the previous 56 meetings.

That the peoples of the Pacific continue to speak with one loud voice when it comes to climate action and climate justice is of utmost importance not only for the PICs themselves, but also for the rest of the world. This voice carries significant weight in the international climate discourse and politics. We desperately need it.

Polarisation has torn the United States apart. Under former US President Donald Trump, it almost tore US democracy to shreds.But America is not only polarised within. It faces a polarised Pacific. Relations with China have reached their post-normalisation nadir after Trump’s years in office, when Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping propagated their strongman cults of personality in parallel.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into legal force on 22 January 2021. It is the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be negotiated in 25 years (since the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, CTBT) and the first such treaty to enter into force in 49 years (since the Seabed Treaty which prohibits weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons being placed on the seabed).